AN INTERESTING CRITIQUE....BUT HOW VIABLE IS THE ALTERNATIVE?

Paul Mason, the economics editor of Channel  4 News, has written “Post Capitalism , a guide to our future “, which  offers a critique of the existing global capitalist system.

He points out that capitalism is only 200 years old and has gone through many changes. Economic systems do not last forever and can sometimes collapse suddenly and painfully.

In its present phase, global capitalism is, he says, “driven by network technology, mobile communications, a truly global marketplace and information goods”. He says this model is now stalling.

He argues that many of the innovations now emerging are ones that derive from discoveries that produce services that are(or should be) intrinsically free, in the sense that, once invented, they can be reproduced indefinitely, almost without  extra cost. 

New software applications, and new pharmaceuticals are, for example,  profitable only so long as they are protected by patent or copyright exclusivity. That is a fragile enough protection, it  is arbitrary, and is dependent on a continuing global consensus.

As their societies age, he also believes the debts of many developed country governments are un payable, without drastic cutbacks in services to the elderly. Debt default by a major country could blow the whole global financial system apart.

He argues that the capitalist system has only kept itself going, by bringing into the for profit sector, services that previously were provided free, like childcare and care for the elderly. Rapid urbanisation has made family care, outside the market, impractical for many thus creating new” for profit” markets in care services of all kinds

Meanwhile the market is incapable of finding solutions to global threats like climate change. There are so many players. With contradictory interests, that no one is in charge, and capable of imposing a solution.

Inequality in incomes and wealth are reaching what he regards as unsustainable levels. This is driven by technological change. Work that requires only a high school level of education is harder and harder to find. 

Education is becoming as much a means of sorting out job applicants as it is a method of releasing a student’s potential.

Those who control technology and finance, and have key skills, qualifications, and intellectual property, are commanding an undue share of the flow of wealth. States are too weak to curb this activity. 

Underutilised capital is being accumulated in the financial sector because of a lack of good investment opportunities.  This is driving down interest rates, and creating conditions for another speculative bubble. Mason  blames lack of spending power among workers for the lack of investment opportunities.

His solutions are not as well worked out as his critique.

He wants everyone paid a basic income by the state, whether they work or not (notwithstanding the fact that admits that the same states are already horrendously in debt).

He wants the state to intervene to promote the provision of more goods and services for free, like the free service provided by Wikipedia. He also wants the state to use the criminal law to penalise rent seeking behaviour in business and to strengthen the role of trade unions. 

Given that that people and businesses, who want to avoid doing what one country wants them to do, can easily move to another country, his model could not be implemented without reintroducing capital controls, and reversing the benefits of globalisation.

Most of his proffered solutions are thus impracticable for one country, acting on its own. They would require some form of, self sufficient, global government and the author offers no clue as to how that might be achieved.

He wants the un payable debts of states to be gradually reduced through inflation, which he accurately describes as financial repression.

He believes this financial repression should be engineered by the central banks.  This would destroy people’s savings, pensions, and insurance policies, which are underwritten by the very debts he wants to write off or devalue. As he puts it, his policy would “reduce the value of assets in pension funds, and thus of the material wealth of the middle classes and the old”.

People would never vote for solutions along those lines, and nothing in this book will persuade them to do so. The only way they could be introduced would be by stealth.

The book is useful in that it offers an insight into the logical outcome of the policies espoused by left wing anti capitalist protest parties.

It also portrays the risks that lie ahead for the world, if the defects in the present system, which the author correctly identifies, are not tackled properly.

NATIONALISM'S UNEXAMINED LIFE.......

An ideology that does not have all the answers.

I  was in Asia when I read the New York Times obituary of Benedict Anderson posted above.

I confess I had never read any of his books but was struck by the huge contemporary relevance of the quotations from him in this  fascinating obituary.

Many of the disturbances in the world today are driven by the phenomenon Anderson spent his life analysing.....nationalism.

For example,

• it is nationalism that lies behind the tension between China and its neighbours over islands in the South China Sea.
• It is English nationalism that lies behind the UK effort to detach itself from the EU, while still enjoying its benefits.
• It is French nationalism that is fuelling the growth in support for the Front National.
• And it is, of course, a particularly virulent form of  American nationalism that lies behind the anti Muslim, and anti Mexican, rhetoric of Donald Trump and friends. 

