Set Europe aside, Mr Cameron, and reinvigorate a genuinely One Nation outlook at home

Giles Marshall 10.49am

I’m not sure “Fresh Start” is quite the right name for a group of Tory MPs busy re-hashing what is by now a pretty hackneyed message. The group is publishing a report calling for the repatriation of significant powers from the EU to Britain.

So the same call that has been made by Tory MPs since Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech – a fresh start indeed.

Yet, of course, the group’s report is newsworthy because David Cameron is himself entering the European maelstrom, with a speech due on Friday that advance spin suggests will be redefining the British relationship with Europe and calling for a referendum on the terms of our membership. Mr Cameron is going to complete the work that Sir John Major began with Maastricht it seems, though Sir John himself had rather assumed that the Maastricht agreement was an end in itself.

The problem for Mr Cameron is that of the few policy positions he does hold, a vague Euro-scepticism is among them. This is a Prime Minister viewed with deep suspicion by the majority right-wing of his parliamentary party, and he undoubtedly sees a new Euro-scepticism as just the sort of thing to appease them with.

He should beware. There is no beast so determinedly single-minded as the Euro-sceptic Tory MP, and they will not be appeased by some vague ideas about renegotiation. Nor shall they be too happy about what must seem a far distant prospect of a referendum on Europe under a majority Tory administration, especially given its current unlikelihood.

Hatred of the EU has become part of the DNA of many Tory MPs, to the extent that any rational debate about it is virtually impossible.

Take the Obama administration. After successful reciprocal visits between President Obama and Mr Cameron, you could be forgiven for thinking that this was a transatlantic relationship built on the strongest of foundations. Back to the glory days of Reagan and Thatcher.

Well, in the sense that Reagan consistently belied his own rhetoric by following a US interest that typically denied Britain her own, I suppose it is. For all the bonhomie of Cameron and Obama, the administration has not been slow in making it very clearly known that it regards these European manouevres as unwise and potentially disastrous. A Britain isolated from Europe will not be able to rely on any special relationship with the United States. Her realpolitik views a single European unit as the most useful form of European ally. Any country standing outside of that – including Britain – will be marginalised.

American attitudes are nothing compared to those of powerful European countries such as Germany. Gunther Krichbaum, a key CDU ally of Chancellor Merkel, warned of economic disaster for Britain if she stood outside the single market. Just as British Tory euro-sceptics are vigorous in their call for ‘renegotiation’, so most European players are equally determined that Britain cannot keep treating the EU as a la carte.

Mr Cameron is more Euro-sceptic than Sir John Major. Yet he also appears to be a less effective diplomat. Andrew Rawnsley, in a thoughtful piece for the Observer on Sunday, recalled Major’s tenacious and canny diplomacy (“a gentleman”, according to one of his European adversaries, Ruud Lubbers), which yielded the opt-outs of the Maastricht Treaty.  But, as Rawnsley reminds us, such opt-outs benefited Major not a bit, as he watched his 1992 election triumph dissolve into the ashes of a disastrous party war.

David Cameron is not, as I’ve noted before, a leader with deep roots in the Conservative party. It is something that isolates him, and it would be foolhardy of him to think that he can ride the Euro-sceptic bandwagon. Europe wins few votes amongst the British electorate, but a perception that Britain is an isolated, marginal figure in world affairs does resonate, and in appeasing certain MPs, Mr Cameron is heading in that direction.

He should leave Europe alone, and appropriately enough on the day of the launch of a new book about Tory modernisation, look to reinvigorating a domestic One Nation policy. Therein lies our real chance of reversing decades of Tory electoral decline.

Follow Giles on Twitter @gilesmarshall

A little solution to the EU’s big Nobel Peace Prize balls-up

Richard Ellis 10.29am

I can’t stand the French. Their accent irritates me. As does their arrogance, their dishonesty, their laziness and their ingratitude.

The idea that their cooking is better than ours is nonsensical (how would you rather start your day - a full English breakfast or a croissant?).

And the suggestion that they have a nobler sense of chivalry is a joke (no Englishman worthy of the name has even seen those pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge; the French published them).

I don’t care much for the Germans either, though deep down I imagine that our Teutonic cousins would be almost as civilised as us if they didn’t share a land border with France.

