Sarkozy address

Whether or not Britain remains in the grip of Sarkosis (deep obsession with Sarkozy and his wife), the state visit has been an interesting one.

At the State Banquet at Windsor Castle, which I had the privelege to attend, and in his speech to Parliament, the French president went out of his way to thank Britain for saving France in the two world wars, which he said France would never forget. This is something that not every previous French President has been happy to say so clearly and eloquently.

He likened France and Britain to two brothers, born in the same era, who had grown up together and as teenagers had squabbled a lot, been jealous of each other's possesions, pinched from each other, and yet had fought side by side in early adulthood (20th Century) in defence of their independence and their shared values of liberty and democracy. Now their relationship had matured into deep friendship and although their lifestyles, tastes and friends might often differ, this, as in the best of families, in no way detracts from their brotherhood. Indeed, they also mutually admire many of each other's achievments.

They are both also part of a wider family of countries in Europe. Both need the European Union, just as the European Union would be inconceivable without them.

Well put.

Jens Peter Bonde to retire

The veteran Eurosceptic MEP, Jens Peter Bonde, who leads the “Independence and Democracy” Political Group in the European Parliament, of which UKIP is the largest component, has announced his forthcoming retirement.

One of only five MEPs to have served continuously since the first European elections in 1979, he is a well known figure in the Parliament, and for more than half his period has served on the internal management body of the Parliament. He has been the most prominent euroesceptic across Europe for many years, is hugely energetic and is a prolific writer.

His euroscepticism is now very different from the nihilistic vision of UKIP. Granted, when he was first elected, he too wanted to destroy the EU or at least see Denmark leave it. But as he wrote himself in last week’s Parliament magazine:

“At first I worked to withdraw from the EU and, since 1992, have worked mainly to reform the European institutions with transparency, proximity and democracy.”

Indeed, he often said that he could make common cause with federalists on these issues. He was certainly not averse to consulting me on his publications, some of which focussed more on facts and documentation, in the cause of transparency, than on political point-scoring.

Clearly, as he got to know the EU better, he realised that his initial hostility was misplaced and he evolved to join the ranks of reformers rather than destroyers. His retirement press release refers to his desire “to focus on building a better European Union”. A lesson UKIP has yet to learn! Indeed, I know that Bonde was increasingly uneasy about the UKIP members of his Group, both in terms of their extremist positions and about their recent tactic of trying to disrupt the Parliament.

Bonde’s problem was that he was a prisoner of his own supporters. To keep his position, he needed to play up his scepticism and exaggerate the defects of the Union. His attempts to lead his movement in Denmark to a more realistic position led to it splitting in the early 1990s, but there was only so far he could go without being disowned by the more extreme elements. Similarly, in Parliament, he was a prisoner of the more extreme elements of his Group, including UKIP.

I wish him well apon his retirement.

Who will be President?

On Tuesday the Independent dedicated a page to the issue of the future President of the European Council, who is favourite for the job and what exactly they will have to do, should the treaty be ratified.

Tony Blair has of course been touted for the job, and is supposedly being backed for the role by Sarkozy, but I think it remains a bit of a longshot. First, would Blair be popular enough to win support Europe wide and second, would he want to do a job which involves, as the John Lichfield explains, "not an enormous amount"?

The job is not President of the EU, but simply the chairmanship of just one of its institutions - the one that only meets four times a year, namely the European Council of heads of government of the Member States. The job has no independent executive powers or own administration. The EU's executive remains the Commission, whose President will be elected by the European Parliament.

Indeed, the relationship between these two Presidents could be problematic if the European Council President has too high ambitions and seeks to develop the role beyond its original conception of preparing and managing the "summit" meetings. It may also be confusing for the wider public if Europe has two "presidents" with an ill-defined division of responsibilities.

