Off Topic Political Debate

The objectives are quite different. Farage wants the EU to cease, I presume Juncker wants the EU to flourish.

Maybe Juncker is secretly a UKIP agent?

 

It will be hilarious when Farage is announced as the US 'special advisor' to the EU.

 

ok, it's in the Mail but quite a balanced article on events by British historian.


For decades an arrogant global ruling class tried to crush the spirit of nationhood, says DOMINIC SANDBROOK. Now, with Brexit and Trump, the world is witnessing the bonfire of the liberal elite
By DOMINIC SANDBROOK FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 01:42, 12 November 2016 | UPDATED: 08:43, 12 November 2016

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President-elect Donald Trump

Even now, four days on, I can't quite believe it. When I turned on the TV, late on Tuesday night, I was reasonably sure that Hillary Clinton was going to become the next President of the United States.

By the time I went to bed, in the small hours of the morning, the map of the United States was splashed with Donald Trump's Republican red.

Historians will be arguing about the reasons for Mr Trump's victory for as long as the United States exists. But I think the greatest clue to his appeal was right there on that hideously undignified baseball cap, which bore the slogan: 'Make America Great Again.'

As it happens, Mr Trump was not the first presidential candidate to have uttered those words. Both Ronald Reagan and, by a remarkable irony, Bill Clinton had used the phrase before.

Neither of Mr Trump's predecessors, though, turned the slogan into such a relentless mantra. Restoring American greatness was not one of several campaign messages; it was his only message. If you doubt it, just look at what he said in his victory speech. 'America,' he said, 'will no longer settle for anything less than the best . . . We're going to dream of things for our country, and beautiful things and successful things once again.'

And in his message to the 'world community', designed to reassure foreign leaders that he would 'deal fairly' with them, Mr Trump added something else. 'We will,' he said, 'always put America first.'

Put America first. Restore lost greatness. Here, boiled down to its essentials, was Mr Trump's manifesto. There is a word for this kind of thing, and it is nationalism.

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In that respect, I think Mr Trump is less remarkable than he likes to think. Far from being unique, he is simply the loudest, the most outrageous and now the most powerful standard-bearer for a wave of nationalism that is utterly transforming the politics of the Western world and the balance of power for a generation to come.

So what lies behind it? At its heart, I think, is a widespread populist backlash against a political class whose liberal assumptions ignored and sometimes openly deplored many of the basic principles — patriotism, belonging, community and security — on which our nation states were built.

Now, it seems, the voters are making plain just how much they've come to feel forgotten and abandoned by the men and women who, for the past three decades, aspired to lead them.

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Putting their country first: Britons celebrated Brexit

Only a few years ago, nationalism seemed to be heading for extinction. The future, we were told, lay with international organisations and economic globalisation. The U.S. was working on ever more intricate free-trade deals with its neighbours, while the EU was heading for ever-closer union.

Yet as the events of the past year have shown, that vision was a fantasy. Britain's vote to leave the EU, a decision partly driven by our historic sense of national exceptionalism, was just the beginning.

In Germany, the far-Right AfD has made sweeping gains, while in France many opinion polls make Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-Right Front Nationale, a clear favourite to win the presidential election next year. Nationalist strongmen already rule Russia, Hungary and Turkey. Nationalist politicians demand independence for Catalonia; an openly nationalist party even governs Scotland.

And from January, the United States, the cornerstone of the international order, will be governed by a man who has insulted his neighbours, questioned the existence of Nato and put America's interests above those of all others.

There is a clue in the fact that his promise to put 'America first' is a slogan borrowed from a rabidly isolationist pressure group which opposed U.S. intervention in World War II.

There can be little doubt, then, that we are living in a profoundly nationalist age. Like some Western equivalent of the Arab Spring, a tide of anti-elitist resentment has shaken the capitals of the world's richest countries.

Yet even ten years ago, the rebirth of nationalism would have seemed almost unthinkable. Nationalism, we were often told, belonged to history.

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Put America first. Restore lost greatness. Here, boiled down to its essentials, was Mr Trump's manifesto


Donald Trump wins 2016 US presidential race


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It was comical, the stuff of flags and parades, the province of strutting dictators and tin-pot Hitlers. But it was also lethally dangerous, the poison that had provoked two world wars and slaughtered millions.

Studying history at school in the late Eighties, I assumed that nationalism was a relic of the past. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, I naively assumed — like most of my generation — that the future lay with globalised liberal capitalism, a 'new world order' presided over by the United States.

In 1992, the year Bill Clinton won the U.S. presidency, an American political scientist called Francis Fukuyama published a best-selling book entitled The End Of History And The Last Man.

His argument was simple. With the end of the Cold War, the world had reached 'the end of history . . . That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government'.

