Backbench rebellion - another headache for Cameron.

Awkward George is often how its peers on the continent refer to Britain. For centuries, Britain did not interfere with the administrations or the wars taking place on the continent. Britain was a seafaring nation and although it dabbled in several continental wars, most notably against the French, it preferred to look further afield with its international policy. It was not until the Battle of Blenheim in 1704 (part of the War of Spanish Succession) where the Duke of Marlborough, Randolph Churchill (relation to Sir Winston), helped defeat Louis XIV and the French forces, that Britain became a force to be reckoned with on mainland Europe. Fast forward three centuries of warfare at Waterloo, the Crimea, Flanders and World Wars One and Two, Britain still appears to be uncertain of its relationship with Europe. For Prime Minister David Cameron, it will continue to give him and the Conservative Party a headache.

Last night, MPs voted on a motion (that had no legal binding) on whether there should be referenda to decide whether Britain should remain in the EU. For many, during a time when the 17 countries that are within the Eurozone and debating the currency’s future, it was an opportunity for Britain to redress the power balance and restore powers back to Westminster. They see the EU as an undignified institution, full of overpaid bureaucrats based in Brussels and Strasbourg, who lack any accountability, squandering taxpayers’ money and dictating laws to European Parliaments that supersede the national sovereignty. Many Eurosceptics believe that EU legislation and red tape is placing barriers on UK businesses and stifling growth, something that could send the UK back into another recession. Last night’s vote saw 81 Conservative MPs back the motion, and despite the vote being unanimously put down, it could certainly be the beginning of trouble.

For backbench Conservatives, many who voted for and against the motion were displeased by the apparent aggressive nature used by the party whips. The vote was not binding and yet the Government sought to kill the bill as soon as possible. In doing so, it managed to generate more press coverage and appeared to reopen old wounds within the party that destroyed it from within back in 1993 up until 1997. The issue for Conservatives was highlighted by many of the speeches they gave to the House during the debate, some said they have promised to their constituents and associations that a referendum was something they believed in and to back down would appear to renege on their promises. The other points highlighted the fact that it has been over 35 years since Britain’s previous referenda on EU withdrawal, and within that time far from the economic market that the EU was, it has become a giant political project. Finally, if the debate wasn’t raised now, then when would be a good time to address these questions.

These displeased members are part of the first Coalition government in 70 years and for them climbing their way up the Ministerial ladder will be much more difficult than in previous administrations. They not only have to contend with Liberal Democrat appointments but with a party that is keen on promoting women into Government, this may be the best way of making their voices heard. In the vote on Maastricht in 1993, 41 MPs rebelled compared to last night’s 81. It took almost six years of the Blair Government to reach that mark and as political scientists pointed out; people enjoy the taste of rebellion and are only more likely to continue.

For David Cameron, the vote became a disruption as a leader and for his reputation in Europe. French President Nicholas Sarkozy apparently told him that he was fed up of Britain trying to meddle with Eurozone politics and many of his own MPs have deemed his leadership as weak. Cameron is part of a generation of politicians that are generally Eurosceptic and many of the comments he put forward to the house highlighted his displeasure with the organisation exactly. Yet, for Britain, one of the big players in European politics, to be outside of any discussions would be stupid. As Chancellor George Osborne and Foreign Secretary William Hague have pointed out, a fiscal union within Europe would make sense, yet with Britain on the outside, it would not take long before France and Germany would take control. Who is not to say this could affect the revenues of the City of London and all the while Britain is powerless to do anything. Britain has an important trading relationship within the EU and is too a big country to simply do what Norway and Switzerland do. For most Europeans the debates raised by Britain and the nation state is something they would associate with 19th and early 20th century politics, not early 21st. Cameron, Osborne and Hague are all aware of this but will be wary of the displeasure it brings among their own party and electorate.

When Britain joined the Common Market in the early seventies, Western Europe contributed almost 50 per cent of global trade and today it stands around 16%. Britain is right to question its relationship within the EU and what economic benefits it provides but we must have a sensible conversation and one that takes in all factors. Most British businesses have highlighted their issues with the EU but still remain reliant on its relationship. As long as the Euro crisis continues and Britain continues to contribute towards bailouts the debate isn’t going to go away.

