Society

Friday

9 Jan 2009

The cost of selling the EU

While we’re discussing Rand (here and here) and the dangers of bureaucratisation and centralisation, it’s worth pointing out this astonishing fact from Open Europe’s latest bulletin: “Open Europe has published new research which shows that the EU is spending billions of euros a year on initiatives to promote itself and its central aim of ‘ever closer union’. In 2008 alone, it spent more than 2.4 billion euros, which is more than Coca Cola’s global advertising budget.” The accompanying report can be read here.

Peter Hoskin

Why is Ayn Rand so isolated?

Simple fact is Ayn Rand’s outnumbered. For all the force and topicality of her Atlas Shrugged – Fraser’s recommendation of which I heartily agree with, although I think The Fountainhead is a more effective dose of Rand’s objectivism – the artistic and literary worlds seem to have much more room for works that, on some level, can be used as counterweight to Rand’s philosophy. There’s plenty of literature, cinema and music which almost solely deals in the dangers of enterprise, ambition, industry and the American Dream. Now, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be – after all, no social or political system’s perfect, and critique is always necessary. Besides, much of this

James Forsyth

Brooks: this time next year, Obama will either be a great President or a broken one

David Brooks is, to my mind, the most perceptive American political commentator. He is a conservative who understands both the potential and limitations of Obama. Today, he argues that Obama’s decision to try and do everything through the stimulus is as bold as it is risky. He writes that: “This is daring and impressive stuff. Obama’s team has clearly thought through every piece of this plan. There’s no plank that’s obviously wasteful or that reeks of special-interest pleading. The tax cut is big and bipartisan. Obama is properly worried about runaway deficits, but he’s spending money on things one would want to do anyway. This is not an attempt to

Fraser Nelson

Britain, by Ayn Rand

Even though it’s deemed America’s second most influential book, there are plenty in Britain who haven’t heard of Atlas Shrugged – or Ayn Rand, its Russian-born author who had such a profound impact on American conservatism. Now is a very good time to read it, because – as Stephen Moore argues in the Journal today – the reader would find plenty of chilling analogies for the current economic collapse. It’s a story of an American recession, during which the state starts to nationalise various industries – which in turn collapse under bureaucratic control – and keeps on going until there’s nothing left. The heroes are those with an entrepreneurial spirit:

Peter Hoskin

Business leaders give Brown the thumbs-down

Apologies, after my last post, for the opinion poll one-two punch, but this ComRes effort in today’s Indpendent is well worth pointing out. Only 28 percent of its business leader respondents say that they’re confident in the Prime Minster’s ability to manage the economy – down from 42 percent in October – and only 16 percent are confident in Alistair Darling. The corresponding figures for Dave ‘n’ George are 46 and 29 percent respectively. Off the top of my head, it’s the first time that the Tory pair have had a significant lead on economic credibility for a few months now. And – although the poll was conducted exclusively among

Thursday

8 Jan 2009

Alex Massie

Celtic Tiger De-clawed

Tough times on the Emerald Isle: Dell is closing it’s largest non-US manufacturing plant. This is not good news. Established in Ireland in 1990, Dell employed more than 4,500 staff in Ireland at its height and is the country’s biggest exporter and second largest company. It accounts for approximately 5 per cent of Irish GDP and last year contributed €140m to the south western economy in wages alone. Who’s next? UPDATE: Should have realised this myself, but as Tim Worstall says, these figures seem very fishy. Not the number of jobs, the other ones. 5% of GDP? Hmmm. Anyway, it still ain’t good news and, given how much Ireland has

Alex Massie

The Envy of the World

Further proof that the British economy remains better placed than any other to weather this turbulent, tempest-ridden economic sea: the Bank of England cuts interest rates to 1.5%, the lowest rate in more than 300 years. Obviously that’s a tribute to the government. Meanwhile, the government prepares to print some more money. This too demonstrates the extent to which the government has everything in hand. I don’t think you need to be an economist to sense that this mob – Brown and Darling, that is – are making it up as they go along.

