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EDITORIAL TWITCHY EUROPE Michael Stenton Europe is as twitchy as a teenager. There is a general dissatisfaction
with the traditional parties, their lack of ideas and aspiration and their
glutinous rhetoric, and the media is more distinctly US-unfriendly than for
many years. Is this a sign of change to come? Since it is hard to foresee a
change in the Balkans without a change in the European context, it is worth
noticing that the question has at least arisen.
For several years we’ve had left-wing regimes with right-wing credentials. Now we have mavericks looking across the spectrum for support. In France M Le Pen did not really collect. He picked up enough left wing votes to top up his natural support and push his candidacy into the second round of the Presidential election, but he then failed to make any progress. Le Pen did make some appeal across the spectrum, but he is the sort of anti-immigration figure that liberals need. They can vote against him not just with a clear conscience but with pleasure and so suppress their doubts about immigration. Many of his voters were extremely reluctant to confess what they had done in the polling booth, and what they feared was the burden of shame imposed on those who object to others because of skin color. This burden is expressed as argument in the strained but effective claim that there really could be no other motive. Though Le Pen can say what others dare not say, he also drags down the cause which he props up. Recent opinion polls make it clear that both stubborn opposition to immigration and popular contempt for the political system were much more widespread in France than support for than Le Pen himself. But Le Pen seemed to pull an even odder character into the
headlines. Fortuyn was a left-wing maverick - post-Left, as in post-modern,
might be truer - bidding for votes across the spectrum. His success, although a
local success in the Netherlands, had just broken the indifference barrier and
become headline European news a week or so before his assassination and the
registration of his success in the Dutch national elections which followed his
death. Fortuyn invented his own party. He was potentially a much more
formidable political model than Le Pen. Le Pen was feared and detested by
immigrants: Fortuyn could appeal to immigrants who agreed with him that Holland
should take no more of them. If I were employed to paint helicopters black on behalf of the
Trilateral Commission, my advice would have been that the assassination of
Fortuyn made sense. Fortuyn’s death was not, we must suppose, the work of a
globalist authority content to meet Le Pen head to head but alarmed by a new
trend in the Netherlands, the heartland of modern moderation. (And if you do
not suppose so, you really did not read it here first!) But the times are
strained and abnormal things are likely to happen even here in Western Europe.
In England the Islamophobic British National Party won three seats in local
elections in Burnley, a decayed former mill town in Lancashire. The BNP-types
are cleverer than the right-wing extremists of the past. Today they concentrate
their attack on Islam rather than on black faces and have just proven that they
can fight an election campaign. So, once again, the case for being vigilant
about Islam is made ‘incorrect’ by its worst, noisiest supporters. The two main british parties are now on guard against
Islamophobia. I would hardly bother to mention Burnley, if it did not appear to
fit into a European trend. That the citizens of Hamburg feel the same way as
the electors in East Lancashire has been clear for some time. What has
surprised everyone is that the Germany’s FDP - the Free emocrats - a drab
centre party that the German electoral system keeps live despite the best
intentions of the voters - have suddenly ediscovered ‘das Volk’ and the deputy
leader has made non-hostile, amost favourable comments about the French support
for Le Pen and the Austrian support for Haider. There is a trend out there. Rebellions against the political establishments are no easier in
Europe than they are in America. But the establishments are uneasy. The
European project is going through another wobbly phase. If the Irish reject the
Nice Treaty a second time, the entire treaty will have to be dropped or applied
by fraud. The Germans still regret the
passing of their currency. The Poles are being forced to humliate themselves
and take a vow of poverty as the price of being allowed into the EU. The former
Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, used to call Polish membership of the EU ‘an existential
requirement’, which sounded more digestive than philosophical. Today, it is
quite possible that Germany would be highly relieved if the Poles decided,
after all, that they were not ready for the EU. But it is more likely that
Berlin knows that Warsaw will simply ignore the fine print, seize menbership as
an act of faith, and then demand better treatment once membership is theirs.
What Berlin may hope is that by being inflexible with the Poles they somehow
prevent the same approach being taken by other applicant states. The Poles must
suffer to keep out the others. The point is not that Germany is weak, it is that reality is
catching up with conventional ambitions and cheap rhetoric and payment time is
unpleasant. As in France and Britain, Germans can sense that their politicians
are third-rate, monotonous and far less useful than they should be. The war
against terrorism grips few imaginations. The sense of the enemy is out there
has faded rapidly. What happened to the World Trade Center provided a political
opportunity that has now evaporated.
9/ll is now taken to have been just a very bad case of terrorism. And
the right response? If America had found a country to blame, Europe might have
sustained an interest, but there is now a mulish refusal to accept an American
lead and cynicism about her motives. Prime Minister Blair is now rather
isolated on this. The mood - in London as much as Berlin - is not exactly anti-American but it is distinctly Washington-averse. The Bush administration seems to have had no plan but to get the NATO allies involved in a war which is not 9/11 related. The British press is believes that nothing is happening in Afghanistan because there are are enough British troops out there who say so. Why should the British, French and German forces march on Baghdad? Is it because something must be seen to be done somewhere, because Osama bin-Laden is hiding in Pakistan and the US dare not complain? A common view is the America should fight her own battles without demanding a protective escort of allies after sign of difficulty. The suspicion - confirmed by the Royal Marines in Afghanistan - is that there is no war to fight. The genuinely pro-American feeling which followed 9/11 has receded swiftly and has been replaced by puzzlement about Washington’s leadership. A trade war against America, or a major transatlantic dispute about Israel or the environment or the ICC, seems almost as likely as joint military action against a rogue state. Popular sympathy for New Yorkers will remain vivid for years, but it may count for as little in securing international support for Washington as the memory of IRA bombs in London secures support for British policies in Ulster.
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