Could Kiev turn out to be 2014's Sarajevo?

The famously impartial BBC, along with most of our national press, seems to have decided that the revolution in Ukraine is A Good Thing.

Just as they hailed the falls of Ceausescu, Saddam, Gaddafi and Mubarak, and are all rooting in unison for the overthrow of President Assad in Syria.

In the case of Ukraine, the now victorious opposition want to steer the country into the European Union, which is obviously progressive and marvellous. Added to which the ousted President Yanukovych used his security forces to shoot demonstrators, and had execrable taste in interior décor. Both of which are self-evidently unforgivable.

Fair enough: hanging IS too good for him

When I was at school we were taught that the Whig interpretation of history, which viewed the past as one long progression to the broad sunlit uplands of enlightenment and liberal democracy, had been completely discredited.

But it still seems to be very much alive and well in Broadcasting House and elsewhere.

This is perhaps borne out by the oddly selective media interest in overseas uprisings and oppression. For example, there is considerable civil unrest in Venezuala at present, but we hear little about it (particularly on the BBC) because the country is well known to be a socialist paradise.

Venezuala? Nope, nothing to report here.

North Korea and Zimbabwe must both be high on anyone’s lists of regimes that are simply evil, but both are very effective at suppressing news-gathering and firmly in the “too hard” pile when it comes to doing anything about them.

Now, I do not suggest that fans of the Ukrainian revolution have necessarily got it wrong. I merely note that many leading opposition voices there appear to be, for want of a better word, fascists.

Similarly, while no one disputes that Saddam was a monster, to what extent has life improved for the average Iraqi since he was overthrown? Look closely at the Al-Qaeda-affiliated opponents of Assad, and one cannot help but wonder whether that is a simple conflict between right and wrong.

One may also pause to wonder just how long the enthusiasm of much of the British press would last if Ukraine did join the EU and immigration from there replaced the inflow of Romanians and Bulgarians on their list of things to fulminate about.

I freely confess that I know almost nothing about Ukraine. My views are probably skewed by the fact that I learned political geography from my brother’s 1938 Chad Valley tinplate globe. This not only gave me a wholly inflated idea of the extent of British power, but also taught me that Lvov (now the Ukrainian Lviv) was one of the major cities of Poland.

Given the massive shifts of boundaries and populations at the end of the Second World War, it should come as little surprise that not all Ukrainians share a common view of their place in the world, or their destiny.

History has given Neville Chamberlain an absolutely terrible press for describing the dispute over the Czech Sudetenland in 1938 as ‘a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing’, but I cannot help thinking that it would serve as quite an apt description of many of the lead stories in the news today.

Similar words might easily have been used about the assassination of an Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo in 1914, and we all now know where that led – though few had any inkling of it at the time.

Perhaps in a hundred years people will turn the yellowing pages of 2014’s newspapers, as we do those of a century ago, and shake their heads in wonderment at the innocence of those poor people who failed to see the spark of their coming destruction.

All one can do is devoutly hope not.

One of the best things about living on an island is that we in Britain have a ready-made excuse for being insular. We cannot isolate ourselves from events elsewhere in the world, and we should always try to support good versus evil.

I merely observe that the distinction is not always clear-cut, and there is absolutely no need for any of us to wade into conflicts we do not fully understand, and in which no vital British interests are at stake.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The European earthquake that could change our lives forever

How would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and found that Britain had ceased to exist, and become part of another country?

You would be a touch surprised, I imagine. Yet within living memory, on 16 June 1940, just such a development was announced by no less a patriot than Churchill himself: “France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations but one Franco-British Union”.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and this was Britain’s last throw to keep France fighting Germany. It did not work. The French capitulated and the “indissoluble” union was consigned to the footnotes of history.

Why bring this up now? Because we are similarly balanced on the edge of a precipice and might find ourselves rudely shocked by the speed and radicalism of the proposed solutions.

We watch the unfolding catastrophe in Greece in much the same detached way as most people in Britain observed the Czech crisis of 1938, memorably described by Prime Minister Chamberlain as “a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing”.

Yet what is going on in southern Europe now has the potential to cost us far more financially than the Second World War ever did, and it is not just money that is at stake. If governments default, banks collapse, wages cannot be paid and cash machines stop working, it does not take a particular pessimist to see the potential for civil unrest on a scale that will make last summer’s riots look like a nursery school sports day.

It is particularly galling that all this was deliberately set up by the euro enthusiasts who realised that their dream of a single European state could never be realised through democratic consent. So they decided to build it by creating a monetary union that they knew full well would be inherently unstable, but could advance the cause of political union through “beneficial crises”.