Alex Massie

The Limits of Reaganism

At a recent debate, every single one of the candidates hoping to be the nest chairman of the Republican National Committee named Ronald Reagan as their favourite Republican president. In one sense this is hardly surprising, given the extent to which the Cult of Reagan – or more precisely, the Cult of the Idea of Reagan – has come to define the Republican party; still, Kevin Drum wonders why no-one dare stick their neck out and admit to admiring some other GOP luminary. As Kevin notes, it is striking how many Republican presidents have been expelled from the Conservative canon. Eisenhower, Ford and George HW Bush are viewed with suspicion

Alex Massie

How many types of libertarian can there be?

Many, many, many. If the GOP increasingly suffers from a suffocating orthodoxy, the libertarian movement (if that’s not an oxymoron) is amusingly/alarmingly/pedictably/irrelevently heterodox. As Brian Doherty explains: Joining the former, and previous more or less useful classifications such as anarchist and minarchist, paleo and cosmo, utilitarian and natural rightsers, is the division between “policy libertarians” and “structural libertarians,” explicated by Jacob Lyles over at “Distributed Republic.” Then again, since libertarianism is as much a sensibility as anything else, it’s scarcely surprising it should be such a divided house. UPDATE: Dave Weigel has a characteristically good – and entertaining! – review of “a thrilling and dispiriting year for libertarian politics” under

Peter Hoskin

A 7 point lead for the Tories

And so the first poll of 2009 delivers a 7 point lead for the Tories. Here are the headline numbers from the YouGov poll in the Sun: Conservatives — 41 percent (-1) Labour — 34 percent (-1) Lib Dems — 15 percent (+1) We’ll need a few more polls to get a clearer picture of the New Year standings, but I expect Team Cameron will be pleased with this showing. Taken with the polls before Christmas, it’s further evidence that the Brown bounce is either slowing or over. And with the stormy 2009 that Brown has in store, the Tories will regard this as a base camp from which they

James Forsyth

How Obama is selling the stimulus

Obama gave a big-speech today promoting his stimulus plan. It was short on detail—there’s much Congressional horse-trading to come—but there were two passages that stood out. The first was Obama’s diagnosis of what has caused this economic collapse: “This crisis did not happen solely by some accident of history or normal turn of the business cycle, and we won’t get out of it by simply waiting for a better day to come, or relying on the worn-out dogmas of the past. We arrived at this point due to an era of profound irresponsibility that stretched from corporate boardrooms to the halls of power in Washington, DC. For years, too many

Daniel Korski

How to put the freeze on Russia’s energetic aggression

Rahm Emanual, Obama’s chief of staff, says one should never let a serious crisis go to waste. So now that the Russians are once again blocking the supply of gas to Ukraine – and, by extension, to Europe –Europe should act to protect itself. Russia remains the largest exporter of gas to the EU, with total annual exports of 130 bcm today. But since the early 1980s import growth from other countries has outpaced that from Russia. 80 percent of the growth in European gas imports now comes from Norway, Algeria, Nigeria and the Middle East. The gas markets of the EU’s eastern members are, however, highly dependent on Russia.

James Forsyth

Duncan’s clever line was full time foolish

Tim Montgomerie and Iain Dale have both written posts today objecting to the briefing against Alan Duncan. They are right that it is never edifying to see someone being knifed by their own side, but I can’t help but feel that this is an inevitable consequence of Duncan giving that rather too memorable quote about it being “Better to be part-time wise than full-time ignorant,” after the leadership had been forced to back down over second jobs. Forcing your leader into a climb-down is rarely good for your career in the long-term, but crowing afterwards comes close to direct provocation. Duncan’s plight has not been helped by the fact that

Peter Hoskin

How low can we go?

