All in it together? Not US!
It isn’t all that long since I said that, whoever leads it, the USA always pursues its own interests — full stop. Well, after a lot of evidence that the world is slowly getting warmer and a succession of storms and floods which may or may not be connected with that, the USA has torpedoed the global warming conference because it wanted a deal whereby it would have to cut CO2 emissions by very little, if at all. (There are those who think that the deal the USA wanted would have actually allowed an increase in CO2 emissions.)
The basis for this was the notion that forests could be credited, as so-called carbon “sinks”, against CO2 output. This seems an Alice-in-Wonderland way to try to deal with global warming, particularly since the USA is one of the single biggest polluters on the planet.
However, you have to understand two things: one is that, as I have already said, the USA always pursues its own interests (and if that conflicts with anyone else, friend or foe, that’s tough — for them); the second is that what is in America’s interest is determined more by big business than whoever occupies the White House. The last thing American industry wants is to have to implement costly measures to cut back on pollution — that would eat into profits.
I don’t imagine anyone was surprised that the USA wanted to wriggle out of any stringent agreement at the Hague. What was a bit more surprising was that some European delegates, notably our very own John Prescott, seemed to think helping the USA get the laughably weak agreement it wanted was a good idea.
It seems an eternity since John Prescott was a figure who drew widespread respect, and not just from Labour supporters. However, his impassioned support of John Smith’s call for One Man, One Vote has in retrospect come to seem a high point from which his stature has done nothing if not plummet.
I don’t know if you recall the old Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone as the Great Detective and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. Bruce’s performance was largely responsible for the impression, widespread until more recent interpretations rescued the character, that Watson was an imbecile so dense it was a wonder he could dress himself; Watson as played by Bruce was so cretinous that he was dubbed “Boobus britannicus”. In recent years, John Prescott has deported himself as though he wishes to claim that epithet as his own.
I think the quintessential Prescott gaffe was when he, with his responsibility for the environment and while he was supposedly encouraging the public to move away from car use, used a car to travel all of 250 yards — and then could not understand why people thought this was outrageous.
On a more serious level, the speed with which this supposedly “Old Labour” figure has dumped his vigorous assertion that Labour would never privatise Air Traffic Control leaves one with the impression that Prescott would not know what “principle” meant if you hit him with a dictionary.
In the three years this government has been in existence, Prescott has shown energy without obvious competence, and has had to rely too often on bullying interviewers to avoid sticky questions. He is in charge of transport, and should be spearheading the drive to reduce car usage. In fact, as everyone is all too aware, the railway network is in absolute chaos and more people are using cars.
This was the man that went to the Hague at the head of the UK delegation.
Despite Tony Blair’s recent strongly pro-European speeches, Prescott’s attempt to push a “deal” at the Hague which boiled down to a supine agreement to almost everything the USA wants suggests that there is still a tendency in the government to look across the Atlantic and treat European governments as of less moment.
How else to explain his behaviour on discovering that some European delegates had the temerity not to agree with him? He and some other delegates fell for the US line; many did not. Did he imagine that because America wanted something that it was ipso facto the right thing? Did he think that because he was pushing it, the deal was done? It isn’t as though he has a brother called Jeb.
Whatever the reason behind his behaviour, it was appalling — stomping out in a tantrum (“Eeh, Ah’m reet gutted”) and then slagging off the French delegate, Dominique Voynet. Single-handedly, Prescott has offended one of our EU partners and made Britain look stupid to many other Europeans. Others have leapt to Mme Voynet’s defence; only Downing Street and Prescott’s delegation have supported him — and they would, wouldn’t they?
The big problem in British politics at the moment is the failure to grapple with what it means to be part of Europe and to look, realistically and optimistically, at where the EU is going. The crux of the problem is that this is true of both main UK parties: the Tories still seem reluctant to lose the image of Britain as an imperial power which can kick ass around the world; Labour — “New” Labour — doesn’t want to do anything which might scupper its chances of re-election.
It does not seem to have occurred to anyone pro-Europe at the head of the political parties that dissemination of information about the EU, how it works, what benefits it brings — and I mean information, not Mandelsonian adspeak — could lead the public to see the pluses of the EU. Unfortunately, the current political discourse still encourages even some young people, in England anyway, to say “We’re British, why should we change?”
The Hague conference is one indication of why we need a strong EU. The USA will naturally always follow a course which is to its benefit. Unfortunately, it seems that it will follow a course which is to its benefit even if that course is dangerous for the entire world. (Perhaps they imagine climate change will respect the Monroe Doctrine.)
Since the collapse of the USSR, the USA’s ability to do what it damn well likes has been untrammelled — well, untrammelled by anything other than incompetence. A strong, united EU could be a check on that, when necessary (I’m not talking about two power blocs continually at each others’ throats), and perhaps engage in some tough negotiations to get stringent, rigorously applied agreements; make no mistake, the sort of problems we may be facing now will be nothing compared with those we face in decades to come unless action is taken to change the way we pollute the planet.
That is not going to happen while the only really keen Europeans seem to be Germany and France, and while the UK derides every move towards closer political union. (Yes, the UK is not the only country to do so, but it is the most weighty voice amongst those who do.)
What, precisely, is wrong with closer political union? There is something deliciously ironic in the fact that the British politicians who most vigorously oppose any move towards a “United States of Europe” also tend to be those who most admire the USA. They certainly tend to be the first to warn of a threat to NATO’s continued existence from something like the newly announced Rapid Reaction Force.
Am I missing something here? OK, let’s accept that NATO kept the peace, in Europe if nowhere else, for the past 50 years. (I know not everyone accepts that, but let’s accept it for the moment.) Who, exactly is NATO defending us from now?
The USSR has been gone for about a decade now. While Russia may not be what anyone could call stable, it is in no state to wage any sort of war against the West. Supposing it did, though, now that Russian communism is officially deceased, would America necessarily step in if there was no threat to the USA? Hands up all those who think the USA would get involved…
Unless you are a raving fundie, in which case rational argument is as pointless as the Dome, the question of whether a politically integrated Europe is a good or bad thing for its citizens depends on how it is structured. (Whether it is good or bad for specific groups of politicians is entirely different, and one which the citizenry would do well to ignore as entirely irrelevant.)
One of the bizarre features of British political discourse over the past couple of decades is the way in which federal has become a dirty word. No one ever stands up and points out that it simply means fair: a federal system is one in which each component gets fair treatment.
Recently, a German politician suggested the EU president should be directly elected. It seems a good idea to me — if a city like London can elect its mayor, why should not the European Union elect its president? It would be a start on the road to democracy in the EU, but no sooner had the words left the unfortunate German’s mouth than British politicians were scrambling to be first to say how silly the idea was.
I can’t see how a move towards democracy in the EU is silly; blocking every such move does note make the system in any way fair for the citizens. It may be good for the bureaucrats, it may keep the politicians feeling nicely secure, but entrenching a system whereby the EU is, effectively, a collection of governments pulling against each other as much as they are pulling together, and in which countries can veto things they don’t like, means that the EU is kept weak. Since there is more public and political consciousness of the environmental dangers we all face in Europe than in the USA, that is dangerous for us all.
© DC 2000. All rights reserved.