The Power of the Powerless: In Memory of Vaclav Havel

Alphen, the Netherlands. 19 December. Two men died this weekend. One was a towering literary and political figure, one of my heroes, a man who understood change and freedom and put his life on the line for it. The other was not; resisting change and freedom at all costs in the defence of an extreme version of a failed idea against which the other fought.

Vaclav Havel was a Czech patriot, playwright, poet and president who broke the crushing bureaucracy and terror of absolutist totalitarianism. Kim Jong Il was a North Korean born to be president of a dynasty in the ludicrously named Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, an absolutist, totalitarian state that is neither democratic nor of the ‘people’. Son of his dictator father the Dear Leader exercised power through terror, the crushing bureaucracy of an overweening state and by blackmailing neighbours with the threat of an over-costly military and nuclear weapons. Both in their ways defined their age in their space, and yet they occupied opposite ends of truth.

Let me deal first with President Kim Jong Il. Enough said.

Vaclav Havel wrote; “The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line, everyone has a small part of himself in both”. Europeans have fought for centuries to ensure that the powerless have sufficient ownership of the powerful to render accountability real; the very cornerstone of democracy.

Sadly, Central and Eastern Europeans understand the value of freedom in ways which shames us all in Western Europe, where dangerous complacency reins. Perpetual vigilance is vital to protect freedom, particularly at times of crisis such as this. European history is replete with fool's contracts; “we the powerful will resolve the mess we have created if only you the people give us more power and all your money”. Havel would have rejected a choice between being bankruptcy and freedom, but if choice was forced upon him he would have chosen the latter.

Small was beautiful for Havel. Indeed, Havel believed passionately that power should be seen to be alongside the people, in the people, with the people. His desire to bring power down from the high perches of pride it so often and too often claims for itself in Europe saw President Havel oversee the break-up of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. That was the will of the people.

Havel found the presidency an uncomfortable part in a theatre de l’absurde, describing himself ‘absurd’ at his investiture in Prague Castle. And yet perhaps it was not Havel who was absurd but rather the ridiculous ego-driven pomposity, perks, and police-escorted pageantry that Europe’s new great and increasingly not-so-great now routinely claim for themselves in the name of ‘protocol’. Havel rightly mistrusted power and the people with it.

As Europe teeters on the edge of a financial and economic abyss the truly powerful call for more power. There is a very real danger that power in Europe will become systematically ever more distant from the people – the very anti-thesis of freedom and democracy. This elite-driven project comes in various ‘plays’ and ‘acts’ on stages from Berlin to Brussels. Some call upon one superpower state to lead in the name of ‘Europe’, others call for a super-state that is ‘Europe’. Both threaten democracy and freedom if not held in check. Sadly, checks and balances are being eroded in the name of 'Europe', with Havel's Europeans patronisingly encouraged to disengage from the political process, ‘our’ political process and to ‘leave it to them’.

For that reason above all other Havel was an inspiration for this blog and its own self-satirising and pompous mission to ‘speak truth unto power’. Indeed, I see myself as a true Havelist because I have never lost, nor will I ever lose my capacity to laugh at myself. However, whilst I am and can only ever be a pale imitation of my Czech hero my mission remains deadly serious – the defence of freedom in Europe.

Europe is most decidedly not North Korea. We Europeans do at least retain the semblance of choice over our leaders that the Dear Leader denied his people. Moreover, our leaders for all their many faults are not Kim Jong-Il. Nationally-elected political representatives in national parliaments are close enough to the people to understand them and their needs and yet close enough to power to hold to account the eternal and infernal ambition of the super-ego. May it ever be thus. 

‘Europe’ remains a good idea in a world that is getting ever bigger as ‘we’ Europeans get ever weaker. However, Big Europe also threatens freedom even if it is not intended and must be guarded against. Havel understood the danger of seeking efficiency and effectiveness at the expense of democracy and freedom. Throughout history that has been the seductive, siren call of the powerful in pursuit of absolute power in the teeth of crisis. The pursuit of absolutism comes in many forms but it is always ‘for’ the people and in the name of the ‘people’, as it is in North Korea. Europe is a long way from that but 'we the people' must remain vigilant.