Nationalism frequently defines itself by the people it is AGAINST, rather than by the values it is FOR.

US Senator Cruz exemplified  this aspect of nationalism when ,in a recent speech, he called for "moral clarity" in US foreign policy, defining moral clarity as knowing how to identify America's enemies!

Unfortunately nationalism often has to pick on violent events to provided cohesion for the "imagined community" that is the "nation".

In Ireland, for example, we are embarking on a year of celebration of killings and death, in the Dublin rebellion of Dublin in Easter Week 1916,  and this rebellion, and the Proclamation that launched it, is being presented as the  "founding event" for the Irish nation. 

This is historically inaccurate.

The Irish national identity was built,  much earlier, by peaceful agitation, by people like Daniel O Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell and others, much more than it was, by the killing and dying of the 1916 to 1923 period. In fact O Connell's movement was arguably the first peaceful mass democratic movement in the world. 

But I fear that will not be not the message that will be conveyed to Irish school children during 2016. 

One interesting thing about nationalism is that is so un self critical.

It does not examine the assumptions it makes, whether about

+ who belongs to the nation,

+ who can opt out of the nation,

+ whether a nation is about territory or people and

+ whether the nation comes before the individual or vice versa.

Another thing to note is that nationalism is modern, and not an ancient, ideology.

It came about, as Benedict Anderson says, because  the other forces, that  previously sufficed to persuade people to cooperate such as a shared religious belief or a shared allegiance to a ruling dynasty, had lost their force . Nationalism has replaced Communism in Easter Europe since 1989.

Nationalism also uses simplifications of history, and mysticism, to  avoid asking difficult questions of itself.

This is evident in Japan, in its approach to China and to the legacy of its  war in China from 1936 to 1945.

Similar over simplifications and blindness to the other side are also present in the dispute between Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms.

These conflicting interpretations of history make it difficult for people, whose objective interests may actually largely coincide, to cooperate fruitfully with one another.

That is why I believe there should be an open debate about what nationalism really means.

The 150 traditional "nations" of the world ,who met in Paris on our global climate,  are all  of them far too small to cope on their own with the  challenges of global interdependence, global waste, and global environmental degradation. Nationalism does not have an answer to that problem.

While nationalism will always be with us, it needs to accompanied by other, more global, foci for loyalty and common action.

NEW INSIGHTS ON NINETEENTH CENTURY IRISH FAMINES AND ON THEIR IMPACT IN NORTH AMERICA

I recently read  “Irish Hunger and Migration......Myth, Memory and Memorialisation” which is edited by Patrick Fitzgerald, Christine Kinealy and Gerard Moran and published by  Irelands Great Hunger Institute,  in Quinnipiac University in Connecticut

HOW WAS THE GREAT FAMINE REMEMBERED?

A number of years ago I visited the Museum Exhibition on the Irish Famine in Quinnipiac University. 

Having grown up in Ireland, and read Cecil Woodham Smith’s seminal work on the Irish Famine, I was well aware of the drastic impact the Famine of the 1840’s had had on my own country, and how the strict application of free market economics had needlessly increased the appalling death toll when the potato crop, on which the majority of the Irish people survived, failed in 1846. 

But I was puzzled as to why a University in the United States, the home of free enterprise, would be devoting so much attention to an event, however appalling, that had occurred on another continent, 150 years previously, given all the other horrors that had occurred elsewhere in more recent times.

This book answers the questions that were on my mind back then

Beyond Ireland itself, the Irish Hunger, and the wave of immigration to the Americas that it caused, had a huge impact on the psyche, the demography, and the religious diversity of North America itself.

It provided much of manpower that fought the American Civil War.

Its memorialisation provides a shared source of identity for generations of Americans of Irish ancestry.

 Initially, the memories of the starvation in Ireland were suppressed by the Irish immigrants, whose immediate goal was to fit in as Americans, and indeed to maintain their sanity, by not dwelling too much the horrors they had left behind.

