Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Last month the government published its Brexit position paper on ‘Northern Ireland and Ireland’ (by which it meant the Irish Republic). It was hardly a scintillating document, but at least it tried to imagine how a ‘seamless and frictionless’ border might work in practice. In response, the EU Commission issued a set of truculent and unhelpful ‘ Guiding principles for the dialogue on Ireland / Northern Ireland ’. Like the British paper, it filled a great deal of space referencing the Good Friday Agreement and emphasised the importance of the peace process, but it pointedly refused to ‘put forward solutions for the Irish border’. ‘The onus to propose solutions’, it said, lies squarely with the UK. What the commission didn’t say directly, but its negotiator Michel Barnier acknowledged in a press conference, was that the UK did propose solutions, which the EU rejected out of hand. The British paper made it clear that the government sees no need for a so-called ‘hard border’ from ...

Previously, I argued that there are no longer any ‘leavers’ or ‘remainers’: just Brexit deniers and Brexit realists.  The UK will leave the EU and the government has outlined in reasonable detail its plan for the future.  Northern Ireland’s decision-makers, whether or not they comprise a devolved Executive, can either act as if they're still fighting the referendum campaign, or start to plan to make the best of our future after Brexit. On behalf of the think-tank Global Britain , and local businesses including Sandelford Policy , David Hoey and I have written a report describing “ An Agenda for Northern Ireland After Brexit ”.  This sets out a framework to address some of the policy challenges presented locally by Brexit. At The Dissenter, David sets out in detail why all levels of government in Northern Ireland should “stop talking and start doing” .  Many of our most pressing local issues are economic and many of the issues that we’ll face after Brexit ...

After the EU vote the terms ‘leaver’ and ‘remainer’ became effectively meaningless.  More accurately, we now have ‘Brexit realists’, who accept the result, and ‘Brexit deniers’, who are still fighting the referendum campaign, almost 9 months after it officially finished. In Ireland, north and south, ‘denial’ can cause real damage, because it won’t allow the focus of debate to address how both parts of the island can prepare for Brexit.  Article 50 will be triggered, without serious impediment in the House of Commons, and while many of the details are still uncertain, the UK will leave the European Union.  We also know the broad strategy the government intends to pursue after it leaves. Surely even those who would rather Brexit didn’t happen can plan to make the best of the circumstances we’re in?  As yet, there’s little sign of that happening.   Alone among the UK’s devolved institutions, the Northern Ireland Executive is without a document outlining it...

The Good Friday Agreement was a clever, influential document because it defined a political struggle over sovereignty in Northern Ireland in terms of a much more slippery concept: identity.    No piece of paper could tell people whether they were British or Irish or both, and the prerogative of people born here to take citizenship of the Republic of Ireland existed long before 1998, but the agreement reassured voters that their professed identities would be recognised and respected under new power-sharing arrangements. Northern Ireland is now in the midst of another emotional debate about sovereignty as UK voters decide whether to stay in the European Union or opt for ‘Brexit’.    Alongside practical arguments about the economy and the Irish border, some campaigners have tried to suggest that the principles which underpin the Belfast Agreement could be undermined by a vote for ‘Leave’.    The foolish implication is that Irish identity in Northern Ir...

William Hague writes in today’s Telegraph , defending the provisions of his European Union Bill , which reaches committee stage tomorrow.  As a significant piece of constitutional law, the legislation will be considered by a committee of the whole house, entitling any MP to contribute to a clause by clause dissection of its contents. The bill is supposed to deliver the ’referendum lock’ on any future European Union treaties or transfers of power between Westminster and Brussels.  A significant body of Tory Eurosceptics, though, insists that it is riddled with loopholes and doesn’t go far enough .  Two rebel amendments are proposed, which could derail the government’s plans. Hague is insistent that the legislation represents a significant consolidation of democratic principles and empowers parliament against an over-mighty executive.  Still, it will remain up to the government to make a decision on whether a proposed transfer of powers is 'significant'. The Fore...

