We (Britain) must choose between Europe and America

The contrast could not be greater. Today's 40th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty between France and Germany has provided a remarkable springboard for the reassertion of Franco-German leadership in the European Union. Tony Blair, on the other hand, appears to have been shuffled sideways, at risk of becoming a spectator as others set the pace in EU affairs.

This is a striking reversal of fortunes. Only a few months ago British diplomats could barely conceal their delight that Paris and Berlin seemed to have lost their capacity to act in concert. Mr Blair, we were told, was filling the breach, pioneering the debate on the future of Europe. Britain's turn at the helm of the EU was nigh.

The decline in British fortunes has been abrupt, its fall from grace palpable everywhere. President Jacques Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder reached a deal on agricultural spending without even deigning to consult Mr Blair. Last month's agreement, governing Turkey's accession to the EU following a Franco-German proposal, pointedly shunned the timetable pushed by Washington and London.

Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, regards London's attachment to the primacy of the nation state in EU decision-making as the greatest threat to his organisation. The EU's smaller member states have also taken fright, regarding many of London's ideas on institutional reform as little more than an attempt by a "directoire" of larger countries to dominate the EU.

There are many reasons for the sudden change in the UK's standing in the EU. Some are self-inflicted. British ministers have a grating habit of overstating their case in EU debates. Gordon Brown is famous for lecturing his counterparts into submission. There has been too much baseless hype that the Convention on the Future of Europe, chaired by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, is "going Britain's way".

Other reasons are beyond the British Government's control. In particular, the ruthless brilliance with which M. Chirac has moved to capitalise on the German government's weakness to reoccupy the EU's centre stage could not have been foreseen. Last week's Franco-German proposal for a dual presidency of the EU, one representing national governments and the other the European Commission, was only the latest in a succession of proposals shaped by M. Chirac's determination to set the EU agenda.

But there are two more profound reasons for the plunge in Britain's status within the EU that should give Tony Blair real cause for concern. First, there is the euro. Last month, the Portuguese Prime Minister, Jose Durao Barroso, voiced in public what EU heads of government have long whispered in private – why should the UK be granted a leadership role as long as it is unwilling to sign up to one of the central tenets of EU membership? As long as EU leaders believed Tony Blair was merely biding his time before putting the issue to a referendum, there was sufficient goodwill to forgive Britain's procrastination. But, as the Continent looks on with perplexity at the gridlock between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, fears have deepened that Mr Blair has missed his chance.

And then, most important of all, there is Britain's special relationship with the United States. It is difficult to capture the conflicting reactions which Blair's ostentatious loyalty to George Bush's foreign policy elicits within the rest of the EU.

Admiration, to some extent, that there is a European leader trying to exercise a restraining influence on the US administration's apparent unilateral instincts. Envy, too, at the effortlessness with which the London and Washington establishments communicate with each other. But, above all, a deep suspicion that the gusto with which Mr Blair has aligned himself with Mr Bush demonstrates that the UK's reflex is to choose America over Europe. De Gaulle, it is muttered, was right. British Atlanticism will always stand in the way of a true commitment to Europe.

This poses a fundamental, possibly intractable, challenge to Mr Blair. It is an article of faith to him, as it has been to every British Prime Minister since the last war, that the UK should not have to choose between its affinity with the US and its place in Europe. It is the founding principle upon which British foreign policy has been based for over a generation. But as the EU embarks upon its most dramatic transformation ever – an extensive enlargement accompanied by a recasting of its constitutional arrangements – the British may finally have to choose. EU membership now requires a degree of political commitment which makes it impossible to remain half-in, half-out.

Mr Blair may still harbour ambitions to realign Britain's role within the EU for good. But his own actions, and events, are pushing him in the opposite direction. Ambivalence on the euro, a stubborn allegiance to Washington, and a resurgent Franco-German duo are proving incompatible with Blair's European aspirations. He will need to make painful sacrifices and take greater risks if he truly wishes to anchor the UK at the heart of the EU. He cannot afford to dither much longer. It is time to decide.

Great article. Sounds like the plan is well underway!

Meantime, here's another gem from today's Times:

Britain, spiritual home to this creed of hate
Libby Purves – Times of London, 1/21/03

These are filthy people. Animals! They and their wives and children are scum of the earth, lower than cattle. We must crush them without mercy, until decent people like us can live in peace in the way which our God dictates, which is the only right way to live. Anyone who disagrees is filth.
Phew. I could have been in trouble for writing that. I could have been rounded up by an assiduous police force for “hate crime”. Fortunately I was not speaking for myself but quoting from a couple of random articles in Al-Jihaad, the online journal of the Supporters of Sharia (led by Abu Hamza, British citizen by marriage, who is proving so difficult to dislodge from the Finsbury Park Mosque). Its readers have little patience with the host community: “These animals who, some of them, claim Allah is three; Father, Son and Holy Ghost. They are filthy scum of the earth and Allah says about these kuffar, they are beneath the level of the cattle. So now it is time to make your decision ... make hijrah or stay amongst these filthy people with your families, wives, and children and become like them? Fight or run and hide? Love Allah and his Mujahidin or prefer the dajjal and the kuffar? (Antichrist and unbelievers).”