By the early 20th century the situation had changed, and Irish Americans were ready to talk about  the Famine. But they tended to do so in a simplified way, which highlighted British neglect , as proof of the case that Ireland should separate itself from Britain politically and economically.

For example, the Famine was remembered as if all its victims had been Irish Catholics, and as if Irish Protestants had escaped. As this book shows, that is simply false. The death rate in many Protestant areas of Ulster was just as great, but it suited neither the Unionist nor the Nationalist myth makers to emphasise that.

This reminds us that memorialisation of any historic event serves a different function in each succeeding generation. The way we commemorate an important event in the past, tells us what it is about the past, that we regard as important (and unimportant ) today, and thus how we see ourselves now and in the future. 

If, for example, we only commemorate the dead on one side of a conflict, that shows us that, for us, the conflict is not really over at all.

As our current needs change, so too will be the way we commemorate the past.

This point is brought out very well in one of the essays , by Catherine Shannon,  which describes  how a  coastal community in Massachusetts  commemorated the fatal shipwreck of 99 Galway and Clare emigrants fleeing famine at home in 1849. The way the local commemorations of this shipwreck changed, in tone and format over time, showed how the Irish community in that part of Massachusetts  made the transition from marginalisation and obscurity, to  noisy self assertion, and then ultimately to complete and contented integration.

FAMINE RELIEF IN QUEBEC, AND BY THE QUAKERS

This collection of essays also deals with the integration of Irish Famine immigrant in the French speaking community of Quebec. Much help was given to the starving Irish by French speaking Catholic orders of nuns. But eventually the Irish settled down  so well in Quebec  that a concern grew that Irish influence might displace the French in the hierarchy of the local Catholic church!

The vitally important role of the Quakers in famine relief in Ireland is described, as is how the Quakers drew on their Irish experience, in helping in famine relief in Finland in the 1850’s.

IRISH IMMIGRANTS IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY

The part played by Irish immigrants in the defence of the Confederate States of America is described by David Gleeson. Here the Catholic and Protestant Irish made common cause. 

Forinstance, Randall McGavock of Nashville, a planter and proud of his Ulster Scots roots, was happy to emphasise his Irishness when seeking a command in the Confederate Army.

This was presumably because this would make it easier for him to recruit the post famine Irish immigrants to his command.

Randall, one of whose descendants is a good friend of mine, lost his life at the head of his Irish troops at the battle of Raymond in Mississippi in May 1862. I have seen the standard of McGavock’s regiment at my friend’s home in Franklin Tennessee. It features a harp on a green background

Another Irish supporter of the Confederacy was the Young Irelander, John Mitchell.

A Derry Presbyterian , Mitchell was an opponent of the constitutional politics of Daniel O Connell and  had taken part in the 1848 Rebellion in Ireland.  In America, however, he became a strong supporter of slavery. 

Writing in the Richmond Examiner, of which he was editor, he justified secession on the ground that the North has broken the compact establishing the United States by its attack on the “God given” institution of slavery. He also criticised the statement in the American declaration of independence that “all men were created equal”.

THE FORGOTTEN FAMINE...1879 TO 1881

For me, the most interesting of all the essays in this book is the one by Gerard Moran on the forgotten Irish famine of 1879 to 1881.

This later famine was also due to potato blight, but its effect was confined to the western seaboard, and to some poorer inland counties like Monaghan and Longford, because it was only in those parts of Ireland that exclusive dependence on the potato for food had persisted, after the terrible experience of the 1840’s.

Still reliant on the potato, the population in these counties had increased  in the 1861 to 1881 period, whereas population had been allowed to fall in the rest of the country. This meant that when, in 1879 after a series of earlier poor harvests, blight struck, starvation was  immediate  in the counties still that were still unsustainably dependent on the potato.

This time , however , relief was provided with greater speed that it had been in the 1840’s.

The Lord Lieutenant’s wife, the Duchess of Marlborough, wrote a letter to the “Times” newspaper  in December 1879 drawing attention to the famine. Her letter sparked the formation of the Mansion House Relief Fund and also to a fund bearing her own name.