Readers of The Times and some other papers may well be startled to learn this morning that Kosovo is a murderous, criminal ‘state’ and that its prime minister, Haksim Thaci, is the biggest villain of all. It’s not exactly news to anyone who makes the least effort to stay independently informed about events in the Balkans.  To be fair, almost uniquely among British newspapers, the Guardian has carried occasional articles taking a fair and balanced look at the Serbian province and its affairs. That newspaper  has acquired the full text of a report to the Council of Europe on organised crime in Kosovo.  It is the result of a two year inquiry headed by the Swiss human rights investigator Dick Marty and it will be published in full tomorrow, although a provisional draft is available on the Council’s website. Its contents are grimly predictable.  Kosovo is a major conduit for heroin into Europe and its prime minister heads the mafia which smuggles the drug. The e...

“It’s real basic irony, but still you can get a hoot”.  The quote from the comedian, Bill Hicks, came to mind reading this month’s Standpoint. Former BBC correspondent William Horsley has decided that the problem with Europe is that it isn’t sufficiently Russophobe (I paraphrase). Anyway, hark at these gems. “Russian leaders were emboldened to break new bounds in August 2008 when they sent some 30,000 troops into South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the would-be breakaway parts of Georgia.” Setting aside the obvious omission of any context to this statement for the time being (there’s more), ’would-be breakaway parts of Georgia’?  Two regions which have never, NOT AT ANY TIME, been successfully administered from Tbilisi as part of a post-Soviet, unitary, independent Georgia.  I’d say that puts them squarely in the ’breakaway’ category without any qualification. “In what independent analysts have shown to have been a premeditated use of overwhelming military force.” By Georg...

The Bosphorous Straits: Where Europe meets Asia David Cameron’s recent remarks in Turkey aroused some interest in my household, because we are currently planning a trip to Istanbul.  In preparation, various books with a Turkish theme are strewn here and there. Our hastily assembled reading list is often, unsurprisingly, preoccupied with competing European, Central Asian and Middle Eastern influences which are brought to bear on the country.  It is the territory of Orhan Pamuk’s fiction and a recurring motif of his memoir, Istanbul: Memories of a City . Burke’s Corner has hosted a debate on Turkey’s European credentials in recent days.  Brian is insistent that the country’s cultural and religious heritage sets it apart from the rest of the continent, but his contention has met stiff resistance from some commentators. In Christopher de Bellaique’s Rebel Land , which examines Turkey from the wilds of the south-east, bordering Iraq, the author concludes that it ’...

I’m sure this post will foreshadow a more erudite article, around a similar theme, at Burke’s Corner . I’d imagine that BC is adamantly buffing his polished philosophical prose as we speak. Nevertheless, I like Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s latest Comment is Free piece enough to offer my own, doubtless rather more superficial, interpretation. Hopefully it’ll do until the real thing becomes available. Wheatcroft is convinced that the Conservative party must cast off the excesses of hardline Euroscepticism and neoconservatism, as it formulates its foreign policy, in order to embrace an older tradition which is cautious, realistic and diplomatic. He detects that David Cameron has been at his least sure footed reacting to issues beyond the scope of domestic politics. In Europe he has isolated his party from the mainstream, by withdrawing from the EPP. The Conservatives are now estranged from natural European allies. Wheatcroft describes the furore over Lisbon and a referendum as a “self-des...

I’m a little puzzled by a section of this blog , by Iain Martin, carried on the Wall Street Journal’s site. Martin (presumably the same one who writes for the Telegraph) hails the death of ‘British Euroskepticism’ (sic). It is this passage, however, which had me scratching my head, “The defeat of British Euroskepticism reminds me quite a bit of what happened to Ulster Unionism around the turn of the century. One minute it seemed to be winning the arguments. It was strong, then the wind changed and it wasn’t - in any way that we had previously understood it - there any more. Its former adherents couldn’t quite see the point of carrying on as they had previously done and within months had “adjusted to reality”. Quickly, they were prepared to adopt positions they would have previously though unthinkable.” Ulster Unionism ‘wasn’t there anymore’? Undoubtedly accommodations were reached which were disorientated many unionists, but unionism, devoted to retaining and strengthening the Union...

