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Europe issue deprived Conservatives of
27 seats – Bruges Group, 8 May 2005
A country
called Europe – Die Welt (German newspaper), 30 April 2005
MEPs vote to keep generous allowances –
Raphael Minder, 13th April 2005
Mood music for drifting into a Eurostate –
Rod Liddle, 13th February 2005
BBC guilty of pro-Europe bias, its own inquiry finds – Anthony
Browne, 28th January 2005
A cowboy in Eutopia – Mark Steyn, 17th June 2001
Europe issue deprived Conservatives
of 27 seats – Bruges Group, 8 May 2005
The incredible, untold story of the general election is the effect that
UKIP (and to a lesser extent Veritas) has had on the outcome. Overall,
the combined votes of these two parties affected the outcome of 27 seats
which might have otherwise gone to the Conservatives.
Of these 18 are held by Labour and if the Conservatives had won them the government would have had an overall majority of 30 instead of the 66 they actually have. Also the Conservatives would have 224 seats instead of 197. Liberal Democrat gains would have been reduced to a mere two.
The seats are as follows:
- Battersea (Lab hold) Majority:
163 - UKIP: 333
- Burton (Lab hold) Majority: 1,421 - UKIP plus
Veritas: 1,825
- Carshalton & Wallington (LD hold) Majority:
1,068 - UKIP: 1,111
- Cornwall North (LD hold) Majority: 3,076 - UKIP
plus Veritas: 3,387
- Crawley (Lab Hold) Majority 37 - UKIP 935
- Dartford (Lab hold) Majority 706 - UKIP: 1,407
- Eastleigh (LD Hold) Chris Huhne Majority: 568
- UKIP: 1,669
- Gillingham (Lab hold) Majority 254 - UKIP 1,191
- Harlow (Lab hold) Majority 97 - UKIP plus Veritas
1922
- Hereford (Lab hold) Majority: 962 - UKIP: 1,030
- High Peak (Lab hold) Majority: 735 - UKIP 1,106
- Hove (Lab hold) Majority 420 - UKIP 575
- Medway (Lab hold) Majority: 213 - UKIP 1,488
- Portsmouth North (Lab hold) Majority: 1,139
- UKIP 1,348
- Romsey (LD hold) Majority 125 - UKIP: 1,076
- Sittingbourne & Sheppey (Lab hold) Majority:
79 - UKIP plus Veritas: 1,118
- Solihull (LD Gain) Majority: 279 - UKIP: 990
- Somerton & Frome (LD hold) Majority: 812
- UKIP plus Veritas: 1,531
- Staffordshire Moorlands (Lab hold) Majority:
2,438 -- UKIP: 3,512
- Stroud (Lab hold) Majority: 350 - UKIP: 1,089
- Stourbridge (Lab hold) Majority: 407 - UKIP:
1,087
- Taunton (LD gain) Majority: 573 - UKIP: 1,441
- Thanet South (Lab hold) Majority: 664 - UKIP
(Nigel Farage) 2,079
- Torbay (LD hold) Majority: 2,029 - UKIP 3,726
- Warwick & Leamington (Lab hold) Majority:
306 - UKIP: 921
- Watford (Lab hold) Majority: 1,148 - UKIP: 1,292
- Westmorland & Lonsdale (LD gain) Majority:
267 - UKIP: 660
From this, it is clear that potentially, UKIP/Veritas had a far more significant effect on the election than their vote would imply. Given how different today would look if Blair has a majority of 30 and Kennedy had only taken two seats, it could be said that the "UKIP effect" is the political sensation of the election – and one that the mainstream media missed completely.
Furthermore, from provisional data, it is evident that UKIP is – almost under the radar – making steady gains in a hostile electoral environment. Seats fought over the last three elections have increased from 194 and 434 to 497, while the national share of vote has increased from 0.34% and 1.47% to 2.38%, with deposits saved increasing from one in 1997 to six in 2001 and 45 in this current election.
Total votes stood at 106,001 in 1997, at 390,910 in 2001 and at roughly 610,000 this time round. Given the tenacity of the Party, even where funding had dried up, fielding 497 candidates was a considerable achievement and there is no reason to expect that the Party will be any less tenacious in the next general election.
On the basis that the UKIP vote increases the same amount in the next election, having gone through the current results and worked out, provisionally, that some 15 extra Conservative seats could be lost to the "UKIP effect" in the next election.