Fraser’s already raised the most important question hovering over today’s rate cut: that is, what options are left once the rate-cutting route has been exhausted? But there’s another question in the air, touched on by Mike Smithson over at Political Betting: just how low can we go? We’re already at the lowest base rate in the Bank of England’s 315 year history, and bookies are offering odds on rates hitting 0 percent by the end of the year (20/1 according to the Ladbrokes press release that hit my inbox earlier). Politically, I can’t see the downwards trajectory of interest rates doing much to help Gordon Brown. Of course, the cuts

James Forsyth

Field artillery

Frank Field was once famously lifted off his feet by his lapels by Gordon Brown, so enraged was Brown by Field’s criticism of him. Considering this, Field would we well advised to steer clear of the great clunking fist after writing this on his blog: “During no move since has the Government been able to get itself ahead of the curve, and thereby perhaps influence the course of events. The latest example is over VAT. It was a fatuous move from the very beginning. And when we had a chance in Parliament sometime before Christmas to debate it I voted against, making a plea that the billions being borrowed to

James Forsyth

The politics of printing money

I’ll leave the economics of printing more money to those more qualified than I, but the politics of it seems appalling. Mike Smithson is right when he writes at Political Betting that: “…the notion of “printing money” sounds quite horrific – something that simply won’t be understood, surely, by 99% of the electorate and something that the Daily Mails of this world can attach the imagery of what goes on in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.” If the Bank of England does do this, I imagine that economic confidence would plummet. And—as Anthony Wells has shown—when economic confidence falls, Labour’s poll rating is the next thing to go. P.S. By the Wells

James Forsyth

How do you have a debate with nobody talking?

Alistair Darling’s latest comments are among the most baffling he has made during this whole crisis. Here is his response when asked on BBC News about reports that the Bank of England is to start printing money: “We’re looking at a range of measures to support the economy, to support business, to help people, but nobody is talking about printing money. “There’s a debate to be had about what you do to support the economy as interest rates approach zero, as they are in the United States. But for us that is an entirely hypothetical debate,” he said. He added: “We are looking at a range of measures to support

Peter Hoskin

Is Mandelson looking forward with fear or joy to Clarke’s (possible) return?

With speculation mounting that Ken Clarke’s set to replace Alan Duncan in a dual shadow business secretary and shadow Mandelson role, it’s well worth reading Ben Brogan’s blog post on what Mandy makes of it all. By the sounds of it, the Spinmaster General’s already stirring up mischief; letting it be known that he’d welcome Clarke as an adversary. As Brogan writes: “[Mandelson] particularly likes the idea of a fellow pro-European lending weight to the campaign to get Britain (eventually, when the time is right and all conditions have been met bla bla) into the single currency.” The question is what Mandelson intends with all this. Would he really welcome

Peter Hoskin

Bush by numbers

NBC’s Mark Murray has complied a fascinating bunch of “then and now” statistics from over the Bush presidency. Here’s his complete list: UNEMPLOYMENT RATE Then: 4.2% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2001) Now: 6.7% (Bureau of Labor Statistics, November 2008) DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE Then: 10,587 (close of Friday, Jan. 19, 2001) Now: 9,015 (close of Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009) BUSH FAVORABILITY RATING Then: 50% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll) Now: 31% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll) CHENEY FAVORABILITY RATING Then: 49% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll) Now: 21% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll) CONGRESS APPROVAL RATING Then: 48% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll) Now: 21% (12/08 NBC/WSJ poll) SATISFIED WITH THE NATION’S DIRECTION Then: 45% (1/01 NBC/WSJ poll) Now:

Peter Hoskin

An escalation | 8 January 2009

A dangerous escalation of the Middle Eastern conflict this morning, as rockets are fired into northern Israel from Lebanon. As far as I can tell, no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks – although suspicion has to fall on Hezbollah. The fear now is that this represents the opening of another sustained front in the current conflict. And the key question is of how Israel will respond. Any response will partly be a function of scope and ambition. Does the Israeli administration feel it’s already dealt enough damage to Hamas in Gaza? Does it want to spend more time to effectively wipe out Hamas? Or does it want