For an illustration of the bind in which David Cameron finds himself as regards Europe, one need only read Barry Legg’s piece in today’s Guardian. Legg had a short but cantankerous parliamentary career, on the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative party. However, it would be wrong to dismiss him as an unrepresentative crank, based on a history of Westminster rebellion. The former MP is close to senior figures, including Iain Duncan Smith, and his views are representative, for better or for worse, of a substantial section of the Tory grass roots. He is prepared to present any policy which does not include a referendum on Lisbon as a betrayal, whether the Treaty is ratified by all twenty seven countries, or not. T he Bruges Group is limbering up to do similar. Whilst more sanguine commentators agree that David Cameron took a risk withdrawing the Conservatives from the EPP, and disagree about the effectiveness and bravery of his decision, Legg contends that the formation of a new gr...

I have registered my apprehension, on this blog, that the ECR group, which the Conservatives have helped constitute in the European Parliament, contains unpleasant, populist nationalists from the former Soviet bloc. I believe that the Tories should have considered more closely the character of the various organisations with which they were about to associate in Europe. It is true, however, that the groups within the European Parliament are, by necessity, alliances of convenience, forged between parties on the basis of the most amorphous common principles. Such is the character of EU politics. MEPs within a group, and the parties from which they are drawn, might share very broad objectives or a common outlook as regards the European Parliament. They certainly do not, by anyone’s understanding, endorse the domestic platforms of each of their groupmates. Which is why I believe that, the ECR having already been formed, Conservatives do not need to defend the Latvian Fatherland and Fr...

The European Union's Independent Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia has published its report . One of its main tasks was to establish who started the war. So what was its conclusion? "The shelling of Tskhinvali by the Georgian armed forces during the night of 7 to 8 August 2008 marked the beginning of the large-scale armed conflict in Georgia." Georgia started it. Of course it did.

If I were to claim that the Conservative party’s approach to European Union politics causes me no anxiety , I would be lying. The broad aspiration - a cooperative Europe, based on sovereign states sharing a commitment to democracy, a common market and a common travel space, I can support unequivocally. I am certainly not an advocate of federalism. Some of the Tories’ allies in the European Conservatives and Reformists, however, make me rather uneasy. And I worry that David Cameron will cause himself difficulties by pledging not to let the Lisbon Treaty rest, even if it has been ratified by every state by the time he becomes prime minister. One of the more lamentable developments in the former eastern bloc, over the past number of years, has been the ascent of populist nationalism . It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Tories have formed a group with some of the worst offenders. I’ve delved into the various Conservative arguments – the homophobes and racists in other ...

The Foreign Policy Centre has published a pamphlet entitled ‘Spotlight on Georgia’ , timed to coincide with Vice President Biden’s visit to Tbilisi, this week. It is a substantial document and I have yet to plough through all of it. What is clear from my reading so far is that the influential British think tank’s investigations have charted a decline in standards of democracy and human rights under President Saakashvili, despite Western support which is often ‘almost reflexive’. From the 2003 Rose Revolution, and promising beginnings, degeneration in standards has been discerned in recent years, particularly since 2007. Saakashvili’s autocratic style has precipitated a pool of disgruntled politicians prepared to challenge his regime. Opposition has been suppressed, often by violent methods and press freedoms have been curtailed. In its ‘Nations in Transition’ report Freedom House adjudged Georgia to be ‘less democratic’ today than it has been at any point in the last ten years. Th...

