Something autobiographical

I read precious little fiction at the moment, let alone get the chance to write any.  Here is a piece from a few years ago, that was sparked by a childhood memory, and is partly autobiographical.

Summer in the garden was always a gaudy, ostentatious, affair. The heady musk of the roses that billowed in great trusses outside the kitchen window. Fat globules of their scent wallowed in the thick air like barrage balloons, and burst hotly in my face.  Huge iridescent dragonflies manoeuvred like Bell 47s distorted by the haze.  The Laburnum blazed with jeweled strings of pouting, yellow, pea flowers that later on tempted me with slender furry pods. 

Rhododendrons thrived here too, with their neat, tight posies of violet and scarlet blooms to be picked by the sticky stem and methodically dissected for the single bead of clear, sweet nectar within. A pile of bruised petals would accumulate like bones at my feet, tell-tale pollen on the tip of my nose. This manna a fitting dessert to a bounty of browsed young French, dwarf and runner beans hanging from the willow trellis at the end of the garden.

When I close my eyes I picture my father standing proudly amid a forest of dahlias and chrysanthemums of deepest indigo, raging orange and shocking pink, their multi-faceted blooms pom-pomming about his head. Father's looks were unconventional – olive-skinned with dark hair, smooth like a pelt, framed his furrowed, rectangular forehead and below, thick black eyebrows beetled over intense brown eyes. His ears were large and over-lobed and his long nose sloped off to the left. Deep parenthesis around his mouth seemed to convey all his words as asides. He wore his collar too tight and the skin on his neck was gathered and buttoned securely in place and when I snuggled against him he smelled of Wright's coal tar soap and dusty potting compost. My father was a man with a wicked sense of humour and endless time for children.

My father tinkered with old cars and listened to Wagner at volume. At the side of our house stood his workshop, an ancient building of dark, wet oak packed with innumerable and dangerous delights; a roaring compressor; fat chains and pulleys; a bottomless inspection pit; rusty boxes of graded nails, screws, bolts, nuts, clips and bits; and best of all, a lathe from under which I would collect hot, bright, precious, metal spirals from a quivering, intestinal pile of shavings. I loved most of all a sudden summer downpour, I'd perch, picking splinters from my fingers and swinging my legs, breathing the rank, dirty oil and hot fuel and listening to the static hiss of the rain. Afterwards I'd prowl outside and investigate the dark humps of moss sluiced from the roof, lying sodden, belly-up on the path, and poke them with a welly toe until they oozed and screamed.

Where father operated in a world where precision and order prevailed, Mother, by contrast, inhabited a parallel universe of chaos and disorder. A seamstress by profession and a knitter by habit our home was a crazed montage of fabrics, upholstery, and yarns. My mother had a patient, oval face with a blunt chin and delicate lips pursed around a collection of jewel-headed pins. Between her front teeth was the smallest gap. Her nose was straight, long and perfectly sculpted, as if from marble. She hummed constantly and listened to manouche jazz, kneeling, tacking crinkly paper patterns onto gaudy fabrics. From this woman an industrial quantity of gloves, scarves, and hats flowed undiminished. At Christmas she went into overdrive filling endless shoeboxes with legions of knitted dolls for African orphans. Not once did my father or I receive so much as a festive sock – mother's knits were exclusively for others.

Abruptly, Summer would finish and the trees would dump their leaves on the lawn - my father began raking in September with good humour and finished around January without. In the house Mother would fill crackle-glazed ceramic vases with spidery Witch Hazel and whispering stalks of Honesty with translucent paper seed heads. Heavy, sluggish solitary wasps bumped stupidly against the windows.

Different bounties appeared from the garden.  We would still be eating raspberries, when the waxy pumpkins, tightly clenched artichokes, sweet figs, bitter kale and earthy parsnips began to arrive. Outside in the low, ochre sunlight bombastic Michaelmas daisies were attended by frenzied bees, and shaggy Ink Caps sprouted up through the lawn like eggs. The Japanese Maple in the middle of the lawn glowed blood-red and the air tasted of ice and wood smoke.

Is the EU’s future more likely to consist of a tighter economic/political union or a loose confederation of independent states?

The global financial crisis began in mid-2007.  It was a chain of events that ultimately led to the eurozone sovereign debt crises (Kunstein and Wessels 2012, p.5).  Since October 2009 when problems surfaced in Greece, each of the periphery eurozone countries (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), has been the target of market pressures as a result of its fiscal difficulties (Cohen 2012, p.4).  The crisis has threatened the stability of the eurozone and called into question the single European currency (Kunstein and Wessels 2012, p.5).