These include Devon West, Eastbourne, Guildford, Totnes and the Wrekin, these would be in addition to the current 27 potentials, which would bring Conservative losses to 42.
All this, of course, is theoretical but there is good reason to believe that – all things being equal – UKIP could maintain its rate of growth or even improve its performance. For instance, with a prolonged EU referendum battle, it could improve its profile and attract greater support.
Crucially, the most probable year for the next general election is 2009 which, this time, coincides with the Euro-elections, which might even be held on the same date. That would put “Europe” firmly on the agenda and could significantly benefit UKIP.
The failure to develop a fully Eurosceptic policy and the missed opportunity of making "Europe", in just a small way, a part of the Conservatives Party's election campaign handicapped them and allowed Labour to retain a sizeable majority. Clearly, the Conservatives cannot afford to ignore neither "Europe" nor UKIP at the next election, if they are to stand a chance of winning and forming a government.
A country called Europe
– Die Welt (German newspaper), 30 April 2005
Forgive my asking, but why aren’t you being allowed to vote on the
European Constitution? You are, after all, the most important country
in the EU – not only in population terms, but as the biggest contributor
to the budget. It seems rather unfair that you should have to sit there
and watch as the French and the Dutch and the Czechs and the British vote
on your future.
I am forever being told that referendums have no place in Germany’s constitutional arrangements. Well, neither have they in Britain’s. But eventually, against his wishes, Tony Blair was forced to concede that the European Constitution was a special case. For it is not simply another EU Treaty. On the day it comes into force, all past Treaties will be dissolved. The EU will cease to be an association of states, and become a polity in its own right, deriving its authority from its own constitution. It will acquire most of the characteristics that international law recognises as features of statehood: legal personality, defined external borders, treaty-making powers, accredited diplomats, a Head of State.
There is a paradox here. On the one hand, Euro-integrationists disparage the idea of nationalism, which they regard as being only one step removed from ethnic hatred and war. On the other, they wish to endow the EU with many of the traditional trappings of nationhood: a passport, a national anthem, a flag.
But the EU is not a nation. Very few people feel European in the same way that someone might feel Japanese or Norwegian. There is no European language, no common public opinion, no shared identity to which we relate when we use the word “we”. Nor is there any evidence that these things are developing. On the most empirical measure of all – participation at European elections – we are becoming progressively less European: every poll since 1979 has resulted in a lower turnout than the last, despite the European Parliament’s growing powers over this period.
This point was conceded last week by the unlikely figure of Margot Wallström, the Commissioner for Institutional Affairs. “There is no such thing as a European demos,” she told an audience of journalists. “Hopes and fears about Europe very often reflect national politics.” With awesome ambition, Mrs Wallström intends to change all this: she wants to construct trans-European media, and thereby make people think differently about who they are. Instead of reforming the EU, she plans to reform human nature.
It has been attempted before. Multi-national states usually seek to fabricate a sense of common identity among their citizens: the Habsburgs tried it, and the Ottomans, and the Yugoslavs and the Soviets. But nationhood cannot be invented by bureaucratic fiat. As soon as the peoples of these empires were allowed to determine their own futures, they opted for national self-government.
You may think it outrageous to compare the EU to such authoritarian states, even indirectly. Europe, you might protest, is accountable to the wishes of its peoples.
Really? Then why, whenever those peoples vote against closer integration, are they ignored? Why was the Danish “No” to Maastricht overturned, and the Irish “No” to Nice disregarded? Why are EU leaders even now planning to circumvent a French “No”? Why have they already started bringing in substantial elements of the Constitution in anticipation of the national referendums? And why are the 79 per cent of Germans who want a referendum of their own being brushed aside?
Democracy works within units whose citizens feel enough in common with each other to accept government from each other’s hands: that is, within nations. That is why the idea of representative government developed hand-in-hand with the idea of self-determination. A state can be a supra-national federation, or it can be an accountable democracy; it cannot be both.
Commissioner Wallström is right: there is no European demos. Take the demos out of democracy and you are left only with the kratos: the power of a system that, unable to appeal to civic patriotism, must compel obedience by force of law. That is the true betrayal of Europe’s patrimony.
MEPs vote to keep generous
allowances – Raphael Minder, 13th April 2005
Members of the European parliament yesterday rejected reforms designed
to clamp down on abuse of pension contributions and travel expenses as
well as proposals to end their expensive commute between the parliaments
in Brussels and Strasbourg.