Gerard Moran alleges that the Land League “was a reluctant participant in relief operations because it diverted  its activities away from  its main functions as a political and agrarian organisation” and he  quotes Parnell as launching a blistering attack on the Mansion House Relief Committee and its chairman, Edmund Dwyer Gray, which led to Irish Americans contributing to the Land League’s political fund, rather than to the direct relief of starvation through the Mansion House Fund. 

This, perhaps, points up a deeper conflict of interest between the west and the east of Ireland.

In the west, the priority was simple survival, whereas in the east, the priority was wresting the ownership of the land from the landlords, and transferring it to the Irish farmers. 

This book enables the reader to understand the global impact of the Irish famine, and  it acts as an antidote to the misuse of famine memory in the service of contemporary identity politics.

THE US PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST.......BIG NEWS FROM IOWA?

The news that Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Senator, is beating Donald Trump by 10 percentage points in the latest polls in Iowa, increases the possibility that he will be the eventual Republican nominee.

Iowa will host the first contest of the Primary season. It will be followed by New Hampshire where Trump still leads the Republican field by a large margin.

Also according to the latest research, Cruz would be 2.5 percentage points behind Hillary Clinton is a General Election contest confined to the  two of them, and probably further behind if Donald Trump were to enter the race as a third party candidate. Trump would be even further behind Clinton in a two candidate race.

The  potential Republican Presidential candidate  most likely to beat Hillary Clinton is a head to head is Ben Carson, and that is by just 0.4 percentage points over a range of polls.

Senator Rubio of Florida has also been ahead of her in some polls.

Jeb Bush would lose to her but by a narrower margin than most of his Republican rivals, but the early primaries are not ones in which he can be expected to do well.

Cruz has a poor record of working with fellow Senators and some Republican leaders have suggested they might not even vote for him in November.

He gave a speech in the Heritage Foundation recently which sets out his foreign policy approach.

He wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico, and raised the spectre of “terrorists swimming across the Rio Grande”. He says that 40% of illegal immigrants in the US are visa overstays.

He says the US needs “moral clarity” in it foreign policy. “That starts with defining our enemy” he claims. 

This is a mistaken view. Moral clarity, I would argue, starts by defining one’s OWN values rather than by defining ones enemy. But defining one own values is much harder work, than is picking an enemy.

He argues for a foreign policy based on pursuit of America’s interests, and against making democracy promotion a central goal. He is thus critical of US support for regime change in Egypt, Libya and Syria. “We do not have a side in the Syrian Civil War” he states frankly.

In many ways Ted Cruz is appealing to the same core views as Donald Trump. Both are addressing anxieties among the American middle class that America’s standing in the world, both materially and psychologically, has diminished.  

It is something that is important to them, and goes to the heart of their identity. This sense of decline is accentuated by the fact that middle class incomes in the US have stagnated, while the top tier of society has gained.

Hillary Clinton would like to address this question, but many of her financial backers would lose if she did so. While she is well ahead in most Democratic contests, she could lose to Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire. Sanders is from the neighbouring state of Vermont. 

She also has to cope with the conclusion of the FBI investigation into her use of a private email for State department business.  Disclosure of classified information to outsiders would be a serious matter if it is found to have occurred, inadvertently or otherwise. Evidence of any subsequent attempt to cover up mistakes would also be a big problem.

One has the sense, at this stage, that the Presidential Election next November  will not settle things, and the United States will remain deeply divided, with at least  one house of the Congress continuing to resist the President of the day.

A TOPICAL BOOK....A RECENT HISTORY OF SYRIA

I have just finished reading “Syria, a recent history” by John McHugo, which was first published last year by Saqi Books.

The author is a senior fellow in the Centre for Syrian Studies in St Andrews University.

It shows that Syria is not a natural political unit on its own, but is part of a much wider Arabic speaking “Greater Syria”, which included the entire area from Gaza and all of Palestine, to the Turkish border, and from the Mediterranean as far as the Iranian border with Iraq. Uniting “Greater Syria” has been a longstanding theme of Arab politics

This book also reminds the reader of the long, and troubled, history of relations between Syria and France. 

