Manneken Pis
Poor old Herman van Rompuy, the first holder of the EU’s full-time presidential post. For his first six weeks in office, the former Belgian prime minister retained a Trappist vow of silence as he toured European capitals, preparing for a special one-day summit of EU leaders he had called. The strategy was to keep out of the limelight until he could use the meeting to exceed expectations and show himself to be the EU’s powerful new kid on the block.
The first half of this plan—staying low-key—certainly worked. Rarely in Brussels, Van Rompuy gave almost no interviews and met no journalists, making only a couple of speeches and giving just one press conference, in Madrid. So reclusive was he that some observers compared him to Yuri Andropov, president of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, who was almost never seen but would occasionally issue communiqués which were pored over for clues on policy.
Unfortunately, part two of the Van Rompuy plan for greatness didn’t go so well. The aim of his summit, held in Brussels on 11th February, was to start crafting plans for a new form of economic government overseen by the heads of state and administered by the European council, which meets under the chairmanship of Van Rompuy. Instead, the meeting was overwhelmed by the Greek debt crisis and worries in the markets that the eurozone may be about to implode. Van Rompuy was a bit player because the key question—on what to say about a possible Greek bailout—depended on getting a deal between France and an ultra-cautious Germany.
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Simon Johnson
Traditionally, “You should go to the IMF” is not something you would say to a friend. Over the past few decades, the IMF has become associated with excessive fiscal austerity and extreme political insensitivity. Countries borrowed from the IMF only when all else failed and when there was no other way to pay for essential imports. For Iceland in autumn 2008, for example, the only alternative to IMF financing was to eat locally sourced goods—mostly fish.
But the IMF has changed a great deal in recent years under the auspices of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, its managing director. Strauss-Kahn, a former French finance minister and possible Socialist candidate for the French presidency, has pushed through changes that allow the IMF to lend without conditions in some circumstances, and to give greater priority to protecting social safety nets. He has also moved the Fund away from its obsession with fiscal austerity measures (a big mistake—with traumatic consequences—in Indonesia and South Korea in 1997).
Greece undoubtedly has serious problems today. The great opportunities offered by European integration have been largely squandered. And lower interest rates over the past decade— brought down to German levels through Greece being allowed, rather generously, into the eurozone—led to little more than further deficits and a dangerous build-up of government debt.
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David Goodhart
Since Labour’s 1997 election victory 1.6m people have been granted permanent right of residence in Britain, mainly from developing countries. And in 2008 24 per cent of all births in England and Wales were to foreign-born mothers, rising to nearly 50 per cent in London. Strikingly, however, at no point in the last 12 years does there seem to have been a strategic discussion in cabinet about the purpose of much higher levels of immigration.
In the course of making an Analysis programme for BBC Radio 4 on New Labour and mass immigration, I discovered that the final decision to open Britain’s labour market to—as it turned out—more than 1m eastern Europeans was taken by a small group of officials and special advisers before an EU council of ministers meeting in Brussels.
An accumulation of small decisions, all of them perfectly rational and sensible in their own right, has led to a mighty big—and pretty unpopular—outcome. So why did it happen? There were two big background factors: much cheaper mass transit and Britain as a “magnet” both economically and culturally. Our fast growing economy—at least for most of the last 12 years—plus a deregulated labour market meant jobs galore at all skill levels. Then there is the pull of the English language and the “London effect”—a city with communities from all around the world.
But the magnet effect needed some political decisions from government to open the door—and between 1997 and 2003 there were four significant ones. First, there was the abolition of the so-called primary purpose rule, which had the effect of significantly raising the immigration of foreign spouses.
Second, the introduction of the Human Rights Act made it harder to clamp down on the asylum wave which began to rise sharply in 1999 to over 70,000 a year. Third was a liberalisation of student visas and work permits, both of which more than doubled after 1997. Finally, and most significant of all for the fabric of British life, was a decision to open the British labour market to the new eastern European and Baltic EU states, seven years before any other big EU state. As is now well known more than 1m people came after 2004.
All of these, with the exception of the primary purpose rule, had persuasive non-immigration rationales too. Foreign students helped to pay for an expanded higher education system. More nurses and doctors from abroad were vital for the NHS when public spending began to rise in 1999. Business lobbied very effectively for liberalisation, Whitehall was mainly in favour, and there was a network of NGOs and legal campaigners who also pushed to keep the door as wide as possible.
There is one more significant factor in all this: the pro-immigration, pro-diversity, assumption not just of the Cool Britannia left-of-centre but of a large part of the metropolitan middle class, who were not only comfortable with an increasingly multi-racial Britain, but also benefited economically from the cheap labour that flowed in. Meanwhile much of the political and administrative class believed that large inward flows were simply a fact of modern life.