“I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions”. It was Havel’s optimism that attracted me to him all those years ago, precisely because the system he had fought against had failed to crush Havel’s self-defining ‘hope’. In Havel’s Europe the line between the powerful and powerless must remain blurred even if it is not ‘efficient’. Let us all honour Havel the man by respecting his vision for Europe.

In honour and in memory of Europe’s great, ordinary man. Vaclav Havel was a friend I never met.

Julian Lindley-French

A Week is a Long Time in High and Low Politics

Alphen, the Netherlands. 16 December. In 1964 former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson said, “A week is a long time in politics”. This has been a very long week for both high and low politics.  

A week ago I was waking up in Brussels to the British ‘non’ to the Brussels Botch. This was European low politics at its worst as Euro-fanatics and the plain anti-British spurred on by Berlin and Paris attempted to shame Prime Minister Cameron into reversing his position and to blame Britain for a collective failure of strategy and politics. Sadly, they were aided and abetted by the strategically-inept back in London who a) illiterate in the language of power panicked at the thought of British ‘isolation’; and b) seemed willing to pay any price to keep the Germans and French happy. The British reaction was as one would expect – defiant. The British people were up for a fight and it showed.

Recognising the impasse Chancellor Merkel made a conciliatory speech mid-week in Berlin.  Britain will remain an important partner, she said. Was this a new political demarche? No. Last night, Christian Noyer, the Head of the French National Bank, called on Britain’s AAA credit rating to be downgraded. On the ‘not very helpful right now’ scale of ten that got at least a nine. Well done, M. Noyer.

It saddens me that the elite of such a great nation for which I have a genuine liking and respect seems unable to resist pressing the anti-Brit button whenever it does not get its way. French low politics will only trigger more British low politics and thus make it far harder to find a solution and maintain political momentum in other crucial areas such as defence co-operation. More worrying M. Noyer would appear not to understand either the nature of the Eurozone crisis or the causes of it. Thankfully, London reacted in a measured and appropriate tone to M. Noyer’s engineered outburst, something I am sure Berlin will have noted.

Let me now switch to the other side of the ‘pond’. On Wednesday President Obama made a speech at Fort Bragg marking the end of nine troubled years of American military presence in Iraq. Since March 2003 over 100,000 Iraqis and 4500 Americans have died with many thousands more wounded, not to mention the dead and wounded from the other coalition partners who took part in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

If Europe is being broken by an excess of low politics, America is endeavouring to extricate itself from an excess of ill-considered high politics. President Obama said that whilst Iraq "is not a perfect place…we are leaving behind a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people". The President went on, "We are building a new partnership between our nations. Because of you [US military personnel], we are ending these wars in a way that will make America stronger and the world more secure".  With the hindsight of history the Iraq War as a mistake; there were no weapons of mass destruction, it distracted from the main thrust of post-911 strategy in Afghanistan, cost huge amounts of money and many lives; and tied down American forces in such a way as to embolden the world’s real mischief-makers. The US may not be the world’s policeman, but it is the actor of last resort.

Back in 2003 Germany and France warned against this adventure.  Berlin and Paris were correct. The fact that Saddam is gone and some semblance of stability (and it is only a semblance of stability) has been achieved much of it due to the ability of American forces to adapt and learn, does not forgive the error of high politics America and Britain made. The 2011 consequences only indirectly reflect the 2003 war aim, "…to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's alleged support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people". Critically, neither America nor its allies have been strengthened by this war and its aftermath, either in the ‘Greater Middle East’ (wherever that is) or the wider world.