For a generation of liberal politicians and intellectuals, Fukuyama's thesis was immensely appealing. These were people such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, George Osborne and Nick Clegg.

They were clever, cosmopolitan, smooth and slick, the very definition of a metropolitan elite. They lived in expensive houses in capital cities and travelled by private jets to conferences in places like Davos, Switzerland, where they waxed lyrical about the joys of international co-operation, open borders and financial globalisation.

No wonder, then, that they liked the European Union so much. They looked forward to a future in which national contours would wither away, a vision enshrined in the Schengen Agreement, which came into effect in 1995 and dismantled frontiers across much of Europe.

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Historians will be arguing about the reasons for Mr Trump's victory for as long as the United States exists

On the Continent, they scrapped their own currencies, replacing them with the euro. And they opened their borders to millions of newcomers, not just from other EU member states, but from countries all over the world, motivated by their belief that the nation-state was effectively doomed, and that the future would be defined by the relentless pursuit of racial, ethnic, sexual and moral diversity.

As visions go, it could hardly have been grander or more utopian. In essence, it was a dream of a united liberal world, its people mingling in an ever-shifting ethnic and racial kaleidoscope.

You would no longer just be British; you would be European. You would no longer just be an American; you would be an Asian-American, an African-American, an Arab-American.

But as the Brexit referendum and the American presidential election have made overwhelming clear, the liberal vision had — and has — one fatal flaw. People do not like it.

For most people, their national identities remain intensely important. To people across the Western world, their country's flag — so readily mocked by politicians such as Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, who infamously sneered at the sight of the flag of St George flying in Rochester, Kent — is a symbol of pride and a sign of belonging, not a badge of shame.

'If you believe you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere,' Theresa May told her party conference last month. 'You don't understand what the very word 'citizenship' means.'

The liberal intelligentsia, citizens of the world to a man and a woman, had a mass attack of the vapours. But I suspect the vast majority of people in Britain — and indeed the vast majority of people on the planet — would agree with every word.

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I think Hillary Clinton would have made an immeasurably better president than Mr Trump


Clinton concedes defeat in presidential election (full speech)

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Most people do not want to live in communities that are endlessly changing. They want security, stability, a sense of rootedness and reassurance — precisely the things they associate with their national identity.

To many metropolitan liberals, however, this merely identifies the people as antediluvian relics. Indeed, in their sheer hubris, their arrogant belief that they were the apostles of progress, the liberal elite believed — and still believe — that history had appointed them to sweep away centuries of tradition.

If the people resisted, if they clung to their old-fashioned values and settled communities, that just proved they were racists and bigots. And if that sounds too strong, just look at how the Guardian newspaper reacted to Mr Trump's victory this week.

On one page, the high priestess of the metropolitan Left, Polly Toynbee, tells us that Britain's vote to leave the EU was a victory for 'white supremacism'. (Yes, really.)

On another, the paper's former fashion columnist tells us that it is time to stop listening to the 'white working classes', who have been indulged for far too long. (Again: yes, really.)

I can imagine no conceivable circumstance in which I would vote for Donald Trump. But this sort of stuff strikes me as almost mind-bogglingly ignorant, condescending and self-regarding.

It is, I think, no accident that time after time, liberal politicians have sneered at the very people they were supposed to be leading. How dare the common people refuse to embrace their bright new dawn?

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I can imagine no conceivable circumstance in which I would vote for Donald Trump

When Gordon Brown met a Labour voter who complained about Eastern European immigration, he dismissed her as a 'bigoted woman'. When David Cameron was asked what he thought of Ukip, he dismissed them as 'fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists'.

And in 2008, when Barack Obama first ran for president, he was recorded talking about voters who lived in decaying working-class towns that had lost their industry. 'They get bitter,' he said, 'they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.'

At the time, his rival for the Democratic nomination claimed that the remarks showed he was 'elitist and out of touch'. Her name, by the way, was Hillary Clinton.

As it happens, I wish Mrs Clinton had paid more heed to her own advice. I think she would have made an immeasurably better president than Mr Trump, a man who boasts about abusing women, stokes xenophobic hatred and has pledged to dismantle the Western security order.

But Mr Trump won for a reason. The truth is that the new president-elect's overtly nationalistic appeal fell on such fertile ground precisely because the liberal project has been tested to destruction.

Instead of ushering in a new golden age, globalisation, outsourcing, mass immigration and open borders have actually revived the very thing they were supposed to erase from history — old-fashioned nationalism.

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Men such as Franklin D. Roosevelt or Harry Truman were pragmatic, patriotic politicians

Just look, for example, at the way Angela Merkel's open-door immigration policy has revived Germany's far-Right.

Of course nationalism can take many forms, some relatively benign, others more sinister.