The 'Right' of Europe

As the party conference season descends on the UK after the Summer Parliamentary recess, much of the focus will be on the three major parties and their policies towards the economy, education and health. One party that will be holding its party conference this week in Eastbourne, will be the United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP as it is ubiquitously known, and its charismatic leader Nigel Farage. Known within the mainstream as a party that rejects UK membership of the European Union, UKIP is often seen as a place for right wing Tories to retreat to when they don’t like the direction of the Conservative Party. Yet, with bailouts within the Eurozone and increasing concerns about immigration, where does the future lie for parties of the right within Europe.

All across the continent, parties with right wing agendas have surged in popularity. Countries like Finland, in the heart of liberal Scandinavia, saw the True Finns party take almost a fifth of the votes in the recent Parliamentary elections, finishing third overall. The True Finns reject the EU bailout of countries like Greece and Portugal and promote Finnish women to stay home and have more children, preferably ‘ethnic Finns’. This was all democratic, whilst across the border in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik a lone gunman killed scores of younger members of Norway’s Labor Party, an institution he felt that had polluted the Norwegian way of life.

Traditionally, we associate right wing politics with racism and anti-Semitism. The massacre at Clifford’s Tower in York, the conquest of Toledo in Spain and latterly the Holocaust. Yet anti-Semitism is becoming less accepted by most European countries, all European countries recognise Israel and have anti-Semitism laws in place. In fact, figureheads of Europe’s right wing movement such as Marie Le Penn of France’s Front National or Geert Wilders, the Netherland’s most outspoken politician both embrace Judaism. Most right wing parties on the continent have turned their scorn towards Islam.

Too much immigration is not necessarily a right wing dictum; you are just as likely to feel resentment of uncontrolled immigration from traditional UK Labour Party members to traditional Tories living in the Shires. The right has always been successful in threading such political wisdom through appropriating the right of the individual and the need for a smaller government. Single issues parties like the British National Party (BNP) have usually failed because their narrow point of view and lack of political organisation, rare successes can be attributed to voters wanting to give the Government of the day a bloody nose, nothing more. UKIP does not pursue a racist agenda, it is libertarian, it believes Britain has the right to control its own borders and sees Europe as a talking shop full of unelected bureaucrats. In the last European elections in 2009, UKIP secured 13 seats, the same as the governing party of the day, Labour, and under an electoral system that is slightly more favourable to them.

When asked about what concerns voters most, Europe is normally an issue that comes way down the list of priority for most of the electorate. Yet, it would be interesting to see what would happen if UKIP perhaps took a sharper line on immigration, like other European parties. The current Conservative Government of the day would have a dilemma of what to do regarding its coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. In 2005, under the leadership of Michael Howard, the Conservatives took a right wing stance on crime, immigration and Europe, forcing Tony Blair to move his election strategy to the same audience, most likely because they did not have the capability of winning. In an age where austerity is king and voters want secure employment and an accountable political and tax system, it would be interesting to hear what Mr Farage has to say and whether he decides to tread on the toes Mr Cameron.

The Euro: A lot on their Plato.

As most of Britain watched Murdoch in the dock at the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, the Euro countries finally agreed to bail out Greece once again with an enormous 96 billion pound loan. Immediately markets across Europe were relieved, particularly across southern Europe where the Spanish and Italian economies were teetering from Greek contagion. However; the French president Nicolas Sarkozy has said that this bailout is purely to deal with Greece’s economy and other Euro countries will not move to assist the other ailing PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain). Yet as Britain strictly stays on the outside and European countries head towards fiscal union, where does the European project stand?

After centuries of war and bloodshed, it is remarkable to find that the European project has been so successful in turning military hostilities into economic partnerships. A continent ravaged by war became one of the world’s most important free markets. It appeared to be the correct decision to take as well. Europe, an economy of ideas and inventions would be an ideal competitor against the US and Japan. The decades after the Second World War saw great European statesman bridging differences and pushing beyond economic matrimony to a full-scale political partnership. This was a generation that had lived or emerged from two wars that had destroyed and killed millions, the plans that were unfolding before them seemed not only possible but the only option.

However, the increasing integration of the European project hit a brick wall, literally, when the Berlin Wall came down. For fifty years, Western Europe was a bulwark against the Communist East and now with democracy sweeping across Eastern boundaries, what was Europe and the EU supposed to stand for? Germany was always central to the project and unsurprisingly leaders were concerned about a reunified superpower in the middle of the continent.