The war crucially divided the NATO Alliance at a critical moment from which it has never really recovered and made America and the West seem far weaker than is in fact the case in the eyes of allies and adversaries alike. In particular, the American and British failure to properly prepare for the post-war stabilisation of Iraq was a profound mistake, much of it driven by Washington’s ideological belief that the invasion would be seen by all Iraqis as a liberation. 

What conclusions do I draw? It is questionable whether Europeans are any longer capable of high politics in the face of crisis. The gap between the rhetoric of Europe's leaders and their actions is now so wide as to border on self-deceit.    Equally, the gap between what America has to do and what it is willing or can afford to to do is itself becoming dangerously wide.  Indeed, for Washington the common ground between high and low politics in the international arena remains elusive. 

Above all, these two political failures, the  Iraq War and Eurozone crisis, have destroyed trust, that most precious of political commodities and the concrete foundation upon which all sound strategy must stand.

A week is indeed a long time in politics and this indeed has been a very long and a very bad political week.

Julian Lindley-French

"Very Well, Alone...ish"

My Dear Fellow Europeans, don't worry I have not gone terminally Churchillian...yet!  However, I thought you should all see Low's famous cartoon which all we British hold close to our hearts at moments of stress with you lot! And, let's face it you can be just so tedious.  Your only saving grace is that you are NOT American...and only some of you are French (c'est une pleasanterie, Nicholas).  That would be all together too much. All best, Julian

Be Careful Europe. You May Get What You Wish For

Alphen. The Netherlands. 14 December. Yesterday in Strasbourg at the European Parliament European Parliamentarians made some of the most shocking and inappropriate attacks ever against one member-state - Britain. The leader of the European People’s Party warned of ‘punishing’ Britain and of ‘tanks and Kalashnikovs’. In the feeding frenzy of myth-making and scapegoating much of it using language that verged on the profoundly disrespectful to Britain and its people.  Indeed, this was unparliamentary language at its very worst, a clear attempt to create a new ‘narrative’ for a crisis entirely of the Eurozone’s own making by placing responsibility on to the British for the appalling failure of Eurozone leadership. 

This is a blame game.  Indeed, it is a blatant attempt to implicate a country that is not even a member of their benighted currency and which warned against its structural contradictions from the very outset. Even President Barroso joined in this stitch-up…and we all know who is behind him. How dare they?

Some talked of British ‘egotism’ and ‘nationalism’. These people would not have the freedoms they enjoy but for the sacrifice of the British people in both World War Two and the Cold War. Some talked of a lack of solidarity by Britain. These are the same people who for years have dodged their responsibilities for Europe’s security and defence and imposed its true cost on the British people. These are the same people who have dodged their responsibilities in Afghanistan forcing the British to do too much of the dying. These are the same people who wringed their hands over Libya as the British did what was necessary to prevent a massacre in Benghazi. How dare European parliamentarians lecture Britain about solidarity?

As for the Eurozone crisis the full extent of the Brussels stitch-up is only now becoming apparent. There was no need for a new treaty, only Chancellor Merkel wanted that and by demanding it she sought to make the crisis one of the EU at 27 rather than 17. It is in any case already falling apart validating once again British pragmatism.  What is more to the point is that having tried to make this a crisis 'owned'by all 27 neither Merkel nor Sarkozy were prepared to offer Britain the joint leadership role befitting Europe’s second or third largest economy and strongest military power. No, Britain was expected to subject itself formally to German and French leadership even though she is one of Europe’s Big Three.  That will never happen.  How dare they?

And now these same people pretend that the Euro-crisis is all of Britain’s doing because London failed to properly regulate the banks in the City, many of which are German and French et al. They conveniently forget Germany’s failure at the summit to offer any real leadership to solve the immediate crisis. They conveniently forget the chronic debt into which their national leaders have pitched almost all of the Eurozone countries. They conveniently forget that Britain is the second net contributor to the EU and that the British taxpayer has for years been transferring huge amounts of money to southern and eastern Europeans with little or no prospect of any benefit. They also fail to notice that Prime Minister Cameron is climbing rapidly in UK opinion polls for saying 'no' to the wrong treaty at the wrong time for the wrong reasons for Europe.

