One week later

My son is the cutest and most handsome baby in the world*. Ever. No, don’t argue, I’m not listening. He also probably has the messiest nappies and is the loudest crier. Yes, now you can disagree with me. Please.

 

So, what’s been happening since I’ve been away from the keyboard?

A twice failed “Conservative” candidate who didn’t do enough work in his last constituency decides he has still done enough to deserve a peerage, and when Cameron tells him to sling his hook he throws a tantrum. Teacup, Storm. Nevertheless, hours of coverage in the media.

A story from the U.S. (that rather nasty Minnesota Bridge collapse) is reported by the BBC without them, so far, managing to turn it into yet another “blow for Bush” piece.

Still, the Beeb were on form on Tuesday covering the last official day of Army operations in Northern Ireland, with the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 referring to Nationalist areas as the “occupied communities” and playing a good old Irish Republican song. So glad my licence fee is being put to good use.

And Foot and Mouth is back. Not that the French need much excuse to ban our beef exports. Reports are that the government is keen to learn the lessons of six years’ ago – I suppose that means they won’t be burning the cattle with their legs pointing upwards, as one anonymous minister was said to have complained last time.

* I reserve the right to remind him of his in fifteen years’ time in front of his friends should the situation so demand it. I have that power now.

Eurosceptics for Washington!

I have been invited to join a facebook group “Eurosceptic Admirers of the American Declaration of Independence” Join it I shall certainly do.

As I recall, American Independence was finally prompted by a rebellion over excess taxation and regulation. The American founding fathers had a vision of a nation based on liberty, an ideal they still aspire to, though it has triggered (so far) 231 years of debate over how far they have achieved that dream. Even so, can we in the UK say that as a nation we aspire to the freedom that the US does? After all, the declaration’s signatories simply inherited the same values that had driven so much of the English nation prior to the time that relations with the colonies went pear-shaped.

One of the more fascinating exercises in counterfactual “what if” history is what would have happened if Britain hadn’t been so obstinate in the course of action that led to the Boston Tea Party. More than a few American commentators have remarked how obsessed the American public and media seem to be with the British Royal Family, given that the yanks themselves actively rejected the Crown. The thirteen colonies of the “First British Empire” would probably have still spread west - though without the loss of the colonies, what would have been our ambitions in Canada, given the French interest there? Would we, more significantly, have expanded East to India. What of Australia: could modern day Aussies be speaking Dutch? Would a China untouched by Western gunboat diplomacy have been so vulnerable to Communist exploitation?

Anyway, back to the point: what is this to do with Europe? A key factor behind the establishment of the thirteen colonies was the desire to break free from the old problems of Europe. Another emerging aim was the expansion of trade. Indeed, that is what initially drove the Second, more successful (in terms of longetivity* and contemporary influence), British Empire. Trade drove the establishment of routes to the East and defined the initial relationships between Britain and the Indian leaders which later turned into a more traditional imperial structure.

Europe fleetingly dallied with the idea of being a trading partnership, but alas, from day one, it was ultimately being driven by imperial desires of a less transparent nature, borne of the trauma of the Second World War. Europe could still now be a great continent, were it to genuinely free its people from statism – regulation, high taxation – and embrace true free trade, both within its borders as well as between itself and the rest of the world that the current leadership establishment seems to studiously ignore. What nods we currently see towards free trade are often couched in terms of the “level playing field”. Sadly, Brussels’ idea of a level playing field extends to all players wearing the same strip, playing in the same direction, each with his own ball, referee and linesman, and having to ask each match official every time he wants to pass or shoot.

So whereas the American nation was founded on liberty, the European nation will be founded on residual Franco-German suspicion, rampant anti-Americanism, and an unswerving faith in the power of the state. I know which I would more likely identify with.

*”longevity” to our transatlantic cousins. No, let’s not start on the language thing right now.