MEPs voted against a proposal to replace the generous system of automatic travel expenses, which has been one of their most visible perks, with a system that would only reimburse their actual travel costs. They also rejected a proposal to allow auditors to check the way MEPs fund their private pensions and a system of sanctions for those found guilty of violating parliamentary rules.
The parliament's pension scheme has come under fire from the Court of Auditors, the EU spending watchdog, which claims it does not have a "sufficient legal basis".
Chris Davies, parliamentary leader of the British Liberal Democrats, described the rejection of the reforms as an "all-clear to embezzlement".
Mr Davies had pushed in particular for changes to ensure that private contributions to MEPs' pension schemes cannot be paid out of public funds. "After the votes today, people across Europe can hardly be blamed if they think that some MEPs are engaged in corrupt practices and that they don't belong in a parliament but in jail," he said.
The parliament's "gravy train" reputation is seen as one of the reasons for a constant decline in European election turnout since direct elections to the parliament started in 1979. Disillusionment among voters and concerns about fraud prompted some MEPs to demand reforms. Yesterday's votes considerably reduce the chance of a quick agreement between the parliament and EU member states on a comprehensive reform of the legal status and salary of MEPs, which has been a long-standing subject of dispute.
The Luxembourg government, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, has been working on a new proposal to end the deadlock at a time when salary discrepancies among MEPs have widened considerably following last May's EU enlargement because remuneration is linked to the salaries of domestic politicians in the countries they represent.
Ona Jukneviciene, a Lithuanian MEP who steered the budgetary discharge report that contained the reform proposals, said: "After what happened today, the Luxembourg presidency cannot be blamed for concluding that parliament is not yet ready to proceed with reform."
In another disappointment to the reformers, MEPs rejected a proposal from the Liberal group to create a code of professional ethics that would, for example, help clarify the links between MEPs and lobby groups.
Terry Wynn, a Labour MEP, said it was shocking to see some of his colleagues fill their annual declaration of interests simply with the mention "as before".
"What I still have not come to terms with is the amount of people who have agricultural interests - and there are a lot of them - and who then vote on questions of agricultural interests," Mr Wynn said.
By voting against a proposal to choose whether they should sit permanently in Brussels, the seat of the European Commission, or in Strasbourg, MEPs dealt a blow to efforts to end the cumbersome monthly shuttling of the assembly estimated to cost €200m a year.
The migration of MEPs is a legacy of a postwar compromise about where the new European institutions should be located. The Strasbourg seat is enshrined in the EU treaty and resolutely defended by Paris which has repeatedly said that it would block any attempt by MEPs to leave the city.
Reformers insist the only way to put pressure on Paris to end the MEPs' travelling circus is to give a clear and united message - something they markedly failed to achieve yesterday.
Mood music for drifting
into a Eurostate – Rod Liddle, 13th February 2005
Confused about the breadth and scope of the proposed constitution for
the European Union? Worried about how you should vote in the referendum
next year? Maybe Peter Hain can help. Here’s what the leader of
the House of Commons said about it within the space of a few months in
late spring 2003.
“This is not a major change . . . there is no need for a referendum.” (On PM, the BBC Radio 4 programme.) “I am not saying it has got no substantial constitutional significance, of course it will have.” (In the House of Commons.) “Our task is nothing less than the creation of a new constitutional order for a new, united Europe.” (In the Financial Times.) There, I hope that’s cleared things up. On other occasions, Mr Hain has described the constitution as nothing more than a “tidying-up exercise”, a description endorsed by Jack Straw, the foreign secretary.
There is the sort of “tidying-up exercise” you undertake after you have had a few friends around and your wife’s due back within the hour. Then there’s the sort of “tidying-up exercise” that happened to Hong Kong in 1997 or the Sudetenland in 1938.
We would need to cross examine Mr Hain and Mr Straw in some detail about their definitions of “tidying-up” before concluding they were a) lying through their teeth or b) employing the subtle literary device of litotes.