Last week I warned against Britain retreating from Brussels however seductive the vision of our standing defiantly on the White Cliffs of Dover shaking our fist and rekindling the defiance of 1940. “Very well, alone then” was, I suggested, neither a policy nor a strategy for Britain. After yesterday’s sham of a debate in the European Parliament, more redolent of a fascist show trial than a modern, tolerant democratic Europe, I am no longer so sure.

Be careful Europe. If you continue down this road of abusing, blaming and scapegoating Britain for your own lamentable failings you may indeed get what you appear to want. Britain out of the EU.

Julian Lindley-French

Where Next for Europe?

Alphen, the Netherlands.  12 December.  A senior French official privately likened Cameron's negotiating position at last week's European Summit to that of someone invited to a wife-swapping party who failed to bring the wife.  Very French.  A more accurate metaphor would be someone invited to a seemingly perfectly respectable dinner party who upon arrival is told to sell his wife as the price of entry as the hosts cannot afford the party they promised!  In fact the Merkozy ambush on Cameron simply confirmed what was already apparent; the marginalisation of Cameron had been prepared beforehand. So, where do we go from here? 

At least we now know the German-French plan of attack against Britain and the message all their surrogates in the satellite states have been instructed to peddle.  I have just been watching Dutch TV and the Dutch Finance Minister, Jan Kees de Jager, explain to the Dutch people (with a straight face) that the Euro crisis was caused by a lack of banking regulation.  He implied that the British were unreasonable because they resisted more growth-strangling Euro regulation on the banking sector which would have disproportionately damaged Britain for a crisis not of its making.  Cameron made a mistake last week because he opened the door to this kind of nonsense by justifying his stance too narrowly on the protection of the City of London (which is questionable) rather than the profoundly important strategic implications of what Germany and France were trying to do - entrench Europe in growth-free protectionism. 

Yes, deregulation of the banking sector together with a lack of proper oversight did indeed cause a crisis back in 2008 for which the British taxpayer is now paying a high price.  However, the Euro crisis is not a liquidity crisis, as President Sarkozy would have us all believe, but a structural debt crisis.  Debt that was caused by a combination of German exports to a Eurozone which offset the high cost of German production, excessive government borrowing by Eurozone members, the expectation by southern and eastern Europeans that northern and western European taxpayers would go on transferring wealth indefinitely and the exposure of Eurozone banks to said sovereign debt.  The banking crisis may have exacerbated the Eurozone crisis but the cause of it...certainly not.

What the British did last week was to reveal the true nature of the power politics at play. Eurozone-Plus negotiations will now begin on the details of a new intergovernmental treaty designed to impose stricter budget controls on member-states via the European Commission (and, by further extension, via Germany).  There are already signs of the acute political tensions and the sovereignty-crushing implications of what the 24 'others' in the Eurozone-Plus signed up to.  The Socialist contender in the French presidential elections has said that any changes should be delayed until after the elections in May 2012 and in any case he would re-negotiate the deal.  Denmark and Ireland are hinting strongly at the need for referenda before any such treaty change can be ratified which would further delay a 'solution' to the crisis, time the Euro simply does not have.   

Two things are now needed; a sound political strategy in London and a cool head in Berlin. Implicit in the position of Chancellor Merkel is in fact a realisation that no amount of financial engineering or European Central Bank bond purchases will help resolve the immediate crisis.  Greece, and maybe even Italy and a few others, will sooner of later have to fall out of the Euro, if of course the currency itself does not collapse.  Indeed, in Brussels Merkel carefully avoided any commitment that might have been seen as a serious attempt to save the Euro as currently configured.  Germany's objectives instead seem to be to create a structure that would a) prevent a similar crisis destroying a German-centric survivor currency; and b) limit the impact of the inevitable on the German taxpayer.