What is the future of the European Union (EU)? Possibly ‘more Europe’: a tighter political and economic union, by supplementing Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) with fiscal union. Or perhaps ‘less Europe’: a looser confederation, with a smaller eurozone comprising a “coalition of the willing”, with or without fiscal union (Razin and Rosefielde 2012, p.11).  At this present time, “[t]he gradual extension of EMU to most EU members remains as a paramount political goal” (de Schoutheete and Micossi 2013, p.11).  In December 2012 the European Council stated that deeper integration would apply first to eurozone countries (de Schoutheete and Micossi 2012, p.2).  There is deep political commitment to the Euro (Cohen 2012, p.1) and preventing the collapse of the single currency is the EU leadership’s priority (Baimbridge et al. 2012, p.105).

To answer the question this essay looks first at the systemic problems of EMU.  Then it considers the responses to the crisis and reforms in its wake to understand the most likely future outcome.  There are innumerable future scenarios for the EU and predicting it is laden with uncertainty.  However, this essay concludes that the more compelling of these narratives is one of ‘more Europe’, with the continuation of piecemeal current reforms and institution building, with varying groups of participating Member States cooperating more closely in different policy areas.

It is widely acknowledged that the eurozone’s architecture is defective (Razin and Rosefielde 2012, p.12) and the financial crisis has revealed the cracks.  To begin with, the EU is far from an optimum currency area.  The economies of Member States vary greatly in their ability to compete in a single currency area.  Whilst the Maastricht Treaty included ‘convergence criteria’ the rules were applied “with generous flexibility” for strictly political reasons - thus it opened up the single currency area to greater risk of internal balance-of-payments problems.  The policy response for managing this risk was the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), created to “constrain member states’ budgetary policy to prudence” (deSchoutheete and Micossi 2013, p.6).

The single European currency was the next stage of an “integrationist European project, but without the necessary political coordination to underpin it” (Baimbridge et al. 2012, p.96).  The Maastricht Treaty implied a clear discrepancy between “the intentionally rather modest political integration and monetary integration”.  There were no steps on such a scale as monetary union planned for the government system (Issing 1996, p.15).  Rather, it was intended that EMU would generate both “economic convergence and political unity” (Baimbridge et al, 2012, p.105), in other words that monetary union should take the lead as a pace-setter for political union (Issing 1996, p.16).

For Cohen (2012, p.6) the root of the problem is Europe’s lack of a genuine transfer union – impossible without a commitment to a federal Europe with a large central budget.  As Razin and Rosefielde (2012, p.16) argue, if there had been political consensus for fiscal union then the EU project may well have proceeded in reverse order, as with the US precedent (fiscal union 1790 and monetary union 1913) where the transfer system underpins the common currency.  Using a single currency as a pace-setter turns this idea on its head: rather common money creates a transfer requirement, and in turn is expected to establish political structures (Issing 1996, p.19).

Baimbridge et al. (2012, p.97) argue that the eurozone’s response to the crisis and reforms have been piecemeal; ad-hoc loans to Greece and Ireland and the creation of a bailout fund “deal with the symptoms rather than the fundamental causes of the euro’s structural weaknesses”.  Reforms have happened both at EU-level and, outside of the treaty framework, as projects of “differentiated integration” with only some Member States participating.  At the EU-level the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism ‘firewall’ has been established – enabling the Commission to borrow against the EU budget on behalf of struggling Member States, and the ‘Six-Pack’ – a revised SGP aimed at correcting macro-economic imbalances (Kunstein and Wessels 2012, p.6).  Outside the EU treaty framework, intergovernmental agreements with varying membership have been established.  This round of institution building established a formal safety net of €750 billion for troubled debtor countries in the temporary European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and its permanent successor the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) based on an intergovernmental treaty between all 17 eurozone members (Cohen 2012, p.6).  However, to prevent ‘moral hazard’, Member States in receipt of support must make far-reaching economic reforms.  This conditionality is underpinned by an enforcement mechanism - the Treaty of Stability Coordination and Governance (TSCG) (containing the ‘fiscal compact’) (Kunstein and Wessels 2012, p.9).  In March 2012, 25 of the 27 EU members (excluding the UK and the Czech Republic) signed up to the fiscal compact, which requires “formal balanced-budged rules to be written into national law or constitutions” (Cohen 2012, p.6).