Then there’s Keith Vaz. He was once the minister for Europe and he described the EU charter of fundamental rights, to which we will all be signatories if we vote “yes” in a referendum, as having “about as much legal status as The Beano”. Again, we are mired in ambiguity. To take Keith literally, The Beano may be a comic for children, but it has unimpeachable legal status, as I’m sure D C Thomson, its publishers, would attest. Is that what Keith meant? He also described the proposed constitution as a tidying-up exercise. Almost everybody associated with new Labour used to employ that phrase. Like the pashmina and, mercifully, Keith Vaz, it has become rather de trop.
Let me tell you about something that happened four years ago, a little incident which shows you quite a lot about the government’s behaviour over the EU constitution, its general trustworthiness and its attitude to people or institutions that question its intentions.
It also brings into play some interesting characters whom, two or three years later, we were to meet again in not entirely different circumstances.
Back in November 2000 I was editor of the Today programme. One morning we ran an investigation into a document commissioned by the European commission through the University of Florence with the help of Professor Alan Dashwood, a Cambridge don. It was, we said on the programme, part of a potential blueprint for an EU constitution. Dashwood agreed.
At that time the government was adamant it would not sign up to anything called a constitution. As far as ceding power to Brussels was concerned its line was “this far and no further”. A constitution implied that more power would be ceded, so such a thing could not be on the agenda, we were told.
The reporter who carried out the investigation was Andrew Gilligan. As soon as his report was transmitted, all hell broke loose. The BBC received three furious complaints, almost identical in tone and content, from John Williams, the head of press at the Foreign Office, a pencil-necked EU bureaucrat called Jonathan Faull and a certain Alastair Campbell.
This document was old news, they screamed — and in any case did not suggest preparations were afoot for an EU constitution. At the morning lobby briefing, on November 29, Andrew Gilligan was attacked by Godric Smith, one of Campbell’s 10 Downing Street scullions. “Gullible Gilligan,” he told the lobby hacks, “falling for the Eurosceptic agenda.”
The letters of complaint to the BBC continued into 2001 until the broadcaster, with commendable resolve, finally told them to piss off for good and all.
The document was nothing more than a tidying-up exercise, the public was assured. It just ties together documents and treaties, loose ends, things like that.
Of course, we now know that a constitution was planned. It did indeed involve a considerable loss of sovereignty and the document we had revealed formed part of the blueprint, just as Gilligan had alleged.
And now, more than four years down the line, when Jack Straw talks about the proposed EU constitution he assures us it stands for “this far and no further”. Despite the fact that it involves the creation of an EU foreign minister, insists EU law is supreme over national law and, in many cases, ends the single country veto.
But then, as we have seen, when new Labour talks about the EU it always tells the public “this far and no further”. And then, quietly, it goes further and further.
Some people believe Alastair Campbell’s fury at that Today programme item contributed to his decision to eviscerate both the corporation and Gilligan three years later over the death of Dr David Kelly, the government scientist. Maybe. Frankly, I’m not sure I have the time or inclination to paddle around in Mr Campbell’s psyche. It is enough to know he is back in the saddle.
But the splenetic nature of the attack, the suborning of the Foreign Office and the EU to join in with it and the personal invective — we were to see all that once more in the summer of 2003 with the David Kelly affair.
Far more important, though, is this notion of trust. Michael Grade, the chairman of the BBC, is the latest in a procession of Establishment figures to have attacked the “cynicism” with which interviewers such as John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman are alleged to approach politicians. Such a perspective damages the democratic process, we are told, and inculcates a weariness within the public that results in them not bothering to vote.
As broadcasters, Humphrys et al have a duty to ensure that the public engages with the politics rather than become disaffected.
It is the view of the factotum who has too many politicians as friends.
For how are we to lay our cynicism aside when faced with government ministers whose answers shift with the wind? It’s a terribly unfashionable thing to say, but the old Claude Cockburn maxim: “why is this bastard lying to me?” still seems to carry a bit of force.
Call me cynical and disaffected if you like, but I have the suspicion that were you to ask Peter Hain if he thought Camilla Parker Bowles should become Queen of England following her marriage to Prince Charles, his answers would be as follows, dependent upon who was asking the question: a) yes. b) no. c) It is ridiculous to suggest there will be any such thing as a “marriage”. It is simply a tidying-up exercise.
BBC guilty of pro-Europe
bias, its own inquiry finds – Anthony Browne, 28th January
2005
The BBC has been accused of failing in its duty of impartiality and promoting
an institutional pro-European Union bias in a damning report that it commissioned.