After the First World War, France was awarded a League of Nations responsibility to administer Syria, with a mandate to prepare it for full independence.

Britain was awarded a similar mandate for the area that is now occupied by Israel/Palestine, Jordan and Iraq. Both mandates covered an area that had hitherto been  part of the defeated Ottoman Empire.

Both Britain and France were rivals for regional influence, and both wanted to retain as much control as possible in their own hands.

France had to suppress a major revolt against it rule in Syria in the 1925 to 1927 period, and it used brutal tactics in that war. Even at the end of the Second World War, France still wanted to hang on the Syria, and was engaged in hostilities with Syrians seeking independence as late as May 1946.

This book described the complex post independence history of Syria right up to 2014.

Initially Syria had a parliamentary democracy of sorts, but this was gradually replaced by military regimes.

The parliamentary regime proved too weak to cope with the external threat posed by the rise of Israel.  The parliamentary regime was dominated by wealthy Sunni interests, who had traditionally exercised power in Syria.
After 1948, the Army was increased in size and strength. The army’s increasing involvement in politics brought new groups into power in Syria, but it weakened the army itself, because of factionalism and politically motivated purges. This weakness was exposed when Syria lost the Golan Heights to Israeli occupation when it was defeated in the 1967 War
That led, indirectly, to the takeover of the state by Hafez Al Assad, a former Army officer, of Alawite religion, who has been Minister for Defence in 1967.

He was a ruthless pragmatist and held power for 30 years.

He ensured that Syria performed better in the 1973 war, although it did not regain the Golan Heights.

His regime was a police state, although it did provide order, and it improved education and infrastructure in the country.

His regime was not a sectarian one, in the sense that it did not set out deliberately as a matter of policy to grant privileges to the Alawite minority at the expense of the Sunni majority. But patronage jobs in the public service have always been a way of building a power base in Syrian politics.

When Hafez al Assad died in 2000, he was succeeded by his son, Bashir.

The rebellion against the regime was sparked by a minor enough incident in March 2011, when some children were arrested and detained for writing anti regime graffiti on a  wall in a town near the Jordanian border.

The conflict with Israel contributed, from its beginning in the late 1940’s, to the militarisation of the Syrian regime.

This book does not provide any solutions to the current civil war, but it may help in the avoidance of mistakes. It gives a good sense of the deep complexity of Syrian politics and society.

HOW DIFFICULT WILL IT BE TO KEEP THE UK IN THE EU?

Prime Minister David Cameron’s letter, to   European Council President Donald Tusk , about  the renegotiation of the  terms of UK membership of the EU, shows that he has invested time in trying to understand the perspective of other EU states. This is good.

That said, the timing of this renegotiation is bad, because the EU has so many other politically difficult problems on its plate just now, problems from which the UK has excluded itself, namely

+ the refugee crisis and the threat  it poses to free movement within the Schengen zone and 

+ the fact that a number of EU states are at risk of breaching the terms of the fiscal compact on debt reduction and fiscal deficits.

A supportive attitude by the UK on the resolution of these EU wide problems would  help create the impression that the UK is, potentially at least, in the EU for the long haul, which would make it worthwhile for other members to go all the way to their bottom lines in attempting to meet the UK’s requests.

It is welcome that David Cameron’s letter says that he is open to “different ways of achieving the result” he sets out in his letter.

It is also welcome that he seeks to put his proposals in a context of “reforms that would benefit the European Union as a whole”.

He further says that it “matters to all of us that the Eurozone succeeds”.

Although David Cameron has expressed similar sentiments himself before, these sentiments have not been prominent in much of the general UK debate on the EU, which has often tended to treat the EU as something alien, and a matter of indifference to the UK, which objectively it is not. Occasionally in the UK debate, “schadenfreude” has trumped UK interests.

David Cameron’s approach is shaped by the contents of the Conservative Party Manifesto. It is a response to an expression of identity politics, which is a form of politics on which compromise is inherently very difficult indeed, as we know from Irish history.

David Cameron’s letter deals with four sets of issue, and I will deal with each in turn.

ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE

On Economic Governance of the EU, David Cameron  says that

+ the integrity of the Single Market for non Eurozone countries must be protected,

+  that non Eurozone countries must not be liable for operations to support the Euro as a currency, 

+ that the financial supervision of banks must remain a matter exclusively for national institutions in the non Eurozone countries and that

+  any issues that affect all member states must be decided by all member states.

I am not sure that these issues can be as neatly separated, as David Cameron suggests. 

For example, the bailout of Greece by the EU and the IMF was not just an operation in “support of the euro as a currency”. 

If Greece had gone under, UK banks would have been hit hard.

Furthermore it is arguable that, even if it is not in the euro, the UK had a greater obligation to help a fellow EU member, in the situation Greece was in, than had (say) the United States.  

After all, the UK, even if not in the euro,  as a member of the EU, had agreed to treat economic policy as a “matter of common concern” with all other EU states, including Greece, under Article 121 of the EU Treaty. 

Furthermore, the UK has had power to join fellow members in warning member states like Greece if they were deviating from agreed economic policies under Articles 121 (4), and under Article 126 . Non EU states were not in that position.

In light of those articles, it is hard to see that the UK, as an EU non euro member, could say it has no more responsibility for helping Greece, than has a country that is not in the EU at all.

If the UK wants that to be the position, its role in EU economic governance under article 120, 121 and subsequent articles of the Treaty should be changed. 

David Cameron also asks in his letter that the EU “do more to fulfil its commitment to the free flow of capital”, presumably across the whole of the EU and not just within the Eurozone.  

That sits uncomfortably beside his insistence that the Bank of England alone be involved in supervising UK banks lending across borders into the rest of the EU, including the Eurozone. 

As we in Ireland know, unsupervised flows of capital can contribute to bubbles in another country, and if those bubbles were to burst, none of the countries involved would escape the pain, including the countries whose banks had been lending the money, even if those countries were not members of the Eurozone.

His principle that “any issues that affect all member states must be decided by all member states” is very widely drawn.  Few EU decisions affect all members in precisely the same way.

This principle could be interpreted to mean that the UK should have a vote on all Eurozone decisions. Virtually all Euro zone decisions will affect the UK to some limited and indirect extent , not least because the UK does so much business with the Eurozone. This is so even though David Cameron insists the UK will not be financially liable for any of those decisions. 

In a sense, his request could amount to the Boston Tea Party demand in reverse, namely as  a demand for “representation without taxation”.

COMPETITIVENESS

David Cameron makes an interesting proposal under the heading of Competitiveness. It is potentially a big opportunity for Europe. I hope it will be strengthened and emphasised in the negotiations.

His proposal  is that the EU should “bring together all the different  proposals , promises and agreements on the Single Market,  on trade and on cutting regulation, into a clear long term commitment to boost the competitiveness of the EU, and drive jobs and growth for all”.

This idea of a big competitiveness package, as a price for continuing UK membership of the EU, could be used to drive through changes that have been stalled for years by inertia in individual member states.  In Germany, for example, the implementation of Single Market rules is often blocked at the level of the Lander. France is another country that could do more to open its market to EU competition, to the advantage of French consumers. 

If the British are to get a credible package on competitiveness, it may be necessary to demand prior enactment package of measures at national level, in all member states, in the same way as the Greeks had to pass certain laws, before they could get access to bailout funds.

There is, however, one aspect of David Cameron’s letter which could potentially run directly counter to his desire to complete the Single Market. 

This is a proposal he makes under the heading of  “Sovereignty”.

SOVEREIGNTY

Under this heading, David Cameron proposes that a group of national parliaments, presumably a minority , should be able to come together to stop what he calls “unwanted” (EU) legislative proposals.

This idea that a minority could block a majority would alter the entire dynamic of EU decision making. It would make it hostage to the vagaries of national electoral politics in a new and unpredictable way.  We should not forget that Lord Cockfield, the UK Commissioner, would never have been able to create the EU Single goods market, without the majority voting created by the Single European Act.

This proposal is actually as likely to be used against UK interests, as in favour of what the UK wants under the heading of Competiveness.

