EU vs US
Sir: Irwin Stelzer can’t have it both ways (‘Now we know: Brown is a European, not an Atlanticist’, 11 August). If Gordon Brown is going to have to give up his independent foreign policy when the EU reform treaty comes into force, so too will Nicolas Sarkozy. So neither a British nor a French special relationship with the US will count for much. The truth of course is that neither proud nation will give up its independent foreign policy.
What the reform treaty does ensure, however, is that there will in future be a more coherent EU foreign policy, which will remove some of the exasperation that some of the EU’s partners feel about present arrangements. And with Brown, Sarkozy and Merkel at the helm of their respective nations, getting on well together and with the US, there is the best chance for ages of a genuinely strong transatlantic relationship, which we all badly need to confront today’s global challenges.
Lord Jay of Ewelme
Vice-Chair, Business for New Europe, London EC2
Sir: Irwin Stelzer needs to understand that many of us in the UK would support a Prime Minister who recognises that our interests are more likely to coincide with those of our European neighbours (if we had listened to them, we would not be in the Iraq quagmire) than with the US. He cites Gordon Brown’s decision, taken arbitrarily and without parliamentary discussion, to allow the US to base its new missile system in North Yorkshire as an example of a position that might be inconsistent with EU policy under the new constitutional treaty. In that case, the sooner the treaty is ratified the better.
David Woodhead
Leatherhead, Surrey
Buy the poppy crop
Sir: In his article of over 1,000 words on Afghanistan, David Miliband devotes 12 words to the opium trade (‘Why we are in Afghanistan for the long haul’, 11 August). Afghanistan is by far the planet’s largest supplier of heroin; of that, 40 per cent comes from Helmand, where Britain is in charge. There, the largest poppy crop ever is about to be harvested. Millions of people around the world are affected in various ways by this drug — murdered, addicted, or threatened by the crime surrounding the vast international heroin business. Afghan warlords, whom we are reluctant to alienate, control much of this heroin. In the late 1960s, during the Indochinese war, I saw the same predicament in Laos; its substantial heroin production, most of it destined for American soldiers in Vietnam, was overseen by a client of the United States, ‘General’ Vang Pao, later flown into exile in Montana. Then as now a solution would have been to buy up the poppy crop — cheap, compared to the horrendous cost of the heroin when it reaches us.
Jonathan Mirsky
London W11
Carbon updating
Sir: From an environmental economist’s perspective, Ross Clark’s criticism of carbon trading (‘The West is running a protectionist racket’, 11 August) is less an argument against carbon trading than against the poorly designed initial allocation of carbon allowances in trading schemes. If, in a future global carbon market, ‘shrinking industrial operations’ in Europe could make windfall profits by selling large quantities of allowances to firms in China, that might indeed be a sign that allocation had not been as well designed or impartial.
But business leaders and economists alike are agreed that creating a long-term, geographically widespread price for carbon is the single most important intervention which governments can make in tackling climate change. To achieve this through conjoined carbon trading schemes is far more politically realistic than harmonising our tax regimes. For this reason, it is vital that the reputation of carbon trading is not further tarnished by a second botched allowance allocation in the European scheme.
Helen Johns
London W1
Pugin’s other biographer
Sir: James Joll writes in his review of God’s Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain (Books, 11 August) that Pugin has ‘hitherto lacked a considered full-length biography’. I am surprised that he makes no reference to Michael Trappes-Lomax’s Pugin: a Mediaeval Victorian — a 1932 work that was written with the ‘active co-operation’ of Pugin’s grandson, Sebastian Pugin Powell.
Michael Trappes-Lomax told Anthony Symondson that he could not find a book about Pugin, apart from Ferrey’s 1861 biography, so he decided to write one himself. His interest had been inspired by a Jesuit teacher at Stonyhurst, Father Philip Watts, a great-grandson of Pugin.
John Christopher Lynch
Tokyo, Japan
Don’t credit Brown
Sir: In extolling Gordon Brown’s virtues, Fraser Nelson repeats the myth that creating an independent Bank of England was done at Brown’s initiative (Politics, 4 August). In fact, as part of Blair’s preparation to join the euro in 1997 he had to install one of the pre-con-ditions of the Maastricht Treaty Article 109e(5). This says that during the second stage of EMU, ‘Each member state shall as appropriate start the process leading to the independence of its central bank.’ Like so many EU-driven strategies this was done clandestinely, like the more than 2,000 EU directives which become law annually.
Brian J. Singleton
Baslow, Derbyshire
All’s fair in Gaza?
Sir: It was interesting to read Francesca Unsworth’s boast in her letter about Melanie Phillips’s article on Alan Johnston, that the BBC ‘is reporting from the region fairly and impartially’. If that is the case, why won’t the BBC release the Balen report which was commissioned specifically to consider whether that was true?
Hyam Lehrer
London NW11
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