Up the republic

What would a good British political party do?

Of course patriotism of this kind is not in the least aggressive. It asks only to be let alone. It becomes militant only to protect what it loves. In any mind which has a pennyworth of imagination it produces a good attitude towards foreigners. How can I love my home without coming to realise that other men, no less rightly, love theirs? Once you have realised that the Frenchmen life cafe complet just as we like bacon and eggs - why, good luck to them and let them have it. The last thing we want is to make everywhere else just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were different.

CS Lewis.

If Euroland wants to avoid a bleak new year, they need to take some more action to see off future crises. They need a banks strategy and a growth strategy.

The European Central Bank needs to stand behind all major banks in the Euro area and provide as much liquidity as they need. During the restructuring period it would not be helpful to seek premature repayment of the special facilities made available. Money supply is very restricted in the Euro area. The Bank needs to help rebuild confidence so it starts to expand a bit more.

Working towards a solution for the banking crisis needs to go hand in hand with curbing state deficits. The Regulators have made the banks hold large quantities of government debt as their prime assets, claiming this is “risk free”. The Bank of England and other Central Banks have made commercial banks buy more government bonds to hold as extra liquidity, getting them to pay high prices by historical standards, and setting them up for major losses should bond rates rise. At a time when Germany can still borrow for ten years at 3.1% Greece has to pay 11.9%, Ireland 8.5%, Portugal 6.4% and Spain 5.5%. If other countries join the danger list, or if there is further deterioration in these countries credit rating, it will simply weaken European banks more.

John Redwood.

And John Redwood is one of the good guys! Inasmuch as you can describe someone who presumably attends meetings of today's Parliamentary Conservative Party without laying about himself with machete, grenades and .45 can be described as a "good guy."

He has (mostly) consistently and very persistently argued for small, effective government and international co-operation over global government (pace his warmist leanings.) He's amongst the best of Tory "Eurosceptics" and proponents of limited government.

There's more, of course, in the post concerning passive and friendly, small-state advice about deregulation and more liberal tax regimes that require no collective international coercion of the sort the EU and UN exist to impose.

But this is about the best that a small state, modest conservative in the Tory Party can say about how our neighbours might be lifted from the mire.

True, as a good conservative, he's facing up to the world as actually it is – in this case reigned over by an intrusive, dirigiste EU and its financial institutions and its currency the Idiotmark – and so it's not a fair criticism to ask why he isn't talking about leaving the Euro and The Project altogether ...except that it is a fair question.

What suits Greece now or what will suit Ireland in the next two years may not (probably do not) suit those who want to perpetuate the common currency and the EU's seemingly unlimited political ambitions indefinitely.

And yet, once more we British are being told that it's okay to stick it to the Paddies again, no matter what their plight may be and how much grimmer the futures they can now expect, because...well, because an Empire tells us to.

So our notions of freedom and neighbourliness are suppressed down so low that that they have no influence at all in the corridors of power.
Yet.

Here's Daniel Hannan.

This isn’t about rescuing Ireland; it’s about rescuing the euro. On any objective interpretation, Ireland has been ruined by the single currency....

The EU then forced Dublin into a bail-out which, while calamitous for Ireland, was thought to be necessary to save the European banking system...

Why the hell is Britain getting involved in this blackmail? The official line is that Ireland is a friend in need. But we don’t help an over-mortgaged country by pressing yet more high-interest loans on it. Far from helping a friend, we are conniving at an ugly shakedown, in which Irish taxpayers are being made to carry the cost of propping up European banks.

And we, the Eurosceptics, the Little Englanders; are the racist, imperialist ones who want to rule coercively and cruelly for our own selfish economic sakes?

What would a good British political party do?

As honest and friendly neighbours a good British political party in power might do more than the County Council formerly known as her Majesty's Government has so recently done to Ireland on behalf of an empire.

It might urge the Irish to seek separation, home rule and rebellion from Empire, as well as wanting those self-same things for us.

It would need to hold power in the UK: not only in Europe's talking shops and Inquisition-like bureaucracies to make such advice stick and to help a free Ireland in practical ways.

It would think of its neighbours and try to treat them as CS Lewis respected his French neighbours and it would insist upon the same courtesy in return.

We need a good British political party for (and dedicated to) power on the home front if we can ever hope to be a good neighbour abroad.

It's not ready yet.