Nevertheless, even I can acknowledge that the people of France and Germany have demonstrated a remarkable greatness of spirit in the years since 1945. Three bloody wars in seventy years left deep scars and painful resentments.

During the mid-1960s, my father spent a few months living in Paris. One evening he had plans to meet some friends in a bar and invited a (French) colleague. He explained that there would be some French people there but also some Dutch and probably a German. Once apprised of the guest list the colleague lost interest: “I would rather stick my hand in a bucket of s**t than shake hands with a German.” And that was some while after the end of the Second World War.

The statesmen and peoples of France and Germany have put these antipathies behind them and forged a deep alliance. That is both a remarkable transformation and a tremendous achievement - and it played a major (though not an exclusive) role in securing peace for Europe. If anyone has earned a Nobel Peace Prize it is the French and the Germans.

The European Union certainly has not. The EU was not even around when the Franco-German rapprochement took place. Nor, with its north and south at diplomatic loggerheads, is the EU a matchless example of how to run a peaceful body politic.

It is too late for the prize to be re-awarded but perhaps a compromise could be reached. Brussels could offer to hold the prize on behalf of the French and the Germans. In fact, now I think of it, that would be even better than giving it to the French and Germans outright. After all, a joint award would bring questions of who should have actual possession of the medal and when.

The French would be bound to hold onto the medal for longer than their turn, which would irk the Germans, who would certainly retaliate - and that could leave us all right back at square one.

Richard Ellis is a solicitor and former parliamentary researcher

Procrastination, prevarication & paralysis: an idiot’s guide to the Eurozone crisis

Henry Hopwood-Phillips 9.46am

I always thought that the EU had secured the winning hand.

In success, it could boast that its social democratic model, inching towards fiscal and ultimately political union, had created a permanent and enlightened route to general prosperity. In failure, the globalised proportions of its wreckage would ensure that only its supranational intervention could offer succour.

Yet the EU’s problem is that its chief creditor, Germany, has been thinking like a nation, rather than a supranational overseer. It is not that Germany is not willing to play paymaster to a transparently political project. Rather, Germany resents the fact that beneath the surface, economically the EU project resembles a cheese grater.

ClubMed, eager to ignore the holes, yearns for closer political unity because of the accompanying German credit card.

The Germans, not wanting to subsidise the European periphery forever, has suggested mandatory terms and conditions and requested appropriate collateral in return for pooling proportions of debt, privatisation, teutonic budgetary discipline, and flexible employment laws. ClubMed baulks at the small print.

The tension between German realism and Mediterranean myopia is painfully apparent. Angela Merkel has said that under no circumstances would she consider Eurobonds. Italy’s ex-prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, retorts that if Germany continues to prevent the ECB from printing money she should quit the euro. Italy’s current leader, Mario Monti, tells the German chancellor that “six decades of integration are at stake”.

In the past, at least, political obfuscation of economic realities was intelligible while the the direction of the EU’s hopes was centripetal. However, with the EU’s economically strongest member now in direct confrontation with the rest, the outcome of the crisis is far from predictable.

The impending Spanish bank bailout ought to be as conventional as a banking crisis can be, following a relatively simple process. Nonetheless, foreign investors are shunning the prospect - not just because they believe the books are cooked but because how they might be cooked is no longer discernible. An efficient and free market should not be run on fiddled facts but it routinely is. Cynicism does not ruin markets on its own. Rather confusion over the target and form of that cynicism, as with the current EU chaos, appears to. It certainly paralyses credit flows, meaning that Spain is now required to spend $600,000 to insure merely $10 million of debt.

The president of the ECB, Mario Draghi, has identified the systemic weaknesses and trends and said it cannot continue, recently describing the Eurozone as “unsustainable”.

Exasperation is noticeable even in the EU’s own reports. Its top brass has informed the new French president, Francois Hollande, that the economic assumptions behind his budget plans are “optimistic”, measures to hit budget targets “not sufficiently specified”, and France’s record on meeting past targets has been “mixed”.

In this febrile climate, the technical solutions suggested in answer to the European crisis - from a ‘Grexit’ to Eurozone deposit schemes - seem to me to be superfluous. At this pretty pass the repair of the EU body seems more dependent on the cogency and cohesiveness of its soul than any mere physical tinkering.