European institutions, whether in Brussels, Luxembourg or Strasbourg have fundamental issues: a weak mandate, they lack transparency and accountability, further bureaucracy and perhaps most importantly to ordinary Europeans, they don’t know what it stands for. Perhaps this was the trouble with the European project; there was an original idea and as things kept on moving along, no one questioned where it was going. Monetary union was purely a facade to continue the project and did not encompass any financial instruments to ensure its success. Politicians and cultural commentators have speculated that a single currency would ultimate fail because the EU had no fiscal powers to monitor and penalise countries. As we have learnt over the past few weeks, there was no mechanism in place to leave the Euro.

The recent financial crises occurred because of a political impasse against the European project. Each country had its own interests to bear against an increasingly frustrated national electorate. It is unsurprising; billions of Euros are being spent on bailouts, particularly Greece, when its economic affairs were in a ruinous state before it joined the currency. Why should billions be spent in on the Greek economy when they should never have been allowed in from the start. This is not a victory to the little Englanders of the right-wing press who claimed it would all end in tears from the start; their grievances were aimed at bendy cucumbers and the inability for town halls to parade the flag of St George. This was a rose-tinted view that economic union would endure culminating in further political union.

So does a two-tier Europe have a chance? That is Euro countries forming a political bloc with countries such as Denmark, Sweden and the UK on the outside. It certainly retains the status-quo, France and Germany dominating the internal politics and directing its future. Tighter regulation of finances would bring control of taxation and other macroeconomic measures in house. That would be a massive repeal of sovereignty. Yet is there a political or cultural demand for such changes? Do European people seem content to move in a closer direction? The rejection of the Lisbon treaty or European constitution would suggest no and after the recent bailouts Northern European countries would demand checklists to ensure tighter controls on the PIGS, not to mention new entrants. Yet for the Euro to survive, as it stands now, this is the safest solution.

And Britain. Although it is not part of the bailout plan, it is yet to hear the last of Europe.

A Greek tragedy via Moscow - Operation Barbarossa

As politicians from around Europe try to work out how to sort out the Greek financial crisis and the potential domino-effect across Southern European nations, the prospects for a generation of young Europeans does not look prosperous in terms of employment or financial stability. One of the main issues that economists and political commentators have pointed out was the fact that the creation of the Euro was built on a premise of political union and advancement, without the framework of a single European economic policy. However, politicians and people from across mainland Europe, despite the uncertainty, have been pursuing such a goal for the past 60 years. The rebuilding of Europe after World War 2 was both cosmetic and political. It provided a framework to pursue peace and a bulwark against Soviet Russia in the East. Even after the Berlin Wall came down twenty years ago, politicians including British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the French President Francois Mitterrand believed a reunited Germany could spell danger for the future of Europe. The whole purpose of European unity was to keep Germany down and central to its future, something it was battling against seventy years ago to this day.

If one battle is to define World War Two then it must be Operation Barbarossa. Launched with five of Hitler’s armies across the Eastern European frontier it set out to destroy Bolshevik Russia and to expand Germany into the distant East. Eventually five million German soldiers would die to fighting, the cruel Russian winter or disappear in to the work camps in the Arctic North. Russia’s gamble saw it lose over 27 million of its population, two thirds of them being civilians. Yet, despite the tremendous human loss, it is defined by historians as a battle won and lost through the eyes of Hitler and Stalin. These men were caustic and murderously driven to victory, yet they saw the battle as a chance to amend the wrongs of history and to place themselves within the annals of military legend.

Hitler’s hate and scorn for communists and the Slavic race is well documented yet during the infamous pact signed by von Ribbentrop and Molotov that sliced up the Poland and Lithuania between Russia and Germany, Stalin believed Hitler would keep his word and refrain from invasion. Yet Operation Barbarossa, named after King Frederick I of the Holy Roman Empire who set out to conquer the Holy Land in the twelfth century was deemed by Hitler to be a befitting name. On 22 June 1941 when Hitler’s tanks and troops crossed the Russian border, Stalin could not believe it. Despite intelligence from Soviet spies within Germany and on the border he chose to ignore it. Stalin was more sceptical of the British, who were relaying the same information, than his German counterparts (Britain had been Russia’s long term rival in the nineteenth century and had intervened against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War). In the first day two thirds of the Russian air force was destroyed.

Hitler’s Blitzkrieg, the lightning war that walked over Western Europe, captured Minsk, Kiev, encircled Leningrad and came within 18 miles of Moscow was flawed from the start and any essence of military history could have told Hitler this. Napoleon’s epic battles against the Russia in 1812 are best captured in Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ where the French are eventually pushed out by a disorganised Russian force. Hitler was obsessed with postcard captures rather than strategic victories. He was blinded by the fog of war and the abstractions of history that had eluded German and Prussians in the past. Like Napoleon, Hitler’s lines were stretched to the limit across a continental front. He ignored the cries from his Generals and believed he knew best. Blitzkrieg had worked but the front line still needed to be supplied.