Barack Obama is in Russia today. Thus a proliferation of articles and editorials urging the US President not to trust perfidious, semi-Asiatic barbarians adorn the newspapers. Predictably. In contrast, few media outlets chose to cover an assassination attempt last month on reforming Ingushetia president, Yunusbek Yevkurov, which constitutes part of a reinvigorated Islamist campaign in the Russian Caucasus. Encouraged by Dmitri Medvedev, Yevkurov has implemented a regime built on principles of glasnost in Russia’s most dangerous region. The terrorist attack was targeted very deliberately at a force for normalisation and transparency, which Wahhabi militants wish to undermine. Fewer reporters still have highlighted the ongoing struggle for democracy in Georgia and the government’s repressive tactics against the country’s opposition. But with Obama in Moscow to meet his Kremlin counterpart, all the clichés about a totalitarian Russian regime, intent on snuffing out democracy al...

In stark contrast to the sweeping hyperbole which filled opinion pages in the weekend newspapers, O’Neill has written an intelligent commentary of issues surrounding immigration to Britain from central and eastern Europe, prompted by attacks on properties housing immigrants in Belfast and a subsequent exodus of Romanian families from their homes. In particular he examines the plight of Roma, many of whom have suffered institutional prejudice, rights abuses and violence in their home countries, before being subjected to wanton thuggery by youths in South Belfast. O’Neill highlights two issues which are particularly pertinent to the case of Romanian Roma. First, countries from previously communist parts of Europe have been admitted to the EU without sufficient scrutiny of their legal treatment of minorities. Certainly this has partly been influenced by good will and good faith on the part of longer standing EU members. There was (and remains to a degree) widespread sympathy for neig...

It has been a couple of years in the planning but it seems that Gazprom is gathering the wherewithal it needs to push forward the South Stream pipeline. Agreements have been signed with transit states - Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Italy - in Sochi. The pipeline, which is scheduled to be finished by 2015, would carry gas from Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. As such it poses a threat to the EU sponsored Nabucco project which aspires to bring natural gas to member countries from producers in Central Asian and the Caspian without the involvement of Russia or Gazprom. Although the more rabid anti-Moscow elements within the EU will see South Stream as a serious reversal which increases dependence on Russian gas, there is a strong argument that the pipeline will increase energy security, by bypassing erratic transit states like Belarus and Ukraine, whose payment disputes with Gazprom have disrupted supplies in recent winters. In conjunction with Nord Stream , which comes into opera...

An editorial in the Guardian on Saturday questioned the value of the EU’s ‘Eastern Partnership’ summit, held in Prague. Although an invitation to attend was initially extended to Russia, the Czech hosts have more or less acknowledged that the venture’s purpose is to prise six former Soviet republics away from Russian influence. The paper records the opinion that it will fail in this purpose, possibly whilst threatening to further polarise political divisions within the countries and sending out an ambivalent message about human rights and political freedoms. MT has written a thorough and detailed examination of the issues surrounding the summit. He is broadly in agreement with the Guardian’s analysis and he also challenges the initiative on the grounds that it wastes European tax payers’ money and seeks to establish an EU ‘sphere of influence’ whilst at the same time working on the assumption that Russia’s interests in its own locality are illegitimate and invidious. There is...

Shadow Minister for Europe, Mark Francois MP, joined Jim Nicholson MEP to campaign in the South Antrim, Upper Bann and Lagan Valley constituencies. It's worth printing in full Francois' observations. "Jim Nicholson will be part of a strong group of Conservative MEPs in the next European Parliament, standing up for the interests of the United Kingdom. No lone voice, he will be part of a strong team committed to delivering for Northern Ireland and the entire UK. "If the Conservatives are successful in winning the next general election, Jim Nicholson and his colleagues in the Conservative grouping in the European Parliament will be able to work with that new government to reform Europe, to halt the federalist agenda, to keep Sterling and to ensure that British businesses and workers are not dictated to by the Working Time Directive. Others may talk about doing this - only Jim Nicholson and his fellow Conservative MEPs with a Conservative Government in Westminster can ...