Welcome to BBRU 226.

First things first

Can you bake a good cake? Misssy M is struggling.

Does the Objectification of Women via the explosion of pornography really lead to bad outcomes for women? Not at the Himmelgarten Café.

Update: And, to get us into the swing of what follows, a magnificent example from Liberal England of European integration – a wonderful Anglo-Saxon church dating back to 680AD, perhaps using stone taken from even earlier buildings erected when the Romans were oppressing us.

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Remember those European Parliament elections a few days ago? No you don’t. Even if you voted you have forgotten what the results were, except that Labour were a wash-out, but you knew that already.

This BBRU tries to cast some light on what if anything the British blogosphere has to say about the UK’s relations with Europe. And if the blogosphere says nothing or very little, that in turn says … a lot?

Eurosceptics fume that ‘Brussels’ is pouring out edicts adversely affecting our lives, yet who is bothering to look closely at precisely what happens there?

Take the Total Politics 2008 list of the Top 50 Political Blogs. How many of them – not least the two most popular British political bloggers Guido and Iain Dale – devote any quality time to looking in depth at how the European Union works and at its impact on our daily lives?

I have been looking for energetic and unambiguously pro-EU British blogs written not by journalists or professional experts. The best resource is the long lists of EU and Europe-themed blogs over at lapsed Eurosceptic Nosemonkey’s EUtopia, with some helpful words on what each writer represents.

Among them are some political and psychological writings far from what might be acceptable in the UK, or anywhere else. For example, Federal Union blog which hopes to see a federal UK in a federal Europe in a single federal global polity.  They like federal. But they are unhappy:

The European election results were bad news for pro-Europeans. There’s no point trying to present it any other way…

Mary Honeyball MEP stands before the yawning popularity chasm in front of Labour – and strides purposefully forward:

This is where we start out (sic) fight to bring home the relevance and the benefits of Europe to the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. There is no doubt that the European cause has been put back some long way by the results announced on Sunday. But this is no time to give up…

Jon Worth (European, social democrat, federalist, inline skater) is arguably the leading pro-EU British blogger patiently explaining to a wider audience what it all means, including the contest for the next President of the European Commission:

I think Barroso is rubbish, and I would be very happy to see Verhofstadt as President of the Commission instead. But how would you possibly explain that to European voters? … It would look mighty odd, especially as it might well be Angela Merkel or Nicolas Sarkozy that could signal the end of Barroso, rather that it being someone like Brown or Zapatero.

Odd indeed. But what, a baffled nation cries, exactly are the differences between all these foreign people? What’s at stake?

Meanwhile among the many Eurosceptic-trending British bloggers there is satisfaction, but also not.

Dick Puddlecote thinks that the British National Party’s vote suggests that the Lib/Lab/Con powerhouse have got something badly wrong:

It’s not a failure of democracy, you wibbling fool, it’s proof that posturing twats like you have pitifully failed to address the concerns of a large proportion of your electorate.

Talking Clock raises an eyebrow at the claim by Jose Barroso that the EP election results “confirmed that voters wanted a strong and ambitious European Union.”

Are the Conservatives are likely to make any difference on EU issues? EU Referendum has grave doubts on this as on, well, everything emanating from the EU.

Heresy Corner points out more scary EU plans aimed at creating a new ‘security strategy’ unaffected by national boundaries, and quotes a European diplomat:

“No one wants an election in Britain, not because of any special affection for Gordon Brown but because an early election would threaten the Lisbon Treaty,” he says. “That cannot happen”.

No, indeed it cannot. So presumably it won’t. Europe has spoken.

Which is why A Tory warns William Hague to beware a renewed push on the Lisbon Treaty.

Yet even Eurosceptics find things to savour in today’s EU. Such as the sensuous pleasure for Tim Hedges of voting in Rome:

I didn’t agree with what almost all of them had to say, and I didn’t agree that the election was conducted more or less on national lines (as it was in England). But I did get that frisson of being a part of a democratic system and participating in it.