Following German logic what really matters now is that Europe recovers over time to become competitive globally.  This also implies a further set of questions about the role and extent of future transfers from the western European taxpayer to the rest in pursuit of such an end and whether or not said taxpayers are prepared any longer to maintain such an open-ended commitment. That is why this moment is both structural and strategic.  And here is the irony.  Critical to that game will be the relationship between London and Berlin.  Here Britain has a strong card to play because not only is the single market central to that mission, whilst the Euro is the cancer killing the European body economic, but Britain and Germany agree about the need for a competitive Europe. 

Therefore, if cool heads prevail London and Berlin can begin a dialogue of strategic equals that would not have been possible if Britain had been reduced to a kind of super-Belgium by signing up to a hopelessly flawed deal last week.  Britain is not Belgium - it is the world's fifth or sixth largest economy which many serious commentators worldwide believe is the only European economy likely to challenge Germany over the next twenty or thirty years or so precisely because of its greater openness to the world.  Indeed, had Britain signed up to the Brussels Botch it would have been subjected to the same sovereignty-crushing constraints as the other Eurozone-Plus members with the added 'bonus' of having London pay for much of the cost of 'fixing' a failed currency via a future financial transactions tax 85% of which would have been paid in London.  Fair or what?

Today Britain has preserved the strategic room of manouevre worthy of one Europe's Big Three and which Germany and France last week tried to deny it. When Berlin emerges from its funk it will realise it has to deal with Britain.  The French are unlikely to make that connection whilst lost in pre-election 'faux' anti-Britishness.  Indeed, a more sober Berlin will realise that a deal with Britain is much more likely to promote the kind of economic reforms and disciplines Germany knows full well Europe needs to compete in this world. 

The alternative for Berlin is a structural relationship with France which simply sucks Germany ever deeper into a protectionist, statist, indebted Europe which sooner or later will be overrun by the very forces of globalisation enshrined in the City of London.  The longer Europe puts off those reforms the more deadly the crisis that will eventually consume it...and the current malaise is only a ripple of that economic tsunami.  Hopefully by then Britain will have long before readied itself for the real world.

Cameron?  He must hold his nerve against those many siren voices that seek French and German approbation at any price.  To say that it is twenty-six versus one is ridiculous.  It is two of Europe's three strategic powers versus the third.  All Europeans matter, and should matter equally, but the nature of this crisis has demonstrated the extent to which some Europeans are more equal than others.

Where next for Europe?  Avoid French wife-swapping parties.

Julian Lindley-French

     

Well Done, Prime Minister. Continent Isolated, Britain Right!

Alphen, the Netherlands. 10 December. T.S. Eliot wrote, “We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men”. The most telling image from this week’s European Summit was British Prime Minister David Cameron sitting all on his lonesome in the Council chamber. Not only did it show the childishness of our Dear European Leaders, but also the extent to which this summit was really more power politics than principle. Time will show Cameron to have been right and our Continental friends should realize that the massive majority of Britons have no problem with standing alone. 

The summit was not about the Euro – nothing was done to fix that. Rather, it was about the rebranding of the European Union into an Empire. A German Empire led by Berlin with its French Passe Partout acting as agent. The hollow men and women of the twenty-four other member-states wished to do nothing that might offend Europe’s new headmistress, Chancellor Merkel. So, David Cameron was made to sit on his own in one corner of the room like some offending schoolboy. For Cameron it must have been like being back at Eton.  It was pathetic to observe, as I did – I was one hundred metres away.

President Sarkozy, employing the gracelessness with which we have come to associate with a man who does a great nation no honour, suggested that Cameron had made “unacceptable demands”. If he means by that that Cameron had acted to protect Britain’s core financial services and by extension the British people from a Euro-saving tax 85% of which would have been paid in and by Britain then I suppose that is ‘unacceptable’. Can you imagine a French president agreeing to such a punitive tax on a critical French industry? No way. Can you imagine a French president opening the door to an aggressive set of European regulations that would in time destroy said industry? One only has to look at the ninety-plus cases the French are facing in the European Court of Justice for breaking EU rules to know the answer. 