Stalin too was also blinded by foolishness. His ignorance over intelligence and disastrous attempts to advance was an opportunity to replicate the successes of the 1812 General Kutuzov. At one stage, Stalin believed that his costly decisions would see him ousted, yet the reality as Professor Robert Service points out; he had imprisoned and killed all potential rivals – he was the only one left. He was asked to take the battle to the Nazis

While Hitler continuously gambled, Stalin used history to prevail. Like 1812, he saw this as the ‘Great Patriotic War’. He stayed in Moscow, unlike in 1812 and coordinated the battle from the Politburo in the Kremlin. He allowed generals to make decisions and employed effective propaganda to cede attempts to capture Stalingrad. Leningrad survived the Nazi siege for over 900 days. Armed by the allies, Russia was able to push back the Nazis, war weary and frozen (like Napoleon’s men) to his new prize, Berlin. After years of struggle, this was an opportunity to recapture and to take revenge, through any circumstance necessary.

During those three and half years, Eastern Europe became the blood lands of a violent and ideological war. It was rape, genocide and conflagration on an enormous scale, destroying and poisoning Europe for the following fifty years. Over 2.5 million people died in Stalingrad alone. It is easy to say that times are tough, but Europe has seen much worse.

Serbs you right?

The capture of the former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic is perhaps more significant than many people estimate. Mladic, who was arrested yesterday in northern Serbia, has been arrested on 15 counts of crimes against humanity and is expected to be extradited to The Hague where he will be tried.

It is only three years since the first Serbian President Radovan Karadzic was arrested. Karadzic by all accounts was charming and garrulous, performing to the world’s media and statesmen when Yugoslavia was being savaged by war. Whilst Mladic (or the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’ as he became ordained) was inflicting the misery of war on millions. Small, yet tough, the indignant and ruthless general, was behind the massacre at Srebrenica where over 8,500 Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) were killed in mass graves whilst the UN stood by, this was genocide in Europe sixty years after the Holocaust. He also oversaw the bombardment of Sarajevo. A place that became a poetical term for misery, death and destruction. This was a war that spilt blood on a continent that had been ravaged by so many conflicts earlier in the century. It brought us the inaction and inertia of diplomats and introduced the chilling phrase ‘ethnic cleansing’ into the English language.

After twenty years of hostilities, this may finally end a chapter of toil and unrest in the South Eastern corner of Europe. Since the bombing of Belgrade by NATO and the indictment (but later death) of the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, the region is transforming economically and politically. Many of the new republics that once formed Yugoslavia like Croatia are now attracting tourists and are close to agreeing European Union membership. Many of the world’s best sportsmen and women also come from the region with footballers like Serbia’s Nemanja Vidic and Croatia’s Luka Modric to the tennis players Novak Djokovic and Anna Ivanovic.

Many commentators have speculated that Mladic’s arrest may have been induced through diplomatic circles that would quicken up Serbia’s membership to the European Union. Yet many Serbs feel aggrieved by their national perception of those around Europe. And do they have a right to be? The Yugoslavian break up and subsequent war did not stem from a couple of years of uncertainty. There have been ethnic tensions between Yugoslavs for many centuries, a country composed of Muslims, Catholics and Orthodox. In World War 2 over 1.2 million Yugoslavs were killed, but not by Hitler’s war machine, but mainly through ethnic violence. The Communist dictatorship of Marshal Tito brought decades of stability; but his death only saw those underlying tensions come to a head at the beginning of the 1990s. The all-out war saw all men conscripted and all families suffer, yet the perception is that it was instigated by Serbs. Despite the bloodshed inflicted by the likes of militant criminals like Arkan and Mladic, it is wrong to simply pigeon hole the entire nation of Serbia as the only aggressors, many were murderous and acted with impunity; but like most wars it was subject to history. The Serb victimhood was used by politicians to fuel Serb nationalism. It ultimately inflamed Milosevic to attack Kosovo at the end of the century, bringing NATO and Russia to the verge of war.

History has unfolded in front of us with new nations with strong cultures, and Europe has yet again learnt to move on from its troubled past. The capture of Mladic may finally end an era of aggression and insularity for Serbia and now allow it to evolve politically, economically and socially.