Not all UKIP supporters are happy with the party’s performance. Take Junius:

Public dissatisfaction with the main political parties has NEVER been higher. And yet UKIP still only managed to gain a pathetic 0.3 % increase in the share of the vote!

Nosemonkey agrees. The anti-EU impulse among UK voters may not be as strong as some people think:

If so many people in Britain (80% was the usual figure quoted) wanted a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, how come only 43% bothered voting? If the anti-EU cause is so overwhelmingly popular, how come only around half of those voted for an anti-EU party? (And that’s only if you include the Tories as anti-EU.)

But Bloggers4UKIP crunch the numbers differently:

Bearing in mind that the governing party polled 2,381,760 votes, just 15.7% of the total votes cast; then factor in the ‘anti-EU’ votes which comprise UKIP, BNP, English Democrats, Socialist Labour Party, NO2EU and UK First, which together polled 4,121,983 votes, 27.2%, the Labour Party can hardly be said to have a mandate when deciding a major aspect of this country’s policy on membership of the European Union…

Daily (Maybe) is pleased with the Green vote in Scotland (nice graphs) and notes that UKIP fared less well in Edinburgh than in the Orkney Isles:

… the further from civilisation you get, the UKIP votes begin to surface

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Tentative conclusions.

An easy one first. Is the BNP racist? Yes.

But what do 800,000 BNP votes tell us? Are UK voters becoming more belligerently anti-EU, if not downright extreme/racist? Or not?

Jim Bliss’s Quiet Road has the quote of the week:

… we don’t live in a world where the depressing has an inverse relationship with the true.

We are none of us entirely free of prejudice. A wise man once said that “racism is the water through which we all swim”. But the idea is to swim against the current, folks, not get swept along with it …

True enough. However, can the BNP be compelled to be multicultural? Look out Harriet Harman, Loretta is moving in to your shed – and wants to get pregnant!

People react in different ways to the BNP. Uber bendy Benefit Scrounging Scum sets us all an example:

… regardless of my disgust for their politics I absolutely support the right of parties such as the BNP to believe whatever they want to believe….

… Just one small gesture performed every day by each one of us can make enough difference to change our society. Today my gesture was to visit the grave of Lieutenant John O’Neill, VC. Lt O’Neill is buried in the cemetery a few streets away from my home. His grave was looking like it needed some love and attention when I discovered it a few days ago, so today I returned to clean it.

One argument goes that many BNP voters feel ‘powerless’, so the voting system should be changed to allow more ‘participatory democracy’.

Hmm. Is it wise to give the busy bee populist/nationalist pro-death penalty, anti-EU, xeno/homo/islamophobic forces rumbling away out there even more scope to make a political impact?

Not to mention other collectivist tendencies whose commitment to democracy and civilised open-mindedness might be at best, hem, modest?

Andrew Ian Dodge spots a “master class in cognitive dissonance”:

… the political establishment has been unable to recognize that a growing segment of the British electorate is both racist and heavily socialist … The rise of the neo-Nazis may be a benefit to those who oppose proportional representation for the election of MEPs, which would necessarily lead to “minor” parties getting seats. Does anyone really want to see neo-Nazis sitting on the green benches of Westminster?

Brian Barder (no Eurosceptic he) reviews the various options for changing the voting system but is disinclined to favour radical changes:

Since 1935, not a single party has ever won 50% or more of the national vote.  It can be said of every single government since the war that more people voted against it than for it.  So what?

Cabalamat on the other hand thinks that the UK’s ‘first past the post’ system is a dead man walking and wants the Lib Dems to help bring it down:

The First Past The Post (FPTP) voting system is dead, at least as far as the United Kingdom is concerned … a clear majority of voters think it is no longer fit for purpose, and it will be abandoned for UK general elections within the next 20 years.

Of course free voters in a free country need free media. But are free media … good media?

What about the Daily Mail? Why, asks enemies of reason, does this newspaper make everyone unhappy?