There is no such thing as a free tax and the result would have been the British people paying for a currency disaster that French newspaper Le Monde says rightly has nothing to do with the British. Moreover, Britain is already the second biggest net contributor to the EU mainly because of a previous Franco-German power play when they stitched up a deal on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that forces the British taxpayer to subsidise French farmers. Sarkozy even had the temerity to suggest that banking deregulation had caused the Euro crisis. This may have something to do with the fact that in January the French will have to honour €52.9 billion in government bonds, a further €35.9 billion in February and by April a further €50 plus billion.

Taken together the refusal of ‘Merkozy’ to address Eurozone sovereign debt, Chancellor Merkel’s insistence that the European Central Bank cannot act as the lender of last resort and the failure to address Europe’s appalling growth-strangling over-regulation now dooms the Euro to failure. No amount of effort to shift the blame for failure onto Britain and Cameron will work because time, and not much time, will demonstrate who really is responsible. 

Of course, the usual suspects came out of the woodwork back in London to attack Cameron. The BBC’s flagship radio news programme ‘Today’ embarked on one of the most politically one-sided set of interviews and commentary’s I have ever heard. Retired diplomats such as Lord Hannay suggested that Britain will now be excluded from ‘process’. Lord Hezeltine even suggested that Europe is in its inevitable way to forming a United States of Europe. What planet are these people on?

They miss three simple verities. First, most political moments are indeed ‘process’, but every now and then a ‘moment’ comes along that is strategic. At such moments a stand needs to be taken and this was indeed a strategic moment. Second, a profound ideological split exists between a statist Europe beloved of the French and the more free market British who are much more attuned to global realities. To have signed a deal on those terms would have subjected Britain to European statist nonsense effectively ending all hope of the flexible economy Europe (and Britain) needs if it is to properly adapt to this globalized age. Third, and above all, not only the future of the Euro was at stake, but also the future power map of Europe.

The choice was between a legitimate Europe made up of democracies and a power Europe led by Germany and France. The deal on offer to Britain was in effect to become a super-Belgium subject to German and French whim. Berlin and Paris have done everything they can over recent years to exclude Britain from their power core and this was to be the final act. Britain will never accept subjugation to their leadership and rightly so.

Through the centuries there have been times when Britain has stood alone against the hegemony of one or two powers in Europe. This is another such moment and we British are again called on to make a stand. So be it! The one inspiring thing that came out of the Brussels summit was to see a British Prime Minister stand on an issue of principle. Now Britain stands clear in opposition to a Europe it does not believe in.  That is the best negotiating position London can possibly have. 

So, be sure of one thing Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy this game has only just begun. In Prime Minister Cameron you are facing at least one European leader who understands that.

Well done, Prime Minister. Continent isolated, Britain defiant…and right!

Julian Lindley-French

Stiffen the Sinews, Prime Minister

Alphen, the Netherlands. 8 December.

Dear Prime Minister Cameron,

We are both off to Brussels today. You are going to attend some minor event at which you are expected by your German and French hosts to play a minor bit part. I will be attending (and you will love this) a meeting on the cost benefits of a common European defence policy. Who says our Continental friends lack a sense of humour!

The EU Brussels Summit will be the most important European moment since Maastricht when the Treaty on European Union 1.0 was signed. Over the years it has slowly been expanded and now its tentacles reach into all aspects of British life. Each iteration of Euro-spread has seen a British prime minister draw a line in the sand only for it to be washed away by the oncoming tide of European regulation. Having made its strategic choice not to join the EU-defining single currency back in 1991 Britain’s semi-detachedness is no longer defensible. Either Britain joins the Euro or leaves the Union. There is no middle ground anymore and you must understand that is the reality implicit in this tous azimuths summit.