It is easy to envisage such a veto mechanism being used by a sufficient number of national Parliaments of other EU states to block legislative proposals to complete the Single Services Market or the Single Digital Market, both of which David Cameron wants, to protect some national vested interest. 

A  solution might be to exempt all Single Market related legislation from this blocking mechanism. 

Another solution might be to associate all national parliaments with the EU legislative process in a manner similar to the involvement of the Economic and Social Council or the Committee of the Regions, but without creating a new veto point.

David Cameron also wants the UK exempted from the commitment to “ever closer union”. This phrase  has been in all EU Treaties since the UK joined, and was in the EU Treaty when the people of Great Britain and Northern Ireland  voted in a referendum to stay in the EU in 1975. 

Essentially the UK wants to “constitutionalise” the idea that there are two types of EU member, 

   + those committed to “closer union”, and    + those who are not committed to it. 

This is a formal recognition that there is a “two speed” EU. This idea may be welcome by some big states but not by smaller ones. If Britain is exempted from the commitment to ever closer union, it is not hard to imagine that other EU countries will demand a similar exemption.

He says he wants this distinction to be “irreversible”, which implies that a future UK government could not decide to commit itself to ever closer union in future, without getting the permission of all other EU states, by means of  a Treaty change, or the amendment of a protocol(which is the same thing legally speaking).

This runs counter to David Cameron’s own expressed wish for flexibility in the UKs relationship with the EU. 

The notion of legal irreversibility is contrary to the British constitutional tradition itself, which declares that Parliament is not trammelled by external legal constraints.

A legal device can probably be found to accommodate this request but it does raise a wider question of whether the UK will ever be satisfied. 

The UK already has special arrangements on the euro, on passport controls, and on Justice and Home Affairs.  The more exemptions it gets, the more exemptions it seems to want. 

Will this renegotiation /referendum process result in a full and final settlement, or will it just be an instalment?  This is not a mere debating point. If the UK will keep coming back for more, the EU will never settle down. Indeed other member states may not be prepared to go all the way to their bottom line, if they feel whatever they offer could never satisfy UK public opinion.

IMMIGRATION

Immigration is the area in David Cameron’s letter which has attracted the most comment.

There is no doubt that the UK has been more open to immigration in the past than have many other EU states.  This is partly because English is a second language for people from all over the world. The restraint David Cameron is proposing will not change that.

Clearly, if one does not like immigration, the fact that English is a second language for so many of the world’s population has disadvantages, as well as advantages.

On the other hand, the cost of living in London and the south east of England is already a strong deterrent to immigration to that part of the UK.

David Cameron wants, if the UK remains in the EU, to be able to require that people, coming to the UK from other EU states (presumably including from Ireland,) must have lived in the UK for four years, before they qualify for in work benefits or social housing.

If this four year principle is accepted, it could be implemented in all other EU states for other purposes as well.

David Cameron also wants to “end the practice of sending child benefit overseas”, which presumably means that an Irish worker in the UK could no longer get child benefit for his children, if the children are living in Ireland .

The principle of not “sending benefits overseas”, if accepted , could conceivably be applied to pensions, which would affect the UK pensioners living in Spain.

If one has to live four years in another EU country to get benefits, access to health services could also be denied to people living in another EU country.

David Cameron then acknowledges that these issues are “difficult for other member states”.

This is a revealingly narrow way of putting it.

In his speech, David Cameron mentions “other member states” but does NOT mention Article 45 of the EU Treaty, which covers free movement of workers within the EU. 

Article 45 bans

“any discrimination based on nationality as regards employment, remuneration and other conditions of work and employment”. 

There is no reference in this Treaty Article to any qualifying period of residence to be free of such discrimination.

In the UK, tax credit payments are dependent on worker’s hours worked and income, and whether they have children.

So restricting them would amount to discrimination in income, between a UK citizen and  EU immigrant, doing the  same job in the UK.  It would presumably apply to Irish workers in the UK who have been there for less than 4 years. It will be difficult for an Irish Government to consent to this.

I would have expected David Cameron to have directly addressed the interpretation of Article 45 of the EU Treaties, rather than pretending the difficulty is with “other member states”.