The aforementioned lack of a European transfer union means the response to the crisis has necessarily been on terms set largely by the creditors (i.e. Germany), whose deflationary strategy in the short-term has been austerity as the price for a bailout; and, in the long-term, fiscal discipline through far-reaching economic reforms, such as the fiscal compact.  “Adjustments to shocks therefore come down to painful internal price and wage deflation haphazardly ameliorated by the kindness of strangers and bottom-fishing speculators” (Razin and Rosenfielde 2012, p.15).  Within the eurozone deflation “has become the sole adjustment mechanism to the detriment of its citizens”, as members cannot set interest rates or exchange rates to stabilise their economies (Baimbridge et al. 2012, p.96-98).  Yet, without the adjustment of the exchange rate reducing public spending comes with at least an equivalent reduction in output.  However, at present, there isn’t a glimmer of hope that long-term resource redistribution will be a reality within the Eurozone; Germany’s manoeuvring in its Constitutional Court to limit its liability in this regard is an indication of the scale of such a task (Baimbridge et al 2013, p.104).

In conclusion, there is no doubt that a different EU is emerging from the crisis.  These responses and reforms have pushed the EU and the eurozone closer towards a tighter economic and political union.  With the Six-Pack comes an “intensification of the oversight of national fiscal policies”, and the EFSF and ESM provide support in case of liquidity problems (Kunstein and Wessels 2012, p.10).  Furthermore, non-members are “mired in ambiguity”: queasy about enhanced integration, but afraid of loosing contact with the inner circle.  It is significant that 25 Member States are participating in the fiscal compact (de Schoutheete and Micossi 2012, p.3).  Whilst the political will to defend the eurozone persists, at the same time manoeuvring towards a genuine eurozone transfer union seems highly unlikely.  Indeed, “[i]nertia favours doing nothing fundamental” (Razin and Rosefielde 2012, p.16). 

Kunstein and Wessels (2012, p.12) expect an EU that increasingly relies on intergovernmental coordination outside the treaty framework: a likely future of ‘more Europe’.  Specifically a ‘multi-speed’ Europe, in as much as there will be various groups of Member States cooperating more closely in different areas, either inside, or where necessary, outside the EU treaties (Kunstein and Wessels 2012).  Yet, ‘more Europe’ does not mean that “Europe’s half-built house” will ever be completed (Cohen 2012, p.8).  “Europe’s leaders will not let it fail. Europe’s politics will not let it succeed.  The euro, defective but defended, will simply endure”.

References

Baimbridge, M., Burkitt, B., and Whyman, P., 2012. The Eurozone as a Flawed Currency Area.  The Political Quarterly, 83(1), 96-107.

Cohen, B., 2012. The future of the Euro: Let’s get real. Review of International Political Economy, 19(4), 1-8.

de Schoutheete, P., and Micossi, S., 2013. On Political Union in Europe: The changing landscape of decision-making and political accountability. Centre for European Policy Studies Essay, 4.

Issing, O., 1996. Europe: Political Union Through Common Money? London: IEA.

Kawalec, S., and Pytlarczyk, E., 2013. Controlled Dismantlement of the Eurozone: A Strategy to Save the European Union and the Single European Market. German Economic Review, 14(1), 31-49.

Kunstein, T., Wessels, W., 2012. What we hope, what we fear, what we expect: possible scenarios for the future of the eurozone. European View, 11, 5-14.

Razin, A., and Rosenfielde, S., 2012. What Really Ails the Eurozone?: Faulty Supranational Architecture. Contemporary Economics, 6(4), 10-18

No Referendum on Europe in The Queen’s Speech

The issue of Europe continues to split the Tories this week following a Queen’s Speech that didn’t include a new law to provide a British referendum on EU membership.  The absence of a bill is problematic for the Conservatives, because on this issue David Cameron has made two promises; a referendum on EU membership by the end of 2017, and if the Tories win the General Election in 2015, a renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s membership in advance of any referendum.

A referendum in 2017 would be the second of its sort.  In 1975 just over 67% of voters supported Harold Wilson’s Labour government’s campaign to stay in the EEC.  So what would happen if a referendum were held today?  The latest YouGov (April 2013) polling puts the margin at 43-35%, with more people wanting to leave the EU than remain in, a gap of 8-points.  But a ‘no’ vote is not a foregone conclusion.  Today’s 8-point gap is narrower than in recent years when it has been as wide as 15-20 points.  As recently as mid-January the position was reversed, with polling suggesting more people wanted to stay in the EU than leave.  How you phrase the question matters too. When asked the following question the results reverse and a three-to-two majority respond in favour of remaining in the EU. 