There is a considerable difference between Scotland's Nicola Sturgeon and Hungary's Viktor Orban (who has described the arrival of asylum seekers in Europe as 'a poison', saying his country did not want or need 'a single migrant'), just as there is a huge difference between the British businessman who thinks we'd be better off outside the EU and the U.S. Right-wing Tea Party demagogue who says Hillary Clinton should be in jail.

But a world dominated by competing nationalisms, in which demagogues exploit the failure of the liberal project, is likely to be a very dangerous world indeed.

It is perfectly possible that by 2020, Mr Trump will be ruling an isolationist America, France will be governed by Marine Le Pen, much of Eastern Europe will have lurched to the far-Right and the Baltic States may well have been occupied by Vladimir Putin.

Throw in another Scottish referendum and a Jeremy Corbyn premiership into the mix — an unlikely scenario, admittedly — and you have a recipe for utter disaster.

For the problem with nationalism is that it thrives on enemies. Mr Trump inveighs against the Chinese and the Mexicans and promises to put America first. Madame Le Pen inveighs against the Arabs and promises to put France first. Mr Putin inveighs against the Europeans and promises to put Russia first.

But they can't all get what they want. At some point they would come into conflict — and we know what could happen next.

Narrow, resentful nationalism cannot be the answer. Like the disillusioned punters who invested in failed Trump ventures, those Americans who have put their faith in Mr Trump will be surely be deeply disappointed.

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Donald Trump will become President of the United States in January

But the answer cannot lie with a revival of liberalism either. For 30 years it has been tested. It has failed.

What the world needs is a generation of pragmatic, patriotic politicians, open to co-operation but rooted in their national communities, open to progress but respectful of tradition, tolerant of difference but not obsessed with diversity, dedicated to the defence of Western values but not so hubristic as to think the world can be reordered overnight.

The best examples of such leaders in the last century were, as it happens, Americans: men such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, who recovered from polio to save his country from the Depression and helped to defeat Nazi Germany, or Harry Truman, the small-town Missouri haberdasher who rallied the West against the threat of Stalin's Russia.

These were patriots, not nationalists, with a rare ability to speak to the man and woman in the street. They represented all that is best in the American character and in Western democracy.

They really did make America great, and unlike their latest successor, they didn't need a baseball cap to prove it.

It will, I fear, be a long time before we see their like again. That is not just America's tragedy. It is ours.


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Some interesting stuff there SH. One great problem of our age is that all of our democratic institutions were built up within the context of the nation state. The attempt to transform these onto the global stage is fraught with problems - the corporate World has been much faster in this 'globalization' process than any other sector has been. We are seeing a backlash against neo liberal globalization and the traditional left is unable to profit from this. There is real fear of globalization, this can range from `Why am I losing my job because of a decision made in Beijing' to 'Why is my street being filled with people speaking another language' through to environmental concerns, fears of the internationalization of disease, or finally the fear that my vote makes no difference. Unfortunately these fears often express themselves in the picking out of easy scapegoats ie. the immigrant (who is often just as much of a victim of globalization as you are). The words 'The future lay in globalized liberal capitalism a 'New World Order' which was 'The end of history' , send a chill down my spine. Unfortunately there was no left wing reaction - can I make a stand of being anti globalist without automatically being placed on the far right ?

'People do not want to live in communities that are endlessly changing' - of course not, we end up living in places where nobody was born and nobody wants to die - like some parts of our inner cities now. But the people 'passing through' are also victims. The age of globalization has obscured our definitions of left and right - originally, hard left meant collective ownership of the means of production, and nothing but that. No mention of multi culti in either Marx or Engels, or even Kropotkin. Just as right wing means the exact opposite. Yet these terms have become distorted and so no 'leftie' can criticize immigration, even though it has been so often said that no multi cultural society has ever achieved a socialist revolution.

The problem is that the British, in order to regain their sovereignty, will open themselves to the World in the search of free trade agreements which they will need more than their partners, and every international trade deal thus achieved involves loss of soveignty. It cannot always be the case that we allow those on the right to steal the cloak of patriotism, to use the word 'sovereignty' with impunity - Thatcher was able to do this, project herself as a patriot yet sell of the family furniture on the other.

 

Okaaay - when did this happen?

 

According to news reports, Lego will not be doing any future promotional offers with the Daily Mail. This is because of it's political stance. Probably it will make no difference to Lego to take this position, but it does show that the paper needs to think about where it will get it's revenue from.

 

The Andrew Marr programme was very interesting this morning, it included an interview with Marine Le Pen. She came across as sharp witted, assured and likeable. Although she is favourite to win the first round of next years presidential elections, it would still be a massive, Trump style, shock if she succeeded in becoming president.

Mind you, as she remarked, what was considered impossible, may now be possibly. France does have the second highest level of dissatisfaction with the EU, only behind Greece.

