EU Emissions Trading Scheme

Honeyball’s Weekly Round-Up

Labour Party

This week saw Conservative MEPs vote against a Europe-wide initiative to provide aid for those struggling with food poverty. The £3 billion EU fund, known as ‘European aid to the most deprived’, would have sent £3 million in the direction of Britain. The choice to try and block the fund was made on the grounds that “It is not for the EU to dictate…how to help the needy. Individual countries must be allowed to decide for themselves.” It left the Tories among a tiny rump of MEPs voting against, making the Coalition the only European Government to oppose the fund.

With the Tories under pressure to address the explosion in the number of food bank users since they’ve been in office, their approach to Tuesday’s vote baffled many. It comes at a time when pressure is building on the Coalition to address the food poverty crisis, with religious and third sector organisations condemning the effect welfare cuts are having on UK rates of poverty. This week Richard Howitt, my Labour colleague in the European Parliament, called the Tories’ decision to vote against the fund “heartless and callous”.

Blocking European Aid is just the latest in a string of instances which have seen Conservatives adopting indefensible positions in the name of Euroscepticism. Before Christmas they blocked the Estrela report – a strategy to, among other things, end FGM – and they have also obstructed the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, a market-based solution to environmental challenges. They’ve done so on the grounds that endorsing such plans would represent a concession to the EU. This is despite the government’s Balance of Competences review so far finding that the weighting between EU powers and domestic autonomy is roughly right.

David Cameron’s increasingly hostile noises about the EU appear to have been taken by Tory MEPs as a license to indulge their most reactionary instincts. They do this irrespective of morality or the UK’s national interests. As a result we are approaching a state of Tea Party-style fanaticism among some on the British right in Brussels; a new and virulent brand of Euroscepticism. It’s vital that those of us who support the EU do not allow this self-defeating ideology to triumph.

Also this week, UKIP’s Spring Conference was overshadowed by the embarrassing revelation that Nigel Farage’s campaign slogan – “Love Britain: Vote UKIP” – was a rehash of a strapline used by the BNP. Nick Griffin’s far right party campaigned under the same banner in 2010, using the wording “Love Britain: Vote BNP”. The comparisons did not appear to end there, with Farage using his “Love Britain: Vote UKIP”-branded plinth to launch an excoriating attack on immigration, which he claims has made Britain “unrecognisable”. When the BNP link was pointed out Farage argued, bizarrely, that he’d been trying to ‘reclaim’ the slogan.

So far Ukip have resisted calls from the European far right to join ranks. Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen have both attempted, unsuccessfully thus far, to reach out to Farage, pointing out the common ground their respective parties share with his. But with UKIP MEP Gerard Batten’s ties with the far right attracting increasing controversy – not to mention Farage’s recent admission that he supported the “basic principle” of Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘Rivers of blood’ speech – the overlap between UKIP and the extreme right is becoming hard to disguise.

To avoid a return to the ugly politics and racial tensions of the 1970s Labour must contest UKIP’s narrative every step of the way.

Honeyball’s Weekly Round-Up

Labour Party

The fallout from Typhoon Hayain continued in the Philippines this week. The huge storm – which is the second largest the area has ever seen – struck on Thursday 7th and raged for several days, stretching into the start of this week. More than 11 million people have been left homeless by the disaster, and the official death toll is now well over 3,000 – although aid workers say the real figure could be three times this.

Located inside the so called Ring of Fire – a hotspot for volcanoes and earthquakes – the Philippines is no stranger to extreme weather. However, as a country comprising over 7,000 islands it remains a place where coordinating infrastructure and communications is difficult. Although the storm has now relented, the crisis is by no means over, with the challenges of tackling diseases and housing displaced people just beginning.

The Philippines’s UN Envoy Naderev Sano, who comes from the devastated city of Tacloban, made a tearful statement at the start of the UN’s two week Warsaw summit, blaming the typhoon on climate change and calling for decisive action. He described it as an “extreme climate event” and said he would not eat until an environmental consensus was reached.

The priority, of course, has got to be dealing with the immediate humanitarian crisis in the country. On this front it was good to see international aid donations flooding in, and I was particularly pleased with the EU’s decision on Tuesday to increase its contribution from €3 million to €13 million. However, Sano is right that as once the dust finally settles it will be time to have a more serious discussion about climate change.

At present we are still a long way away from a consensus. In April of this year Tory MEPs voted against the EU Emissions Trading Scheme – even though the proposals had been specifically designed as a free market solution to the problem – and back in 2011 they blocked calls for tougher environmental targets. David Cameron may have spoken on Sunday of the need to “prevent and mitigate” climate change, but on this issue the Conservatives are liable to say one thing and do the opposite.

Speaking of the gap between words and actions, it was interesting to see the Tories attempt this week to remove all pre-2010 speeches from online spaces. Ironically, many passages from the deleted material focused on commitments to transparency, with George Osborne, for example, having pledged (in a speech back in 2007) to end the “asymmetry of information between the individual and the state”.

Aside from being politically counter-productive (the news of course prompted an immediate re-examination of the Tories’ pre-government policies) this ‘year zero’ approach is profoundly undemocratic. It is important to the already fragile relationship between public representatives and the electorate that voters and commentators can compare rhetoric with reality, so the deletion of material like this undermines basic standards of political accountability.

With their liberal pre-government rhetoric having been replaced by harsh and socially divisive policies in office, it is no surprise that the Tory high command want to conceal the promises they made in opposition. I am pleased, on behalf of everyone who believes in politics, that on this occasion they have been caught out.