Written by an independent balanced panel of eurosceptics and europhiles, it clears the BBC of deliberately trying to bend its coverage in favour of the EU and against eurosceptics. However, it said that there was substance to the concern that the BBC "suffers from certain forms of cultural and unintentional bias" and that, despite the good intentions of producers, "nobody thinks the output is impartial".
The committee examined a range of BBC output and found bias spread unevenly, with Radio 4's Today programme and BBC TV's Politics Show highlighted for criticism. Eurosceptics, including Conservative politicians, claimed that the report vindicated their longstanding complaint that the BBC was biased against them.
It is also likely to be a setback for the Government's struggle to win public opinion before next year's referendum on the European constitution.
The report, commissioned to find out if complaints by eurosceptics were justified, says that BBC news suffers from an "institutional mindset" that leads to a "reluctance to question pro-EU assumptions".
The BBC complaints unit has in the past four years upheld seven complaints of bias in favour of the EU, but not upheld any complaints of anti-EU bias.
It says that BBC journalists are often ignorant about how the EU works; they portray the EU largely through Westminster politics and fail to show how much of British policies originate in Brussels. It also criticises managers who "appear insufficiently self-critical about standards of impartiality". The report concludes that "the BBC is getting it wrong, and our main conclusion is that urgent action is required to put this right".
A BBC news spokeswoman said that the report found no deliberate bias, although the BBC's governors said they would formally respond only after BBC management, led by Helen Boaden, head of news, had a chance to study it and report back. The spokeswoman added: "This is a serious piece of work, and we will take it very seriously."
Timothy Kirkhope, the Conservative leader in the European Parliament, said: "Most people who watch the programmes have known this for some time. It is a matter of great importance for the British public, and very politically sensitive ahead of the referendum. The BBC has to give an impartial view. The question now is how are they going to redress the balance, and how long will it take?"
Gary Titley, the Labour leader in the European Parliament, said: "It's beyond belief. I am stunned anyone could come to that conclusion. The BBC is too often chasing the Daily Mail agenda."
The Today programme was criticised for not challenging assertions made by Gordon Brown in an interview that 3 million jobs depend on the EU, and that detaching from the EU would not be good for the economy.
The Politics Show was criticised for suggesting that a guest presenter opposed to the euro for economic reasons was really more concerned about losing British pubs.
A BBC Scotland news report was also quoted for suggesting that it was racist to oppose the euro.
A cowboy in Eutopia
– Mark Steyn, 17th June 2001
According to Goran Persson, currently the "EU President" (in
media shorthand) and Prime Minister of Sweden, the purpose of the European
Union is that "it's one of the few institutions we can develop as
a balance to US world domination". Sweden was scrupulously relaxed
about Nazi world domination and Soviet world domination, but even in the
chancelleries of Stockholm there comes a time when you have to get off
the fence.
Had President Persson made his remarks on the EU's global ambitions to Condi Rice and Colin Powell, they would have followed official State Department guidelines and nodded politely while trying not to giggle. But, unfortunately, he chose to announce this latest rationale for the EU as part of a general suck-up to an anti-American rabble, and evidently they took his claims to be a new superpower seriously. By Friday, the mob were rampaging through the streets of Gothenburg torching not just the Stars and Stripes but those gold-starred Euro-flags, too. As far as I could tell, the anti-EU guys dancing up and down in the street weren't yet shouting "Death to the Great Wannabe Satan!" but it's only a matter of time.
By comparison, "Bush the cowboy, the thug, the gunslinger" (thank you, Suddeutsche Zeitung) behaved with remarkable restraint for a man bent on world domination. Bill Clinton may have been Elvis as President, but Mr Bush is Elvis as foreign policy: aside from the odd gig in Toronto and a stint at a US military base, the late rock colossus had no truck with abroad, eschewing it his whole life. A President cannot, alas, toss his passport on the Graceland compost heap, but, within the constraints of his position, this one's doing his best. Before he left for the Continent, the White House announced that with immediate effect US/EU summits would be cut from two per year to one, re-framing the Administration's European policy in the language of a Bruce'n'Demi trial-separation agreement: while we continue to be committed to the long-term success of our relationship, we believe this can best be achieved by seeing less of each other.
Who's to say they're wrong? On every side, the President was assailed by boorish Perssons and Pattens. An innocuous observation that he'd like to see more countries in the EU prompted a terse rebuke from the Union's ersatz Foreign Secretary: "The United States is not a member of the European Union," snapped Chris Patten. Really? In that case how come it's got lumbered with footing the bill for 90 per cent of your defence costs?