Across the opinion pages: the Master, technical schools, open spaces and prisoners

Nik Darlington 2.15pm

The Times (£) has a brilliant range of comment pieces published today, worth venturing behind the paywall to read. Opinion genuinely is one of the newspaper’s USPs, along with its beautiful and accessible multi-platform digital interface.

Tuesdays typically mean Rachel Sylvester’s unmissable column, and today she plays on a favourite theme, ‘the Master’. Often enough she has commented how Conservative party modernisers afford Tony Blair deified status, his autobiography a fixture of Tory bedside tables and playbook for the contemporary political scene. This week, however, it’s all about how everyone’s wrongly reading the Blairite tea leaves, including Ed Miliband.

The truth is that Mr Blair was authentically of the centre in a way that neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Miliband is. He was an entryist who had taken control of his party, whereas the current Tory and Labour leaders are both, in background and beliefs, far more of their tribes. The success of new Labour was based on turning this reality into a political strategy that was pursued with ruthless efficiency and consistency. Everything that Mr Blair did and said - to begin with at least - was dedicated to demonstrating that he was more at home on the middle ground than in the Labour comfort zone…

Mr Blair took office promising new Labour would be the “servants of the people”. He lost power when the perception took hold that he wanted to be a Master of the Universe and his MPs turned on him. Neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Miliband have yet shown whether they are the servants of the people or their parties.

Rough reading for both leaders, who feel the weight of the former prime minister on their shoulders in more ways than one. And a reminder, yesterday, of Mr Blair’s uncommon talents.

Meanwhile, Lord Baker, an honorary life member of the TRG, writes about “a new wave of university technical colleges”. The Government is nearly doubling the number of these colleges, which supported by universities provide technical training to pupils between 14 and 19-years-old. Britain’s school leavers need more technical nous to compete in a challenging global marketplace.

We had a few technical schools at the end of the war but these were killed off by English snobbery. Everyone wanted to go the grammar school on the hill, not the one in the town with dirty jobs and oily rags. Germany didn’t make the same mistake: they adopted and still have the 1944 English education system and it is one of the reasons why Angela Merkel is ruling the roost. These colleges are our chance to rectify that mistake.

Under the Labour government Lord Baker, a former Education Secretary himself, convinced Andrew Adonis to trial two of these UTCs. Their expansion was supported by the Conservative party at the last general election, a pledge that has been wholeheartedly fulfilled by the coalition government.

The outgoing Director-General of the National Trust, Dame Fiona Reynolds, eulogises on the centenary of Octavia Hill’s death. With a theme that I also used in an article earlier this year for the Richmond Magazine, Dame Fiona writes that the protection of open green spaces is a battle still being waged, and one still very much worth waging.

When [Octavia Hill] died in 1912, the National Trust had 713 members. We now have four million. While she would no doubt be impressed, she would not be surprised, and she would certainly not be complacent. She believed, as we do, that beauty, nature and heritage are fundamental to the human condition. She spoke of everlasting delight. If she were here now, she would describe the past hundred years of the Trust and what we stand for as one of enduring relevance; a cause which we must never cease to pursue.

Finally, the experienced barrister and chairman of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC, writes that Britain should give in to the European Court’s ruling to award the vote to prisoners.

Far from being harmless, giving prisoners the unqualified right to vote has positive values. How better to promote peaceful coexistence in society than to remove any sense in prisoners of second-class citizenship. It is precisely what the Government is preaching in its recent legislation on sentencing reform - namely, greater efforts to make the rehabilitation of prisoners more vigorous in penal institutions.

The right of every citizen to vote is acknowledged to be a constitutional right. It is in truth not a human right but it certainly is a civil liberty guaranteed by Article 3 of Protocol No 1 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom, which the UK ratified as long ago as 1952.

Egremont has long been favourable to the Government’s principled and correct stance on penal reform, and last year we published an excellent article by the Howard League’s Sophie Willett. The ‘bang them up and lock away the key’ school of justice is outmoded and discredited; Britain’s prisons are at bursting point. That much is true.