Some have suggested that the two posts should be merged or at least given to the same person. This is unlikely in the immediate, but I have a solution: the current Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is interested in being President of the European Council. His predecessor, Paul Nyrup Rasmussen, now leader of the Party of European Socialists, has been tipped as a suitable President of the Commission. Appoint both - then, for public opinion, the "President of Europe" would be a Dane called Rasmussen. He might look different from one photo to another, but what the heck, you age quickly in this job....

Someone has created a fake of my blog!

Following a Google Alert I was very surprised to find a replica of my blog, that someone has bizarrely gone to a lot of trouble making.

Quite who is behind this hoax is a complete mystery but I thought I should make it quite clear I have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Anyone who is a regular reader of my blog will be aware that www.richardcorbett.org.uk/blog is the real address and I trust anyone who has been fooled by this will ensure their links lead to www.richardcorbett.org.uk/blog

Thanks!

Lords of the Blog

A new collaborative blog site has been launched by the House of Lords, which is called 'Lords of the Blog' and is written by Members of the House of Lords (obviously). Its aim is to increase public engagement and it should certainly offer an interesting insight into the House of Lords.

For those of you interested in political blogs this I'm sure will make for interesting reading with Lords such as Labour Lords Soley and Lipsey amongst the many contributors.

The six-month project states:
"Find out why Lord Tyler decries the myth of a golden age of political reporting; Baroness D’Souza’s definition of a crossbencher and what Lord Norton has to say about Iain Dale’s request for nominations for the most fanciable political journalists."

The blog can be found at: www.lordsoftheblog.net

UKIP bloggers rattled

I was alerted to a couple of blog sites run by UKIP officials, who seem to devote a surprising amount of time to rebutting the material I post here. In particular, England Expects, responding to this flippant piece I did joking that veteran Danish Eurosceptic Jens-Peter Bonde had come out in favour of the Lisbon Treaty, posted this detailed rebuttal.

If they think it worth taking so much trouble to monitor my blog and to try to rebut it, then they must think it is having an effect, which I will take as a compliment.

Unruly MEPs deserve their fines

Parliament's President (Speaker) has this week fined the MEPs who took part in the attempt to drown out the Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates in December.

Yorkshire’s very own Godfrey Bloom is in the hall of shame, though he may well not realise this yet as he wasn’t present for the parliament sitting when Hans Gert Pottering explained the reasons behind the punishments.

That’s a pity because Pottering’s explanation of exactly why Bloom and some others were punished made it quite clear that it was not their views that were the problem (as they claim) - they were in trouble for stopping others (notably the Portuguese Prime Minister) – from expressing their views with their hollering and howling.

Of course Dan Hannan has failed to note this in his demagogic Telegraph blog, as his crusade to convince the world that the European Parliament is "despotic" continues. He points out that other protests have been allowed to go on in the parliament, which is quite true but they made no attempt to disrupt parliamentary proceedings and prevent those with a different view from speaking. Similarly, in this protest, MEPs who merely waved banners have not been reprimanded (Hannan was one). The fines were imposed on those who aggressed ushers or who continued to disrupt the proceedings after being called to order by the Speaker.

Hannan well knows that the sort of behaviour he readily condones would have ended in far more rigourous disciplinary proceedings and suspension had it taken place in the Commons, but the guilty MEPs escape such punishment. Their rights to speak in debates and to vote remain intact and they have simply been fined.

Plenty of MPs have had their right to vote and speak suspended for far less in the Commons. There are myriad examples, a fair number involving Denis Skinner, who has been suspended for simply complaining that Deputy Speaker Sir Alan Haselhurst was being lenient to Theresa May because she was a Conservative. Another MP who was recently suspended was of course Lib Dem frontbencher Ed Davey, who earned a short ban after making excessive points of order during the treaty debate. Despite the frequency of these suspensions I have yet to see Hannan rally against "the despotism of the Commons."

The point is, that all parliaments have rules of procedure and when these rules are broken the people responsible face punishment and in this case, vociferously booing and heckling a speaker on the floor of the parliament, and continuing to do so when called to order by the Speaker, is clearly un-parliamentary behaviour.