 

There is Worldwide dissatisfaction with all governments SH. According to polls 8 out of 10 Americans are dissatisfied with the way federal government is working, and 66% of the British do not feel that their country is run 'by the will of the people' - this is not just an EU. problem. Apparently the highest rates of 'satisfaction with government' are found in Scandinavia and Israel.

 

And it's not hard to guess why for each of those.

 

We have been debating the definition and application of the word 'democracy' in the last few days. Trump employing members of his own family as influential government employees is no better than dictators such as the North Koreans. How can this be allowed? Surely senior figures in the Republican Party will prevent this. They are after all running the most powerful country in the world not a fruit stall on the market.

 

There is no agreed definition of the word 'democracy' SH. it is a very loose description used to describe those we consider as our political allies. There is no attempt to define it further - we just call ourselves a 'democracy' because it sounds like a nice word and because the best way to stop somebody fighting for something is to try to convince them that they have it already.

 

When you look around at the qualities of senior politicians in other countries it makes the UK's choices seem excellent. There is no way a Trump, Berlusconi or even the favourite for next next French election, Alain Juppe would get anywhere near power. How can France endorse a candidate previously sentenced to jail (suspended) for abuse of public funds and deprived to run for public office for 10 years. I know the French turn a blind eye to personal matters but being crooked....

They even make Corbyn look reasonable!!

 

Corbyn, however misguided or just flat out wrong, strikes me as something of a rarity: an honest politician.

 

Basically honest but he has conveniently, but naturally, downgraded many of his controversial views to gain broader appeal. Sadly, this is one virtue when several are required.

 

Downgrading of controversial beliefs is inherent to politics SH. You have to make a compromise between the 'idealist' and the pragmatist ie. to adapt your stance to what is actually reachable. There is no reason to presume that Trump will be any different - even Thatcher did this, which was why she downgraded her belief in the death penalty. But we mostly do this in every day life as well - since when was a CV. entirely accurate in that it represented 100% of your life ? How many people are 100% honest at eg. job interviews ? We all 'present' ourselves in a certain way which is 'fitting' for the circumstances, why should politicians be any different to the rest of society ?

 

Of course to get anywhere in politics a politician must be all things to all men but many, including most of his parliamentary colleagues, would argue that Corbyn's ONLY virtue is his perceived honesty which when watered down does not leave him with very much.

 

A year on from the Paris attacks it has been clearly established all the ISIS terrorists plus hundreds of others came to Northern Europe, through the Balkans from Syria with forged passports.

The 'open door' policy by those who forgot the need for security and just concentrated on compassion and humanitarian needs will have a lot to answer for when the 'Paris style' attacks are repeated in future. All opponents to mass uncontrolled immigration were labelled 'racists' and 'xenophobes', as were people that disagreed with the flawed idea of a borderless Schengen area.

Any government's main priority should be the safety of its citizens, a lesson Merkel has learnt far too late.

 

If I run into a burning building and rescue someone who later turns out to be a mass murderer does it make my actions any less commendable ? If I save 1,000 people from drowning then there is a very good chance that at least a couple will be criminals - should this statistical fact deter me from doing anything ? The risk is of course there that some (maybe less than 1%) will slip through the net - but for every one that gets through this way there are hundreds who were born in the West and went the other way ie. to fight for ISIS in Syria. They were people who were born in Bradford, Antwerp, Paris or Duisburg.

 

I don't think your obvious compassion will be any comfort to the relatives of future terrorist casualties. Nobody is denying most of these refugees need assistance, it was the uncontrolled nature that was clearly wrong. More could, and should have been done to keep them on their own continent. Now we are simply doing the smugglers job by ferrying them to Europe. Turkey will shortly release all of the migrants it currently holds which will cause further chaos in Europe.

 

It was already an uncontrolled situation SH. before there was any response from Germany or Austria. A dangerous bottleneck had developed, particularly in Hungary. The main railway station in Budapest had to be protected 24 hours per day and the authorities there were losing control. There was no way that those refugees already in the Balkans could have been sent back - it was not logistically possible. So, Germany and Austria stepped in to prevent a human catastrophe from becoming worse. You do not seem to realise how porous central European borders are (even without Schengen) and it was better to have people crossing into Germany and Austria in broad daylight rather than across mountain ranges or through forests, because, believe me, they would have reached here anyway. Merkel did not, in fact, say 'everyone can come', she said 'There is no upper limit' - the latter statement is simply an unfortunate fact which accompanies human catastrophies. Can you say to a group of 20,000 people in danger of their lives 'sorry we can only take 2,000 - that is our upper limit' ? No, you save as many as you can and then look for other possibilities afterwards - which is what Merkel did. In fact, the idea that this would open the way for a wave of people was a false one. The actual numbers are way below some of the predictions at the time, and less than half of the accomodation set by for refugees has actually been used.