            Imagine the British government under David Cameron renegotiated our relationship with Europe and said that Britain's interests were now protected, and David Cameron recommended that Britain remain a member of the European Union on the new terms.  How would you then vote in a referendum on the issue?

Cameron, along with Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, wants the UK to remain in the EU.  If there is a Conservative victory under Cameron in 2015 and he can be seen by the public to have renegotiated some of the terms of Britain’s membership, history may well repeat itself.  Harold Wilson’s renegotiation ahead of a referendum was sufficient to secure him a victory of two-to-one to remain in the EEC.  A combination of a Cameron victory in 2015 and the absence of a national consensus on the EU will provide for a referendum that maintains the status quo (as with the referendum on AV).

But do watch out for two potentially significant developments this week.  Rebel Tories have drawn up an amendment criticizing the Queen’s speech for not including a bill paving the way for a referendum.  If the rebel amendment, led by Eurosceptics John Baron and Peter Bone, is selected for the debate this Tuesday or Wednesday, it is unlikely to succeed.  Ministers have been advised to abstain and only around 100 backbench Tories are likely to support it.  It will doubtless serve as an effective protest but is bound to damage the Conservative Party.   On Thursday the ballot for private member’s bills (laws proposed by individual MPs) will be drawn.  A number of Euroskeptic backbenchers will be hoping for a top spot in the ballot which will guarantee them parliamentary time for a debate on an EU membership referendum bill.  Having already supported the idea of a new law on a referendum, David Cameron would have little choice but to support such a bill, although it is unlikely that anything would reach the statute book before the election.

The Eastleigh By-election

There is nothing quite like experiencing historical events first hand, it is nice to be able to say: “I was there”.  The Eastleigh by-election is, by all accounts, an historic event and on a bitterly cold Wednesday, the final full day of campaigning, I was there.  My particular experience in all this was as a volunteer for the Conservative campaign, where prospective parliamentary candidate Maria Hutchings was having her second attempt at the corridors of power after losing to Chris Huhne at the general election in 2010 (by less than 4000 votes).  Being an Eastleigh resident was another way to experience this by-election; and by all accounts, experience it they did.

Tory campaign HQ had been hastily assembled in the achingly dull concrete “Mitchell House” adjacent to Eastleigh train station.  A location convenient for the many hundreds of volunteers who flocked from around the country to wear out the constituency pavements, letterboxes, doorbells and residents.  Convenient too, for the elected Westminster politicians who arrived in spades to lend support to Hutchings; a white board on the wall recorded each individual and the number of visits they’ve made.  Bournemouth MP Conor Burns, who himself lost out to the Liberal Democrats on this seat in 2001 and 2005, made 11 such visits.

The campaign organisers were welcoming and their operation was smooth, but not slick; hindered for a few hours by a mains power outage that didn’t just take out the coffee machine but the printers too.  The envelopes of hundreds of pledge letters had to be handwritten by volunteers and had something of a curious ‘homespun’ effect.  It was the delivery of these pledge letters that was the main task of the last day of the campaign: the ramming of one final item of election literature through the letterboxes of the frazzled, jaded and cynical residents of Eastleigh, some of whom had boarded up their letterboxes in protest.

Political parties only send pledge letters to voters who have already indicated their intention to vote for that particular party.  Their voting intention has been noted during canvassing carried out earlier in the campaign.  By knowing who’s support can be pretty much guaranteed, effort can be targeted to the greatest effect in the final days and hours.  This is known as ‘turning out the vote”.

Yet, there appeared to be something of a gap between the ‘pledges’ and the reality on the ground.  Letters were going to the owners of properties who had no intention of voting Conservative.  The giveaway in some cases were the Labour, UKIP or Liberal Democrat posters displayed in their windows; or the blanket nature of the leafleting in some streets.  Whether this was a failure to canvass correctly, possibly the result of a lack of grassroots support in Eastleigh, or an organisational or technological ‘blip’, is hard to say. 

In the end and unsurprisingly, long-term Eastleigh resident Mike Thornton beat UKIP’s Dianne James by 1770 votes for a Liberal Democrat hold.  Hutchings, only 1012 votes behind James, put the Conservatives in third place.  A sigh of relief for the Liberal Democrats, celebrations all round for UKIP and sober reflection for the Conservatives.  Could a slightly slicker ‘turn out the vote’ effort have secured Hutchings second place, certainly a better position with which to contest the seat in the 2015 general election?  And a third placed UKIP, despite huge gains would be a very different narrative.