You can read Pottering's explanation of the punishments in full here.

It's that time of the year again…

The Daily Mail has a fondness for publishing stories claiming that the Britain is bailing out the rest of Europe by paying through the nose for the EU budget.

This week they duly claimed that "every household in the UK will be expected to pay almost £400 a year for the privilege of EU membership".

A good line - but based on decidedly warped mathematics. Leaving aside our contributions to the EU budget, which is anyway capped at around 1% of EU GDP, the common market is worth £160 billion to our collective GDP - equivalent to roughly £1500 to every family in the UK.

Similarly bogus is the Mail's claim that Tony Blair "surrendered" the British rebate at the budget review in 2005. The rebate remains part of the budget and will actually increase by 13% (compared to an increase of just 6% for the EU budget as a whole) from an average of £3.9 billion per annum to £4.5 billion. Besides, let's not forget that the rebate exists to offset the imbalance that would otherwise leave Britain paying more than our fair share, not to provide us with a windfall which would leave us paying less than our fair share.

Indeed, claiming that Britain gets a raw deal from the EU budget simply does not stand up. According to a recent House of Commons library report on the EU Finances Bill, in per-capita terms, the UK is not one of the highest contributors to the EU budget. In 2006, the UK paid €68 euros per head. By comparison, the Netherlands pays €241 per head, Denmark €127, Sweden €124 and Germany €100. France and Austria paid €50 and €40 respectively.

Moreover, in structural funds (designed to regenerate the poorest regions of Europe) the UK receives a third more than France, 20% more than Belgium, nearly twice as much as the Netherlands and more than eight other countries. The UK received €3 billion in structural funds (an average of €50 per head). This is one euro per head less than Poland receives. Put plainly, the world's fifth largest economy, receives only €1 per head less than one of Europe's poorest countries.

Besides, while some may baulk at the idea of UK taxpayers providing money to the accession countries, the fact is that investing in economic stability in Eastern Europe benefits us all by increasing the total volume of EU trade, investment and jobs. For example, Britain's bilateral trade in goods with Spain and Ireland (two of the poorest EU countries 20 years ago) is now worth £40bn per year.

It is one thing for the Daily Mail to be sceptical of our EU membership, but it is fatuous for it to suggest that we are paying through the nose for the privilege.

Murphy ends Commons debate in good humour

The Commons debate on the Lisbon Treaty finally concluded last night with MPs voting by a large majority to adopt the text, which means just the Lords’ approval is required for Britain to ratify the treaty.

Europe Minister Jim Murphy’s final speech was an amusing one, and included some some weird and wonderful facts, such as "the great unreformed instiution", Bill Cash, made 214 interventions (swiftly up 215), a fifth of all those made in the entire debate!

There were also amusing digs at the strange trend of MPs quoting themselves, quoting other MPs who had quoted them, and even quoting themselves from a speech they never actually made!

Murphy pointed out: "The hon. Member for Stone (Bill Cash) quoted an historic parliamentary debate and a speech—by himself—as a source of reference. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) did the same thing by proxy, quoting the right hon. Member for Wells quoting him. This evening we had another passionate speech by the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Peter Lilley), who went one step further in our proceedings. Not only did he quote himself, which has become the new fashion — a fashion that I have not yet bought into — but, in a remarkable innovation, to make his specific point he did not quote himself from an earlier speech, saying,

‘I can demonstrate that by referring to a speech that I did not give’

when he was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. A remarkable constitutional innovation! It is a first, and perhaps many right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House will take their lead from it in future debates."

Murphy also took time to list the other parties that support the Conservative's absurd position on the treaty – or "the 'not letting the matter rest' coalition" as he called them. It now includes, he said: "Sinn Fein, Marianne Thieme — who, as we all know, leads the Dutch party for the animals in its opposition to the treaty — and the now infamous Philippe de Villiers, part of the leadership of the French hunting party, we have three allies to fill this great chamber of Europe. That still leaves 23 empty seats for the great European coalition of international Governments.”