A distinctively New Labour combination of economic and cultural liberalism was the backdrop to Britain’s great opening of the late 1990s. But notwithstanding the careless manner in which historic decisions have been taken, it would be wrong to say that things were completely made up on the hoof. There have been six major acts of Parliament relating to asylum and immigration since 1997—and Tony Blair spent a huge amount of time on asylum when popular anxiety was at its peak. There have also been anguished national debates about immigration and integration in the light of the 2001 race riots in the north of England and, of course, the 7/7 bombings. But Labour policy has been an odd mix of restriction and frenetic intervention on asylum for example, combined with benign neglect on the broader national purpose of mass immigration.
Belatedly, in the past couple of years the government has put in place a more coherent system of immigration control. There is now a points based system which should restrict work-related immigration to those people the country really needs, and electronic biometric-based border controls will soon count people in and out.
Moreover, aware of the popularity of the Tory plan for an annual immigration cap, the government is preparing to retreat from its laissez-faire approach to overall population growth. Labour has been jolted by the success of anti-mass-immigration lobby groups like Migration Watch and is now prepared to accept that overall numbers do matter. Expect to hear more on this from Alan Johnson or Gordon Brown.
But when historians come to look back on this period in 100 years time they will surely conclude that, as John Seeley said of the expansion of the British empire, we acquired a whole new population in a “fit of absence of mind.”
Analysis: Foreigner Policy is on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 8th February at 8.30pm
Hear David Goodhart discuss national identity at Bath Literature Festival: “Can you still be proud to be British?” takes place on Saturday 27 Feb, 1pm – 2pm. Further details: www.bathlitfest.org.uk/prospectbritain
Manneken Pis
Though it may seem obvious, the EU is learning that having many leaders is not the same thing as having strong leadership. The Lisbon treaty brought two new players onto the stage: Herman van Rompuy, the Belgian ex-premier appointed president of the council of ministers, which represents the EU member states, and our very own Catherine Ashton, the bloc’s new foreign policy supremo. These two figures were always intended to perform alongside the commission president, José Manuel Barroso. But they were expected to replace—rather than compete with—the top brass of the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, which has now passed to Spain.
Unfortunately the Lisbon treaty is a bit of a mess because, under it, the rotating presidency of the EU is not actually abolished. In policy areas such as environment it continues and gives the relevant minister from the presidency country a starring role chairing ministerial meetings. But its design flaw is that the PM and the foreign minister of the presidency country are left feeling like a spare part. Spain, never the EU’s shrinking violet, is dealing with this by pretending the treaty is not really there. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, and Miguel Ángel Moratinos, the Spanish foreign minister, have launched the country’s EU presidency no fewer than three times. In this “transitional phase” it has become ever more difficult to answer the EU’s eternal question: who’s in charge?
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Jon Cartwright
Galileo: Europe’s answer to American dominance of satellite navigation. But what will it really be used for?
By 2013, if all goes to plan, a constellation of European satellites will have launched into the sky to form Galileo, a new instrument for satellite navigation. According to the European commission’s brochure, the €3.4bn (£3.1bn) system is “specifically designed for civil purposes”—including sat nav for cars, oil drilling, aviation and shipping. It will create 100,000 jobs, as well as €200bn of new markets in areas like transport, energy, finance and agriculture.
However, absent from this list is any mention of the military. Since the 1980s, the US global positioning system (GPS)—Galileo’s only fully operational counterpart—has helped co-ordinate the US military’s ground, sea and air operations. Today, GPS guides drones, smart bombs and cruise missiles, and is one of the key assets that makes the US a superpower.
Galileo began life in 1999 to provide satellite navigation independent from the US. Financed chiefly by EU civil budgets, the 30-satellite project was intended to be more accurate than GPS and, crucially, operate even if the US chose to switch off GPS signals at times of conflict.
At the start, Galileo’s military potential was also an open, if cautious, talking point. In 2001, the then President Chirac said the system would help “the development in Europe of a common security and defence identity.” Britain was a co-founder of that identity but, mindful of its special relationship with the US, it was less keen on a military role for Galileo, and by the following year public talk of military use disappeared.
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Anthony Seldon
Tony Blair’s “friends in Europe” did little to support his bid for the top job
President Kennedy once envisioned the void he would face when he stood down thus: “I will find myself at what might be called the awkward age, too old to begin a new career and too young to write my memoirs.” Kennedy never faced that dilemma. But Tony Blair did. And as he comes to terms with his failed bid to be EU president, he will have another chance to solve the problem of retirement.
The British are not usually impressed by their former prime ministers. Few have added to their stature in retirement. Several, like Thatcher, Heath and Churchill, detracted from it—the latter is lucky to have escaped opprobrium for the hospitality he enjoyed from the likes of Aristotle Onassis. Since 1945 most have gone quietly into their dotage, seeking little more than memoirs, self-justification and the money their political careers denied them.