Indeed, what you will confront in Brussels masquerading as an attempt to save the confounded Euro is an attempt to effectively change the Union into an Empire. You must at all costs resist this. Your premiership depends upon it. What is at stake in Brussels is a precedent over the use of power by two EU member-states via the denial of sovereignty to the rest. This is a defining moment towards which the entire European movement has been travelling since its founding back in 1950.

Sadly, in the spin apparent on the airwaves and in the column inches you have instead decided to retreat and then mask your failure from the British people. You insist that because no formal transfer of power will take place between London and Brussels no referendum need be put to the British people. This is legalistic mumbo-jumbo and you know it. Implicit in fiscal union is a profound shift of power from London to Brussels via Berlin and Paris. The implications of a shift of power are just as fundamental as any formal transfer of power...in fact more so.

You say you will not make any “unreasonable demands” and that this is not the time to negotiate. When will there be a better time to negotiate? Do you think Germany and France are not fighting like mad for their narrow national interest? Of course they are. Indeed, their collective strategy is to a) give the impression that there is no alternative but their joint leadership - there is; and b) to pretend that Britain is irrelevant - Europe's second or third biggest economy (depending on exchange rates) and largest financial market.  And yet you seem to imply that somehow it is not cricket for Britain to fight for its national interest. They will laugh at you in Brussels. As President Sarkozy said this week, “...it is a joke, David”. As you old Etonians would say “play up, Mr Cameron”.

And here is the rub (I will indeed become Shakespearian). Yes, saving the Euro for now is an important mission, but not at the expense of Britain’s sovereign will and strategic influence and you must realise the distinction between the two. This is about power and you must enter that room in Brussels clear in your head that you will not sell Britain’s crown jewels. Indeed, the real mission is not to save the Euro per se, but rather to resolve the financial crisis caused by the appalling duplicity of those who established the single currency. That can only be done at 27. If Berlin and Paris insist on a separate treaty of the 17 Eurozone countries then it is a power grab – pure and simple and should be seen as such. Behind it will be a principle of German and French power leadership in Europe that Britain must resist today just as it has always resisted.

By all means be constructive where you can but in return you must insist on a new relationship for Britain with the EU built on a set of quid pro quos. The more Germany and France insist on other EU member-states ‘opting-in’, the more you must insist on ‘opting-out’. The more EU state sovereignty Berlin and Paris want to bring under their control via the supine European Commission the more you must insist real power is ‘repatriated' to London. Specifically, you must demand an end to the German and French-inspired Commission attempts to impose their statist ideology on the City of London. You must also insist that the Working Time Directive no longer applies to Britain and all aspects of the Treaty on European Union that deny Britain real control over its borders are also repatriated. Above all, if they go for full exclusion of Britain from all aspects of EU economic governance you must make it perfectly clear that you will call an in-out referendum.  For that is what is at stake. The alternative is taxation without representation.

If you think that distasteful and too narrowly self-interested then just go to the web-site of the European Court of Justice. There you will find a page devoted to member-states breaking their treaty obligations when it suits their national interest. Germany has twice as many cases pending before the Court as Britain and France three times as many. For all the talk emerging from Berlin and Paris about the need for ‘discipline’ you can bet your bottom Euro that it will not apply to them. And remember, you have many more friends on this side of the Channel than you seem to realise if for once you can think strategically rather than tactically – your biggest failing. The mere sight of you fighting will galvanise other Europeans thus far intimidated by the German-French fait accompli.

I am not wont to quote Henry V but I think this summit warrants a little paraphrasing, Prime Minister. “In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of ‘jaw’ blows in our ears then imitate the action of the Tiger”.

Stiffen the sinews, Prime Minister.

Yours sincerely,

Julian Lindley-French

PS I will let you know how our talks about a common European defence policy get on. Don’t hold your breath!