Why Mr Brown needs mechanics to fix the EU
- 14 Mar 08, 11:27 AM
Gordon Brown鈥檚 proposals have been slapped down.
At last night's news conference, cold water was poured on the idea. Mr Brown got hardly any support from his fellow prime ministers and presidents at the dinner.
A planned joint letter with President Sarkozy hasn鈥檛 emerged. It all came as a bit of a shock to Number Ten. They are now working hard to get some form of words in the official conclusions that at least look as if they could nod towards the idea.
Why this failure? After all the mood here,
But it seems little of the spadework has been done. Although Mr Brown has certainly talked about this before, it's not a running campaign, and seems like an idea whistled up in the last few days. There has been no real effort to get people here in Brussels or the capitals to lend their weight to it.
Deadly mechanics
It is all rather odd. In Westminster, at least in the many years I watched him, Mr Brown employed mechanics. Not in the American sense of hit men, although they could be deadly.
These were people, often former trade unionists turned MPs, who loved rolling their sleeves up and getting covered in oil as they tinkered with the engines of power. They knew exactly how things worked, and how to make things work for them.
They reminded me of Scottie in Star Trek, jerry-rigging the warp drive to get a few more ounces of power out of it so the Captain could get out of his latest scrape.
They would shout up to the bridge: 鈥淚鈥榲e done all I can: I can give you a few extra votes, but it cannae hold much longer!鈥
The Captain would back Mr Blair into a corner with a putative rebellion, get the general secretary of his choice, or whatever conference vote he wanted fixed.
Free-floating charisma
It was all rather different to Mr Blair's style of apparently free-floating, charismatic exhortation.
But Mr Brown doesn鈥檛 use the mechanics based here in Brussels.
The don鈥檛 look or sound much like Scottish trade unionists, and I suspect Mr Brown doesn鈥檛 have much time for the Foreign Office.
But he shouldn鈥檛 be fooled by the double firsts and summer dresses. These urbane alchemists are in essence the same as the mechanics.
Like the mechanics back home, they know which wires carry the power, when to cut them or cross them, when to sweet talk and when to talk tough.
When I have suggested in the past that Mr Brown might get more out of the EU if he engaged a bit more, some of you have taken that as pro EU bias.
I think this case shows why it is not. Mr Brown has a policy objective, to lower VAT on certain goods. He could, of course, achieve that by withdrawing Britain from the EU or the VAT regime.
But that is clearly not his policy and indeed he has made it clear in an interview with me that he thinks it's appropriate to set VAT at a European level. So if he wants to get his way, he has to get the support of other leaders and the commission.
And to do that he's going to have to learn to trust and use people who understand the set of tools that allows you to tinker with the Brussels machine.
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Comments Post your comment
Maybe Brown was never serious about giving up some VAT receipts and it was just a bargain way of looking green.
I think the crux of the problem was highlighted by Mark's suggestion that he suspects "Mr Brown does not have a lot of time for the Foreign Office." It's lovely to come up with the notion of lower VAT on environmentally friendly goods, and very moral, but it's nothing more than hot air (or to borrow a phrase from Mr Cameron, another gimmick) if he doesn't back it up with an enthusiastic and sincere attempt to take the only feasible course of action and bring the other EU leaders onside. Simple liason with the right men would probably be sufficient to twist a few arms, I suspect.
All that's needed to succeed in the EU, as in any other organisation, is the ability and will to do a bit of arm-twisting and horse-trading. Trade unionists do this very well because it is their business.
So either GB sends his hatchet men to Brussels or he engages people there to lobby for his case. The fact that he has done neither does not say much for his style of government.
I guess he didn't make many friends when he turned up late, sneaking in through the back door to quickly scribble his signature on the Lisbon Treaty, in a vain cowardly effort to make sure the Sun readership didn't see what he just did.
I guess since that is one of the first things he did as Prime Minister in the EU, the leaders from other member states see him as weak and view him with suspicion, your article suggests that maybe the case too. Maybe if it was one of the other leaders with a good solid proposal with proper groundwork it might have stood some chance.
It would be nice to afford that solar panel on the roof to cut heating bills and save the planet; but with VAT on top of an expensive item, silly monthly subsidy quota system for grants, its not going to happen this decade!!
Mark,
I think you are wrong in thinking that more effective diplomacy can change EU fundamentals. VAT reductions in one single country will never be agreed collectively by the EU because this would result in that country's contribution to the EU budget will be reduced. On the other hand, general reductions in VAT across the EU would have the effect of reducing EU funding in general. Either way it is an anathma to the "Project". The only way VAT can go is up, because it is an EU tax.
This well illustrates one of the fundamental problems with the EU. It's far too inflexible to change policies once established. OK if it gets them right, but that doesn't happen very often does it?
The CAP is the biggest historical example of this problem of inflexibility. But how about a hypothetical example? Just let's say that in a few years time CO2 induced climate change turns out not to be such a problem after all - how do you think the EU would deal with this?