Myth about not respecting Irish referendum result

Following my comments of yesterday, yet another myth has been drawn to my attention. This time it is that the European Parliament voted not to respect the results of an Irish referendum on the Lisbon treaty.

The parliament did, of course, reject an amendment to add to my own report evaluating the treaty, a paragraph calling for it to respect the result of the Irish referendum, but it did so (1) because this goes without saying as the Treaty can only come into force if it is ratified by every Member State and (2) it was inappropriate to refer only to Ireland as it is every county's decision that has to be respected, not just Ireland's.

The authors of the amendment knew it would be rejected for those reasons, but tabled it anyway simply to be able to misuse its rejection and to make their absurd claim. It's known as manipulation.

A new myth being created

It has long been the tactic of Eurosceptics to continuously repeat untrue stories on the ground that if you say them enough times, people will begin to believe them.

From silly stories (such as the EP legislating that all bananas be straight) to more sinister ones (that ratifying the Lisbon Treaty would lead to armed foreign police patrolling British streets), no opportunity, no matter how far-fetched, is missed to portray the EU as an 'evil Empire'.

A new one is that the European Parliament has decided to "to silence dissenting MEPs", reported in several newspapers which took at face-value the claims of Farage and Hannan to that effect.

According to Private Eye, this even led to a member of the audience at a recent lecture at the LSE by President Pottering to shout out, "you disciplined MEPs for showing dissent and claimed that dissent is not acceptable." Private Eye itself referred to Pottering as "a man who bullied dissenters when they protested against the Charter of Fundamental Rights".

This really is case of breathtaking cheek. The "dissenters" were those who tried to prevent the Portuguese Prime Minister from making a speech in the Parliament. When as in any Parliament, the Speaker or President takes action to prevent such anti-democratic behaviour, it is not bullying, but protecting Parliament from bullies!

Note that the speaking and voting rights of these members were not removed, and they have their say in all debates, as the European Parliament, which contains members with a very wide range of views as it is elected by proportional representation, allocates the bulk of speaking time to each and every political grouping in proportion to its size before finishing with a "catch the eye" free debate. The variety of positions expressed is greater than in most national parliaments.

To try and portray those who shouted down an elected Prime Minister as martyrs of democracy is both spurious and wilfully misleading. It's a shame that the normally excellent Eye chose to print a piece that even the most eurosceptic tabloid would turn its nose up at.

Labour's team for 2009

Delighted with the result of our ballot of all Labour party members in Yorkshire & Humber to choose Labour's team of candidates for the 2009 European elections. Linda McAvan and I are honoured to be the top two candidates again, as we were in 2004.

Several thousand members returned their ballots, which were counted yesterday, giving us, in a very close result, the following team, listed in ranking order:

1 Linda McAvan MEP
2 Richard Corbett MEP
3 Emma Hoddinott
4 David Bowe
5 Melanie Onn
6 Maroof Hussain MBE
Reserves: Chris Williams and Paul Blanchard

This gives us a good balance in terms of gender, different parts of the region, age, ethnicity, and experience. All are enthusiastic and raring to go.

A look at the media's reaction to the Commons vote

Over the past few months some of the papers, especially the Telegraph and Sun, have given a disproportionate amount of coverage to the Lisbon Treaty and particularly their campaign for a referendum, so how are they reacting now the country will not go to the polls?

Predictably!

The Mail complained that Wednesday's vote, "will go down in history as the day our politicians surrendered most of what was left of Britain's sovereignty and trusted the nation's future to a European superstate" while the Telegraph’s increasingly hysterical Iain Martin maintains that "when the entire story is told by historians, future generations will be surprised that the Euro-fanatics who plotted to sell out British sovereignty and democracy avoided being sent to the Tower for treason." - no less! Meanwhile, the Sun's George Pascoe-Watson is confident that, "it won't take long for the entire country to see just how much power has been surrendered to Brussels."