By targeting in work benefits so explicitly, David Cameron has left himself very little room for manoeuvre in light of the provisions of that Article.

Indeed there were reports on the BBC this morning that the UK Government is now considering applying the 4 year rule to UK residents as well, which could mean that young, new UK born entrants to the UK labour market may not qualify for in work benefits until they have been working for 4 years. That would create a whole new swathe of people inclined to vote for the UK to leave the EU.

CONCLUSION

This negotiation will not be easy. 

Sides have already been taken in the UK , regardless of what may be conceded in response to David Cameron’s letter. 

The impact on the EU itself, of a possible UK exit, is incalculable.

So also are the effects of the precedent the UK is setting, and the consequences for the EU, of conceding some the UK requests.

Solving this politically generated problem will require statesmanship and imagination of a very high order indeed.  Keeping the UK in the EU is a vital matter for Ireland and for Europe. 

.............................................................................................................................

Speech by John Bruton, former Taoiseach and former EU Ambassador to the United States, at a seminar on “Free Movement and Labour Mobility in the European Union”  organised by the Institute of European Democrats, in NUI Maynooth, at 12.20 pm on Friday 13 November .

.............................................................................................................................

THE LITTLE KNOWN WOMAN WHO RULED CHINA FOR OVER FORTY YEARS

I immensely enjoyed reading “Empress Dowager Cixi” by Jung Chang, published by Vintage Books in 2014.

It tells the story of a well read young girl, named Cixi, from the Manchu aristocracy, who was selected to be one of the concubines of the Chinese Emperor.  In 1861, the Emperor died young, without a male heir by his wife. Cixi ,had, however, borne him an infant  son, and this son  became Emperor

Power was to be exercised on his behalf by Regents.

But, with the surprising connivance of the legitimate wife of the late Emperor,  the  infant Emperor’s mother, Cixi succeeded in dismissing the Regents,  and, along with the old Emperor’s widow, the exercised full power on her sons behalf.  

In 1875, her son, the Emperor, died,  not long after he reached maturity. Cixi  then managed to have another infant, a nephew of hers, named as Emperor.

Cixi thus continued to be the real power in the Chinese Empire, until her death in 1908.

She  opened China up to modern ideas in public administration, transport and education. She wanted to learn from the West, so that China would not be dominated by the West.

But Japan had been modernised twenty years earlier than China, and had developed a far stronger army and navy. Japan wanted to control China, or at least the Chinese market. When it did not get its way, Japan defeated China in a war over Korea in 1894.  As a result , Japan obtained huge reparations, which further weakened China economically and politically..

Other powers then made  demands on China, which, in 1900, provoked a popular, anti foreigner, uprising known as the Boxer rebellion.

Cixi sympathised with the Boxers, and was forced to flee Beijing when her capital  was taken by foreign troops from a number of nations, including Britain, Germany and Japan, who had intervened to suppress the Boxers. 

The foreign troops  could not , however,  fully  control China without the legitimation of a native Chinese government.  Cixi was thus able to return to power in Beijing after the foreign troops had left.

At this stage, having learned the lesson of the failure of the Boxer revolt,  she set out to prepare dramatic reforms of China, including an elected parliament and turning the Empire into a constitutional monarchy. The laws for this were passes, but Cixi  died before these could be brought into effect.

A few years after her death,   the Empire itself was replaced by  a Republic . This Republic survived, but not as a democracy as Cixi had  envisaged, until 1949.

This book is a dramatic story on intrigue, tragedy and extreme ruthlessness. The character of Cixi, and of her advisors and opponents, is drawn out very skilfully.  So also is  self satisfied and inefficient  social structure of mid nineteenth century China, which Cixi did so much to change, long before China became a republic in 1911. 

Cixi’s role has been downplayed  by both the Nationalist and the Communist Chinese  leaders, because both want to claim the full credit for the modernisations she had, in fact, initiated. 

Above all  this book is the story of how an intelligent  a woman was able to exercise immense power, in what appeared, on the surface, to be a completely male dominated society.

It is also the story of the humiliations suffered by the people of an ancient nation at the hands of foreigners, and explains why China today, is so determined to equip itself to resist unwanted external interference.