It appears that in the current climate fellow European leaders are not willing to seem to turn down a constuctive proposition with reduction on VAT, especially as it costs them nothing to put it in the final statement and put the implementation back.
The EU is hardly a warp drive engine, it more resembles a slogging mule train. How do you train a mule anyway? First you hit it in the head with a two by four. That's just to get it's attention. Anticipating the futility of the coming climate change talks and the inevitable politically unacceptable sacrifices it would entail to achieve meaningful CO2 reductions, the EU is looking for a fallback position of excuses and rationalizations to do what it ultimately did under Kyoto...effectively nothing.
The problem is not the mechanics operating the system; it is the system itself, in particular the single grade of EU law superior to national law in all cases, which is too powerful a tool for general use. Just as a rational individual will agree to be bound by law which (by being applied equally to all) actually protects him from others, a rationale state should willingly agree to EU law that will prevent other member-states from causing its citizens harm. These are the 鈥渨in-win鈥 situations from European co-operation. The current grade of EU law should therefore only be used to prevent one state from causing harm to citizens of another, for example to block the imposition of protectionist barriers against companies from other countries, or to prevent pollution that will be carried across state borders.
In all other cases EU law supreme to national law is too powerful a tool which actually prevents states from doing what their electorates wants even when the proposed course of action has no negative effect on anyone in another country. If the EU legislates in areas where no principle of cross-border harm apples then its law should have a lower status such that we may elect national parliaments empowered to override it as necessary. There is no logical reason why anyone in another EU state should prevent the British government from reducing VAT on green products if this is what British voters want. Such a policy if implemented here causes no-one in another country any harm. There is no logical reason why the French government should not be able to reduce VAT on restaurant bills when their last two presidents have been elected on promise to do so.
My alternative to the EU Constitution (which won the Adam Smith鈥檚 Institute鈥檚 competition to find the best alternative) would make such a distinction by introducing a new 2nd tier of EU legislation (called a 鈥榬ecommendation鈥) to be used when no principle of cross-border harm is involved. If the EU legislation setting the minimum rate of VAT at 15% were a recommendation rather than obligatory then Brown and Sarkozy would be able to implement the policies their voters want and nobody in any other country would care because they would not be adversely affected. Indeed if such a distinction is not introduced then we will inevitably end up in an EU straight-jacked with all national law eventually pre-empted by the ever growing body of EU law and our elected governments will steadily become as powerless in all areas where the EU has assumed competence as Gordon Brown is now regarding VAT on green products.
Freeborn John
"...we will inevitably end up with an EU straight-jacketed with all national law eventually pre-empted by the ever growing body of EU law and our elected governments will steadily become as powerless in all areas where the EU has assumed competence as Gordon Brown is now regarding VAT on green products."
This was the central idea of the EU plan all along from day one when the original ruse that the EU was merely a free trade association where tariffs would be eliminated was sold to the British public. That was the last chance they had to escape. Everything since has been rammed down their throats, not just by Labour but by the Tories and Lib-dems as well. The question is why hasn't the looming prospect of an EUSSR caused rioting in the streets of every major European city. The answer is that the basic mind set of Europe is for centralized monolithic authority and utter universal conformity to a well defined norm. In other words, an anthill like dictatorship. This is why much of its population never saw the USSR as a real threat and had little taste for fighting the cold war. And this is why it is in perpetual conflict with the United States where such a notion is an anathema, the very antithesis of the EU. The US was prepared to end all human life on earth in an atomic war with the USSR rather than submit to such a nightmare.
About a year ago, Angela Merkel, the then newly ensconced Chancellor of Germany visited the White House and astonishingly invited the US to join the EU while Nicolas Sarkozy was telling Turkey it could not become a member of the EU because it is not part of Europe. This was more than mere duplicity, it was recognition that whatever strategy the EU can exercise to bring the US within its control is acceptable. This of course can never happen as the US was born as a rejection of Europe, not merely as a colonizer but of all of the underlying propositions which supported and still support its philosophy of civilization.
In fact the two civilizations are so diametrically opposed that they are now and inevitably were coming into sharp conflict on a wide range of issues and will be at war with each other in every meaning of the term except direct military engagement. Even the one thread which ties them together, NATO is coming unglued as the EU not only did not support America's legitimate national secuity concerns in Iraq but is not close to pulling its weight (except for Britain) in Afghanistan. NATO always has been and still is a one way alliance and the benefits of financing it almost exclusively will be challenged increasingly by American taxpayers and politicians.
The cynicism first of Gerhart Schroeder and then of Jacques Chirac who whipped up anti-American sentiment among their populations BEFORE the invasion of Iraq so that they could win elections in which they were behind in the polls will have dire long range consequences for Europe. It did damage of incalculable dimensions which may never be repaired. Europeans have no concept of how detested they are by the majority of Americans but one day when they come calling on Uncle Sam for help as they inevitably do, there will be a simple shrug in response. It would be political suicide for any American politician today to offer meaningful help to most of Western Europe under almost any conceivable circumstances. Europe has made its bed, now it will have to lie in it...in a straight-jacket of its own making.