If you do fight and die, then Al-Jihaad says it will be OK, because the souls of martyrs are forgiven every sin, and go into green birds dwelling in Paradise, having felt no pain beyond “a pinch” while dying, and acquired the right to save 70 family members from judgment. Imagine the uproar if the St James’s parish newsletter in Crimplene-on-the-Wold chirpily suggested that the quickest route to redemption was to bomb, knife or poison some random Muslims for denying the Trinity. Or imagine the row if a UK newspaper were to say that Muslims were culturally paedophile. Yet here goes al-Jihaad: “We see what the West is all about with the recent exposure of their ‘Wonderland Club’. These kuffar who have sex with little babies as young as 3 months old are only following the footsteps of their pagan ancestors who worshipped the Moon, the Stars, man-made idols and other things ... What about our women when they must travel to get groceries and they see half-dressed men? Are we not angry and worried about this? Do we not care?”

Enough. These malevolent fanatics are a small minority; there are 800 mosques in Britain and only a couple are hotbeds of extremism. Al-Jihaad itself is pretty annoyed at “those who give speeches about Islam with designer thobes (prayer gowns) and say nothing ... Maybe it is because they themselves live very comfortable”. That gives the game away: the appeal of this spitting venom has little to do with the grave spirituality of Islam, and everything to do with envy, dispossession, revenge for real or imagined ills and the sort of fractured temperament that gave us Reid the “shoe bomber”, a Hamza trainee.

The other two million British Muslims are appalled and afraid of this stuff. It must make their daily lives and community relationships damnably hard. When Hamza crowed over the twin towers attack, Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council, said sadly: “For a long time we have felt that we must keep our heads down and let these people bring trouble on themselves. But if we don’t speak out they will do enormous damage to our community.” Dr Zaki Badawi said: “In normal times (these people) are just harmless lunatics but in times like these they are extremely dangerous.”.

Even without ricin, they certainly are. The Prime Minister, in his glum new year message, described 2003 as a “uniquely difficult and dangerous year” of big decisions. Yet the only one he appears to focus on is whether or not to join President Bush’s war, and whether the UN mandate matters. That is, admittedly, a very big decision indeed: but on the domestic front there is a defence issue even more pressing. It has been underlined by the poison plot and the death of DC Stephen Oake, but it was brewing long before that: we have been warned about it often enough by American, French, German and Indian security agencies, not to mention our own sane Muslim majority.

It is this. The link between asylum procedures, slapdash border controls and terrorist cells can no longer be hidden in a fog of timid, politically correct waffle. Even those who support moderate immigration, enjoy cultural diversity and abhor racism are losing patience. It is more than 18 months since a New York courtroom trying suspects for the African bombings heard that addresses in London and Manchester were cornerstones of what confiscated manuals called “the Holy War against Tyrants”. British tolerance of insult and reluctance to throw out terrorist suspects have made us a favourite haven for global mischief. Militant groups from Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Egypt and Turkey all fundraise in Britain; some of these countries have for years begged us to cut off this source of money, raised among romantic sympathisers and laundered through London banks. After September 11, Abu Hamza complacently said: “Many people will be happy, jumping up and down. America is a crazy superpower ... Bin Laden is a good guy.” Yet it has taken until now for him to be forcibly challenged, and then only by the Charity Commission complaining that the mosque is being used for “political purposes”. Well, surprise, surprise: have they only just noticed the prayers beginning “May Allah curse the United States and raise up the Mujahidin within her belly.”?

Only a tiny minority of asylum-seekers are involved with this toxic nonsense; only a minute sliver of our immigrant population has sympathy with it. Yet our spineless response to diatribes of hate, our pussyfooting round anybody who might call us racist, has enabled that extremism to put on airs of importance, and grow ever more attractive to the disaffected young. It has turned Britain into the headquarters for half-baked Holy Warriors.

The situation is aggravated by the other great problem: the disastrous incompetence of succeeding administrations in applying the existing asylum laws. Previously liberal citizens are now saying asylum law must be changed — that our blanket commitment to the world is out of date in an age of easy travel, and that we need an enforceable, home-designed law on our side rather than leaving ourselves open to ever more cunning legal challenges, nodded through by UK and European judges who bear no responsibility for sorting out the ensuing chaos. When Taleban soldiers can claim asylum here because they lost (against us) and when mass detention of immigrants without papers is now backed by a leading Liberal Democrat, Simon Hughes, it is evident that public opinion is moving faster than government.

But there is no point in new laws if we can’t put muscle behind the ones we have. We are currently so hopeless that we manage to expel only one in five of those to whom we refuse asylum, on whatever grounds. Thus, about 40,000 people a year are solemnly and time-consumingly judged by our creaking system to have no excuse to be here, yet they stay and disappear into what is ipso facto likely to become a criminal sub-world. Meanwhile, others — victims of torture, rape, and terror with every entitlement to shelter — are kept in limbo and poverty for months and years. Apparently we can no more set up a brisk, firm system for asylum than for immigration: our official attitude remains a dislikeable blend of the resentful and the supine. The latest Home Office wheeze — to buy up dreary, insecure, randomly placed country house hotels and then backtrack a few hours later when Sittingbourne gets annoyed — is enough to make you cry.

There are things which could be done now, and which would receive an unprecedently fair wind of opinion. We could briefly withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and frame a law to suit ourselves, based perhaps on the UN Refugee Convention (which gives a narrower and more realistic definition of persecution in the homeland than our judges have created). Then we could rejoin the Convention with reservations, as other countries have done. We could press sharply for the EU institutions to do something useful for a change and set up an agency to process all refugee applicants, insisting on fairness between countries. We could detain anybody arriving without papers until we know who they are.

And we could take as hard a line with Muslim hate-mongers as we do with white supremacists. That would be a good start.

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EU leaders are deeply suspicious of the gusto with which Mr Blair has aligned himself with George Bush