But since 2007 Blair has been the exception. Unlike Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher he avoided commentary on his successor, and instead threw himself into a hectic series of projects—hoping to continue work unfinished from his premiership (from which he believed he had been prematurely rushed). And no former leader has been more criticised, especially by a media obsessed with his lucrative consultancies and speaking slots. Indeed, it is rare to come across praise for the charitable work on which he spends half his time, almost all of it unpaid, and through which he employs 80 staff.
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Manneken Pis
As Prospect went to press, Gordon Brown was still fighting to install Tony Blair in the job of first full-time president of the European council. But Blair’s would-be assassins were emerging like the cast of an Agatha Christie whodunit. In Britain, William Hague told EU ambassadors that appointing Blair would be considered a hostile act by the Tories. And on the continent, Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg, held the smoking revolver.
Over the years, Juncker has rarely concealed his dislike for all things Anglo-Saxon—apart, perhaps, for the British banks which set up shop in his tax-haven principality. Juncker, a chain-smoking bon viveur who doubles as the Luxembourg finance minister, has been at the EU’s top table since 1995. A German and French-speaker with good contacts in both countries, Juncker has carved out a role much larger than the size of his nation warrants. Though Luxembourg has a population of just 450,000, it was the oil that greased the wheels of the Franco-German tandem.
As finance minister, Juncker once helped humiliate Brown, then chancellor. Brown had unwisely claimed that, while staying outside the euro, Britain would still be invited to meetings of ministers of the single currency states. But when the moment came, he was politely asked to leave the room. Brown later got one over Juncker, overturning proposals for a European commission savings tax directive.
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Tom Nuttall
EU: there is increasing scepticism about foreign interventions
With Gordon Brown and, reportedly, Barack Obama both agreeing to up their respective countries’ troop count in Afghanistan, Afghan watchers have understandably spent the past week focusing on the military component of the international effort (plus, of course, the nefarious activities of the Italians).
Yet, as with most large-scale interventions these days, Afghanistan also enjoys a significant civilian presence—police, rule of law experts, reconstruction teams and the like. And while the instinct in America is always to turn to the Pentagon first, we Europeans, with our far more subtle understanding of the complex nature of modern security challenges, are much better at deploying this so-called “civilian power” effectively—right?
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Brian Semple
Pagani detention centre in Greece, where 47 minors have been on hunger strike due to poor conditions
Tuesday’s raid by French police of the ‘jungle’ camp of asylum seekers in Calais was welcomed by Britain’s cabinet ministers, with home secretary Alan Johnson describing his “delight” at the “swift and decisive” operation, while immigration minister Phil Woolas deflected criticism from human rights groups by saying: “If they were asylum seekers they would have claimed asylum in France or in the first country they came to.” He added that “genuine refugees” would be protected in the first country they came to, and the rest could go home.
The fact is however that Woolas has no idea how many genuine refugees there were among the estimated 1,500 people living in the camp because of the skewed and inconsistent EU policy that is preventing many asylum seekers from having their applications heard fairly, or, in some cases, heard at all.
European protocol on immigration was enshrined in the Dublin Regulation in 2003, which dictates that immigrants from outside the EU must claim asylum in the first country that they reach (based on the illusion that every state provides equal standards of protection to asylum seekers). The idea behind the policy was to cut down on asylum seekers applying to more than one nation for asylum, while also ensuring that each case is “meaningfully heard”.
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Prospect
UFO sightings in Britain peaked in 1978, the year after Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released, with over 750 reports. The three years after 9/11 saw the fewest sightings (100 or less) since the mid-1960s.
The Guardian Datablog, 18th August 2009
Next year, Britain’s annual payment to the EU will rise from £4.1bn to £6.4bn.
The Sun, 24th August 2009
Martha Stewart, Snoop Dogg, Pablo Neruda and Dimitri Shostakovich have all been banned from entering Britain.
Mental Floss website, 6th May 2009
The average weight of new members to WeightWatchers has risen from 12.3 stone in 1989 to 13.7 stone today.
Daily Mail, 24th August 2009
Americans are giving up their landlines at a rate of 700,000 per month. If this continues, the last cord will be cut in 2025.
The Economist, 13th August 2009
The Times and Sunday Times lost £51.3m in the year to 29th June 2008.
The Independent, 24th August 2009
The number of people killed at work has fallen to a record low. There were 180 deaths in the year to March 2009, the lowest number since records began in 1974.
BBC News, 24th June 2009
General Electric is the only company remaining from the Dow Jones index of 1896. It has had fewer leaders since then (eight) than the Vatican has had popes.
Fortune, 5th April 2004
The New York Times magazine’s cover story on 30th August, about a hospital during Hurricane Katrina, cost around $400,000.
New York Times, 24th August 2009
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