So no surprises but if their extravagant claims about the death of British democracy were true then surely it would be an issue of such extreme importance to our country that it would deserve to dominate their column inches and their websites for some time.

Well actually, the Daily Mail almost instantly returned to baiting women about their weight, digs at immigrants and a story about an England rugby union player being dropped for going to a nightclub. The Sun quickly dumped the story off the front page of their website and was far more concerned by Prince Harry, his girlfriend, Paul Burrell, and a quirky haircut at a fashion show. The Telegraph was just as swift to re-focus on Burrell and the rugby though it did also manage a nod to ID cards.

Could this return to other news be because the British public isn’t stupid enough to believe the nonsense they preach? Or are we simply not that interested in Britain's membership of the EU?

An article in the Times argues the latter point is especially true. It first considers the differing and difficult relationships Britain’s political parties have had with Europe and goes on to strongly argue that these concerns are not shared by the vast majority of the British public. It states that just 2 to 7% of voters list Europe as a concern, meaning it comes well behind crime, immigration, health, defence, the economy, environment, housing, drug abuse, tax, pensions and public morality.

This relaxed attitude to the EU is a mark of the failures of the Eurosceptics, as illustrated by this blog on the Telegraph website which praises Open Europe for playing a "blinder" adding "when it seemed that nobody cared, Neil and his colleagues worked overtime to devise ways of keeping the matter in the public eye."

So there you are, the Eurosceptics admit no-one is really interested in their cause and their campaign was little more than a marketing exercise which failed in its attempts to sell Europhobia to the masses, a view backed up by the media's own desire to stop banging on about Europe as quickly as possible.

Red lines beat red herrings, as Commons votes against referendum

I was delighted to see the House of Commons reject the Tory proposal that Britain should start ratifying international treaties by means of a referendum. The vote, which finished 311 to 248, is a victory for parliamentary democracy.

While it was disappointing to see 29 Labour MPs vote against the Government, this number was far fewer than the 120 that Labour Europhobe Ian Davidson had predicted would follow him into the division lobby to vote for a referendum.

Credit should also be given to Kenneth Clarke, John Gummer and David Curry, who showed that there are still a few moderate Tories on Europe by voting with the Government.

As for the Liberal Democrats, their bizarre approach to the vote, in taking a three-line whip ordering their MPs to abstain, backfired, with a quarter of the parliamentary party voting with the Tories and four MPs resigning from their front-bench. The Lib Dems should have had the courage of their convictions. By using their (familiar) tactic of trying to be all things to all people, their opportunism has been exposed.

This country has a proud history of parliamentary democracy and an issue like the Lisbon Treaty is where MPs earn their salt. Britain has never ratified an international treaty by referendum and the House of Commons has rightly acknowledged that it would have been absurd to start doing so now. It is right that the Commons has dedicated so long to analysing and discussing the treaty, something most people simply don’t have the time to do.

Above all, this detailed scrutiny has revealed that this is a treaty which will make the EU more efficient, more democratic and more accountable and respects the British government’s red lines. The pathetic glut of Eurosceptic red herrings, including claims that the treaty would delete the Queen from our passports and allow armed French police to patrol British streets, has been exposed as nonsense by the Commons.

Prospective Conservative candidates know how to copy & paste

The hijacking of the Conservative party by their Eurosceptic wing has led a number of the remaining moderate pro-European Tory MEPs, including Christopher Beazley, John Purvis and Caroline Jackson, to decide to stand down at next years European elections.

By the looks of this survey on the Conservative Home website, the quality of their replacements is not high. When asked whether a prospective Conservative government should hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty even after it had been ratified by all countries and entered into force, most either agreed or decided to simply cut and paste the official guidance from Conservative Central Office.

However, a significant minority are brave enough to acknowledge that this decision would be folly.

The Tories are completely deluded if they think that pledging a post-ratification referendum would solve their divisions on Europe. The reality is that such a referendum would effectively be a vote on our membership of the EU, as no other member state would want re-open negotiations on a treaty that was in force and which had been recently agreed and ratified by all countries, and which most of them consider to have anyway been entirely tailored to Britain's desires.

