Democracy sinks to keep federalist fantasy afloat
This is Ireland's future, and the eurocrats are no longer trying to hide it, says Eilis O'Hanlon
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It's hard to know which is more worrying: the fact that people were so willing to believe that Enda Kenny and Michael Noonan had given the Germans a draft version of the Budget before showing it to Irish parliamentarians; or that this is still so, despite the Government's protestations to the contrary.
Perhaps they're manifestations of the same problem. The belief that we are weak in the face of European leaders, the Germans in particular, and that handing up our Budgets to Angela Merkel for approval, like a schoolboy having his homework marked by Miss, was the logical next step. That's why Germany wants changes to the Lisbon Treaty next year, after all. So it can do this to the budgets of every member state.
Gilmore, with that instinctive grasp of oratory which has made him such an inspiration to the nation in this time of crisis, declared that he was "quite annoyed" that details of austerity measures had been revealed by German MPs. No doubt he wanted to say "annoyed" but Brussels insisted he add the word "quite" in front to dilute potential criticism of his European handlers. Though quite what the Tanaiste was annoyed about is a separate mystery. The Government advanced a draft budget to Brussels which, in an apparent slip-up, forwarded it to the finance ministries of all EU states. Either way, Europe was getting to see it long before we did. The Irish Government is merely arguing the toss about how it was caught out. It feels the indignation of the guilty.
Whatever the truth, we'd better get used to it. This is Ireland's future, and, tellingly, the eurocrats aren't even trying to hide it anymore. For years, federalists cloaked their ambitions in the guise of democracy, pretending to care what the little people thought whilst privately drawing up plans to bypass the inconvenient opposition of the electorate. Now they're not even pretending.
The Greek prime minister was sent packing, tail between legs, when he dared to suggest his own people could hold a referendum. In came Lucas Papademos, an unelected banker whose previous credentials included being head of the Bank of Greece at a time when the country was lying through its teeth about its fiscal situation in order to gain entry to the euro.
In Italy, shortly after, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi "stepped down" (translation: "was forced out of office"), to be immediately replaced by a so-called technocratic government headed by Mario Monti, economist, EU commissioner and all-round fat cat.
Neither of these men has ever been elected. Monti had to be made an honorary senator for life by the Italian president so that he could assume power.
At least Papademos's government is comprised of members who were actually elected by Greek voters.
The new Italian government's boast is that it is made up "only of experts, no politicians". Men like the CEO of the Intesa Sanpaolo banking group, who is now head of a super-ministry bringing together development, infrastructure and transport; men like the new justice minister, a lawyer; or the new minister for tourism, who is chairman of a power company. We're supposed to find this comforting, so much so that the transition has practically passed without comment.
Last week's Have I Got News For You was a steady stream of fifth-form jokes about Silvio's Latin libido, rather than the fact that the country's third most successful prime minister in history had been ousted in an EU-led coup d'etat. On Morning Ireland, Italian journalist Beppe Severgnini similarly side-stepped questions about the legitimacy of the new regime by arguing, in effect, that it was a temporary little arrangement which was justified by the fact that the eurozone was facing an "emergency".
Italy was taking one for the team, seemed to be his line. Others coo soothingly that there's no cause for concern because the new technocratic government still has to win the backing of the Italian parliament for its decisions, therefore democracy remains unblemished, even though Italian MPs are hardly going to bring down Mario Monti and head for an early election at the hands of a volatile Italian public which, like many European electorates, has no love right now for politicians.
This is not so much a democratic deficit as a total democratic bypass. Where's the resistance? It's certainly not coming from the European Left, but that's no surprise. Soviet-style technocratic government was always socialism's guilty pleasure. The people can't be trusted to do what's right for the revolution, so for a time the normal rules of democracy must be suspended whilst experts make the informed decisions on their behalf. Once the New Order is bedded down, then the little people can get their rights back. Only they never do, because the heirs of Plato's beloved philosopher kings never willingly cede power except to others like them.
That sort of paternalism is endemic on the micro scale in left-wing politics. In Europe, it's simply being transferred to national politics. The issues are too complicated for the uninitiated to grasp, so best to let experts run the world whilst the ordinary people watch TV and eat chips.
The process isn't happening entirely without protest. Students in Milan are already out rioting against what they call a "bankers' government", but that, maddeningly, misses the point too. European democracy is not being subverted solely in order to prop up a free market system which allows incompetent bankers to flourish; democracy is being subverted in order to ensure the survival of a pet political project which would otherwise now be in ruins.
The "markets" don't give a damn about the details, they simply want to make money. It's the political class in Berlin and Paris which is pulling out all the stops to keep the federalist fantasy afloat. They're the ones who've embarked on this course regardless of its consequences or internal contradictions.
The new leaders of Italy and Greece are wedded so deeply into this elite that even a DNA test couldn't separate them. Their job is, explicitly, to safeguard the euro project at any cost. The present crisis has merely presented this clique with the opportunity to forge ahead with full political and monetary union, whilst lambasting anyone who urges a rethink of the federalist project as a narrow nationalist.
Who are these people? Where did they come from? Why are we letting them get away with it? The latest issue of the Economist points out that when Jan Fischer, the Czech Republic's chef statistician, was reluctantly made prime minister in a similar technocratic administration in 2009, he urged Czechs to "protest against this kind of government". There's not much evidence of that on this side of the continent.
In Ireland, the rise of the technocrats has gone largely undebated, in contrast to Britain, which is less directly affected by the trend. We might be next if we don't do as we're told, but we're not even talking about it. Are we still so angry and disillusioned at politicians and bankers that we've become blinded to the potentially greater danger of allowing a superficially benign Franco-German dictatorship in by the back door?
- Eilis O'Hanlon
Originally published in