As crazy Bond villain master plans goes, this one has worked an absolute treat – to the extent that we even have traditionally Eurosceptic politicians in the UK urging closer union on the members of the Eurozone as the only way to resolve their problems.

But why should even that work? The smart money at the time of writing seems to be on Greece being ejected from the euro and unimaginably large sums of money being splurged to keep Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy within the club. Though it is hard to see what ultimate purpose this will serve, other than saving the faces of the shining-eyed true believers in the European project.

Should they succeed, we would end up with the German-dominated Continent that two world wars were fought to avoid – with the difference that the Germans would not be an all-conquering master race, but the hard-working suckers paying to keep their southern neighbours in the comfortable style to which they have become accustomed. Given the resentments that would be generated on both sides, it is hard to see that as a durable arrangement.

There is absolutely no good outcome to this almighty mess. If you were planning on getting richer any time soon, I would forget it. But the least bad denouement is surely one through which we can see emerging from the dust of the earthquake not more Europe, but less - particularly for those of us in Britain, who are blessed by our geography and history with the ability to explore wider horizons than just looking longingly over the garden fence.

But standing on your own is tough. Even Churchill was tempted to gamble his country’s independence to keep an ally on side. As the crisis across the Channel deepens, we must maintain a hawk-like watch on our current leaders. Otherwise, who knows what we might find ourselves signed up for in a doomed attempt to mitigate the short term pain of change?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Too little, too soon in Labour's opera?

The prize for the most useless text message of all time must surely go to the one I received at teatime on Saturday, reading “Miliband wins!”

Since the sender is a fan of both textspeak and The X-Factor, I wondered for a nanosecond whether a military band had scored an unlikely victory in Simon Cowell’s latest talent contest. But I swiftly realised that the timing was all wrong, and fired up the news on my BlackBerry to satisfy my intense curiosity about which of the geeky north London political obsessives had seized the glittering prize of leadership of the Labour party.

At the time, I was on my way to see a Baroque opera of almost incredible obscurity: Steffani’s Niobe, Regina di Tebe (first staged in 1688, next performed in 2008 and only now receiving its British premiere). This was a bizarre and hugely complex tale involving a two-timing queen, her world-weary and indecisive husband and assorted gods, priests, a winged magician and malevolent underworld spirits. Much like the Labour party conference, in fact.

It culminated in a most convincing fire engulfing the palace of Thebes, killing all the royal children, whereupon the king committed suicide and Niobe herself turned to stone in despair. And I could only think: yes, that will be pretty much like the atmosphere at Ma Miliband’s house next time they all get together for a big family gathering, only with better music.

It is as though the Archbishop of Canterbury were about to place the crown on the 80-year-old Prince of Wales’s head, and Prince Andrew swanned up and grabbed it for himself.

Not being a Labour supporter myself, I naturally rejoice in the party’s selection of the more left wing candidate for the post, and one whose name so conveniently rhymes with “red”. But as a Briton, I deeply regret that our alternative Prime Minister is now a 40-year-old who has only five years’ experience in Parliament and has never held down a job outside politics. It is all too little, too soon.

It is ironic that one of the accusations levelled against Ed during the campaign was that he had been dithering and indecisive in office, when his brother might well have been Labour leader today if he hadn’t bottled a series of opportunities to dethrone Gordon Brown. True, there is the saying that he who wields the dagger rarely gains the crown. But the political career graveyard is also full of those who let “I dare not” wait upon “I would”.

Is a bit of dithering indecision at the top necessarily such a bad thing, in any case? It might have spared us Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a younger brother myself, I have some sympathy with Ed Miliband’s defiance of the convention that the older sibling should be the brighter high-achiever, with the number two being dimmer, nicer and ready to step into the elder’s shoes if he should go under the proverbial bus.

But isn’t it a bit odd that, in a nation of 60 million people, the choice for leadership of one of our great political parties should ultimately came down to one between two brothers? What does that say for Labour’s success in widening opportunity for all over the last 110 years?

The track record of younger brothers in political leadership does not seem all that impressive, but might the world have been a better place if Ted Kennedy, Raul Castro or Jeb Bush had been first to the top? No, probably not.

The obvious British precedent is of a most distinguished foreign secretary who never made it to Number 10, despite being leader of his party in the House of Commons. He was called Austen Chamberlain and he had a younger half-brother called Neville who did ultimately claim the prize. Remind me, how did that one turn out?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.