We all know the jokes about Dubya: ignorant Yank, no idea what country he's in, Slovenia, Slavonia, Slovakia, what's the diff? But who can blame him? I mean, what country exactly was he in last week? At one level, he was in Spain, Belgium, Sweden. But at another he was in a strange shadow state called "Europe". It has a government, but no political parties. It has a defence policy, but it doesn't have an army. It swanks about like a superpower, but half its members are neutrals. It wants to meddle in North Korea, but it's paralysed in the face of genocide on its own frontier. It's happy to recognise Macedonia but only by a name other than Macedonia. (True.) It has a currency, a passport, a citizenship, an anthem, a flag and people who like to burn it, but it doesn't have any of the inner organs of democracy, accountability or basic constitutional principles, and on the whole it's the guys who lose the elections (Mr Patten, Neil Kinnock) who get to run the joint.
Although The New York Times maintains that "US-Europe Split Casts Long Shadows", it's difficult for the US to have a split with Europe because there isn't a Europe to have a split with. There's Mr Persson and a few dozen other persons who've got together, ordered up some headed notepaper and issue press releases on this and that on behalf of "Europe". It's a fine place, this "Europe", and entirely unperturbed by anything so inconvenient as Europeans. Why, there was Ireland's Bertie Ahern assuring his chums in Gothenburg that it would be a mistake to interpret his ingrate electorate's vote against the Treaty of Nice as a vote against the Treaty of Nice. Don't worry 'bout a thing, he says. "I do not see any reason why any of this should change the timetable."
No, indeed. If we've learned anything this last week, it's that there's certainly a gap between America and "Europe", as there is between America and the Land of Oz or the Planet Krypton. It's the gap between reality and fantasy. Take capital punishment, on which "Europe" has been busy lecturing the President. On this question, Mr Bush is more in tune with the British public than Mr Blair and the European Commission are. In fact, he's closer even to the Dutch, 52 per cent of whom favour capital punishment, than their official Eurospokespersons are. The difference is that individual American states are free to go their own way in this area: as I'm sure Louise Woodward would be the first to confirm, if you kill someone in America, make sure you do it in Massachusetts rather than Texas. "Europe", by contrast, has ruled that abolition of the death penalty is a prerequisite of membership. Thus, as I recently pointed out to a revered Washington grandee, the US is ineligible to enjoy the benefits of EU membership. "Thank God for that," he said.
I make no comment on the moral arguments, though I note that, unlike the peacenik Swedes, we in North America manage to police our anarchist riots in Seattle, Washington and Quebec City without shooting unarmed civilians. However, the assumptions behind the EU line on capital punishment underpin everything else in "Europe", too: the governing class knows best; its duty is to nullify the baser urges of its peoples - not just on the death penalty or the Treaty of Nice, but on anything that comes up.
Not so long ago, Jean-Pierre Chevenement, then France's Defence Minister, insisted that the United States was dedicated to "the organised cretinisation of our people". As a dismissal of American pop culture - Hollywood, McDonald's, etc - this statement is not without its appeal, though it sounds better if you've never had the misfortune to sit through a weekend of continental television. But the reality is that no one is as dedicated to the proposition that the people are cretins as Mr Chevenement and the panjandrums of the new "Europe". The EU is organised on this assumption. If, like the Danes and now the Irish, they're impertinent enough to tick the wrong box, we'll just keep re-asking the question until they get it right. If, like 29 per cent of the Austrian electorate, they tire of choosing between the Left-of-centre soft-Rightists and Right-of-centre soft-Leftists and vote for something a tad more robust, we'll slap 'em with sanctions and boycotts.
Until the Nineties, continental leaders of both Left and what passes for Right were content with "moral equivalence" between the US and USSR. But, with the present regrettable lack of big-time totalitarian dictatorships for America to be morally equivalent to, Europe has now embraced moral superiority. It's not a pretty sight and, given the thin ice on which continental democracy skates, it's also preposterous. Who's really the swaggering cowboy? The well-mannered, modest Texan? Or the insulated Euronomenklatura sneering at him as they blunder around the world? It's the difference between a responsive democracy, and a poseur democracy. Or to put it another way: America believes in the will of the people, "Europe" in the will of the Perssons.