Feminazery is repelled by the newspaper and by the comments on its site:

… even with a wealth of objective and printable comments to choose from, the Mail consistently chooses to publish the most bigoted, even if this means repetition of the unintelligible. Perhaps most tellingly of all, they would rather publish none at all than any that undermine the party li(n)e…

Moving on, what about a sick person’s right in a free UK in a free EU to choose useless cures? Ministry of Truth on Death by Homoeopathy.

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Therefore, all things considered, what?

Thanks no doubt in good part to feminism, a lot of careful thought has gone into the issue of what really constitutes ‘consent’ when it comes to sexual encounters, and how to give legal and operational effect to the best available answer. A tough subject:

  • Kate Smurthwaite (F-Word) is angered by one ghastly rape report
  • Harpymarx looks at dismal rape conviction rates
  • Liberal Conspiracy retells a gruesome story of WW2 rape in Libya
  • Feminist Avatar (Women are the real Left) likes new legislation in Scotland which includes men as rape victims and redefines consent: free agreement where the party is not drunk, unconscious, asleep, threatened or coerced (and various other things). Consent can also be withdrawn at any point during the sex act…

Maybe the undertow of Euroscepticism in the UK lies here – a feeling among the public that while they cheerfully accepted a friendly relationship with Europe, they just do not consent to the closeness of the union with other EU populations and EU institutions which they are now getting.

But how have we Brits ended up like this? Were we drunk, unconscious, asleep, threatened or coerced when our politicians signed up to the idea of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”? Or did we notice the persistent advances of EU processes working their way into our intimate policy places, but pretend to like them and/or ignore them until it was too late to say Stop?

Or did we say Yes, albeit reluctantly and with a heavy heart, but indeed meaning Yes?

If we did say Yes earlier on, when if ever is it OK to just say No More to ‘ever closer union’ – and to insist on having that No More respected and upheld?

* * * * *

These things are not just about different mountains of laws and directives. Beneath all that lie very deep philosophical currents.

Let’s end with UKIP candidate Tim Worstall on the battle between our Common Law tradition and Europe’s Roman Law tradition as it affects the City:

Precisely because you can construct a contract, create a derivative, make a deal, in pretty much any manner you choose, the innovation will be in that Common Law area. Not in a Roman Law jurisdiction where there is a great deal more approval-getting that is necessary. Extending detailed EU control over these markets will of course wipe out that comparative advantage…

This takes us way back to the eighteenth century and the divergence between different streams of Enlightenment thought in England, Scotland, the nascent USA and France.

Ideas of political responsibility, the definition of the ‘state’, separation of powers, trial by jury, and so on – we in the UK and the wider Anglosphere do have differing traditions from those of Continental Europe (although as Devil’s Kitchen helpfully points out, UK and US libel law regimes are not in harmony these days).

A lot of European governments either do not care for our traditions, or smirk as they are whittled away by EU processes.

* * * * *

There are only three possibilities:

  • Extremes expand to squeeze the middle
  • The middle expands to squeeze the extremes
  • Middle and extremes stay in an uneasy but more or less stable balance

In this case the ‘Middle’ for a long time has been a cosy consensus across the political and media establishments that ‘the EU is good for you’.

More and more UK (and especially English) voters are mobilising via the Web and saying loudly, “Oh no it’s not!” Public unease is gnawing at the legitimacy of British political processes and their interface with the EU. Attention-grabbing though the BNP vote is, the fact that Labour (Leading at the Heart of Europe) was beaten into third place by UKIP is the real story of those EP elections in the UK, giving all the main Parties a lot to think about..

The Internet (driven, as Slugger O’Toole points out, by all those pesky hyperlinks) is a great multiplier for people with something on their minds. It collects swarms of people who get right down to basic principles, at stunning speed.

The recording industry, newspapers, the world’s banking sector and Westminster expenses have all been hit by shuddering unanticipated shocks in recent years, in good part because of remorseless web-driven scrutiny of their Underpinning Assumptions.

Are plump cosy EU institutions and abstruse EU ways in turn vulnerable to equally disruptive technologies – and popular vexation?