As one of the Conservative commenters points out, with answers like this "it is obvious why we haven't been in power for (sic) almost 20 years"!

Tories a bundle of contradictions on climate change

I have followed some of the debates in the House of Commons on the Lisbon Treaty and I continue to be amazed at the disarray of the Tories.

I am told that over half the Conservative speaking time on this has been accounted for by just two MPs - Bill Cash and David Heathcoat-Amory. That the Conservatives allow these two extremely anti-Europe members dominate their contribution to this extent shows how far they have shifted in a Europhobic direction. These two denounce every aspect of the EU as the devil incarnate.

William Hague, by contrast, is now pursuing a different line. He says we don't need a new treaty reforming the EU because, in his words, "the EU is working perfectly well". Not a position Bill Cash would agree with!

The debate on the effect of the treaty on tackling climate change was a further illustration of Conservative incoherence. Two contrasting amendments were tabled by the Conservatives: one which stated that "the Treaty of Lisbon is effectively irrelevant to the vital issue of climate change" - (implying that the EU should be given more powers in tackling climate change), and another, which my regional colleague Hugh Bayley drew attention to, tabled by a number of senior Conservatives, including former leader Iain Duncan Smith and John Redwood, stating that the EU should have no role at all on climate change! Although this amendment was disowned by the Conservative front-bench team it offers another illustration of the Tories' divisions on Europe.

The reality is that we cannot effectively tackle climate change and raise environmental standards without being engaged with the EU - a point emphasised by John Gummer, one of the few moderate Conservatives on Europe, who said that "it is not possible to have an anti-European position and have any kind of environmental policy".

Climate change policy is one of the policy areas where collective rather than individual action is most effective. The unlikely deal reached at the Bali summit on climate change was an example of the clout of the EU when we have a united position. Already committed to unilateral emissions cuts of 20% by 2020, European countries were able to speak with authority and a common voice. Unwittingly, the Tory amendment, in describing the provisions on climate change as "institutional tinkering" revealed the shallow opportunism of their demands for a referendum. The point is that the Lisbon Treaty is about institutional tinkering rather than giving the EU new powers. Therefore, if the Tories accept that the treaty is about "institutional tinkering" then why do they want a referendum?

This is not to say that the Conservatives are all climate change deniers. Indeed, Nick Hurd, Greg Barker, Peter Ainsworth and John Gummer all made speeches emphasising the importance of the EU in tackling climate change. However, their approach in the European Parliament is summed up by their choice of Roger Helmer (who believes that climate change is "a journalistic fiction") as the Conservative member of the temporary committee on climate change.

David Cameron talks a good game on the environment, but Wednesday's debate offered ample demonstration of how the Tories are all over the place. In the words of Caroline Jackson, the only Conservative woman MEP: "from the point of view of the Conservative Party, pursuing the green line is all talk and no action".

Labour's Spring Conference very positive on Europe

Strikingly positive and upbeat atmosphere on Europe at Labour's Spring Conference!

The various workshops, seminars and fringe meetings on Europe have been very well attended - indeed, I'm told the best of all. Certainly, the one that Foreign Secrtary David Miliband and I addressed on the subject of the Lisbon Treaty was packed, and positively enthusiastic.

Why? A combination of the vehemence of the Tory attacks on the EU, the pedagogic spin-off of the long Commons debate on the treaty, and the fact that Labour party members are currently voting on the choice of candidates for the next European elections has led to heightened awareness about Europe in general and the treaty in particular.

Gordon Brown too spoke at the conference of how Europe is vital to our objectives on climate change, development, trade and security, all areas where Europe is leading the way. He also said that the Tories are making a strategic error in turning their backs on Europe and focussing on the past, not the future. As Gordon has sometimes been accused of being luke-warm about Europe, this strong message reinforced the sense that Europe is now one of the major dividing lines between the two parties, and one which will work to Labour's advantage.