However, the right to vote is not God-given, as Sir Louis agrees. Nor should it be beholden on any sovereign government to afford certain constitutional rights to individuals who transgress this country’s laws and bring harm to fellow citizens.

Reform the nature of a criminal’s penance, certainly; but that penance must still be served.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

Does a vigneron in Rousillon shed a tear for the Greeks?

Nik Darlington 9.42am

Suppose that North-Eastern England, the region tending to be most heavily dependent on internal transfer payments, went bust, à la Grèce. Would the rest of England feel happy, or even obliged, to bail the region out? Of course it would.

Even if Scotland went belly up, despite all the rumblings of independence, the rest of the UK would come to its aid - as it did, for instance, to bail out Scotland’s biggest financial institutions (and the North-East’s, come to think of it).

But does a vigneron in Rousillon shed much of a tear for the Greeks? Or more to the point, a bank manager in Berlin? Or a station master in Stockholm?

The emotional flaw at the centre of the European Union is that however many years of postwar ‘good Europeanism’ there have been, Europe’s citizens (has that term ever felt less secure?) still feel the tug of the historic, the local and the familiar, more than the modern, the continental and the abstract.

A Greek default and eurozone exit makes dreadful economic sense, unless, perhaps, you’re Greek. Yet Europe’s emotions are directing the popular response, and, in the case of those northern Europeans with apparently unimpeachable morals, even the economic response too.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

European Parliament must find a bigger voice amidst the chaos

Nik Darlington 11.08am

The European Parliament is vast, its shiny superstructure reflecting the functional surroundings of Brussels back on itself. Yet when the citizens of Europe glance proverbially in its direction, it is not a reflection of themselves that they see - a reflection of their current plight - but a remote and faceless edifice.

However once inside, the Parliament shows itself for what it is. Or at least it offers a glimpse of what it could be.

Much happens here, but few follow it, fewer truly understand it, and even fewer, maybe, genuinely care about it. Whatever one’s views about the European Union, this is something to be regretted.

What we think of as the “European Union” is in fact a smorgasbord of not always complementary (nor complimentary) institutions.

Briefly, the Council consists of ministers passing laws, coordinating policies, and generally representing individual governments depending on the subject matter (e.g. agriculture or transport). Note that this is not the European Council we read of David Cameron attending with other heads of government. That irregular grouping sets the EU’s political direction and has no power to make laws.

The European Commission comprises nominees from individual member states who are assigned a portfolio (Lord Mandelson was a trade commissioner, for instance), and represent the interests of the EU as a whole.

Then there is the European Parliament, a body of more than 700 directly elected representatives from throughout the EU. Members (MEPs) serve Europe’s citizens in a similar way to how our MPs operate in Westminster - in essence holding the executive to account, scrutinising legislation, acting on behalf of constituents, and voting on new laws. MEPs typically stand for office as candidates of traditional political parties - e.g. the Conservatives, Labour, or France’s UMP - which subsequently coalesce with other European parties under like-minded umbrella labels.

As Europe lurches from one crisis to another, I believe it is the European Parliament that has to take the lead.

At a seminar for senior editors yesterday in Brussels, an Italian socialist MEP, Roberto Gualtieri, said: “Non è una problema economica, non è una problema tecnocratica, ma è una problema democratica”. Europe is on the brink because it is suffering a crisis of democracy, above all else. While Rome, Athens, or elsewhere burns, unaccountable placemen fiddle at the fringes. Or so the narrative goes.

The response of Europe’s leaders has been politically anaemic and economically heavy-handed. Throughout the continent in recent years, failed governments have been thrown out by voters. Largely in favour of rightist or centre-right alternatives, although the Left’s renewal is gaining traction. And while politicians have scarcely been so reviled, the political process has scarcely so mattered.

At the same time, euroscepticism has probably never been as strong. And not only in Britain. Why? Because at a time of public frustration, citizens are demanding a greater voice - maybe not their voice, necessarily, but a voice that represents their hopes and fears. The European Union, however, is seen to be inimical to that visceral democratic desire.

It needn’t be. A more self-confident and, crucially, better understood European Parliament can be that voice. Its members do, after all, have a democratic mandate. Of course, European elections in Britain typically attract few voters, but apathy is as much the fault of the electors as the elected.

The European Parliament also has, in the experienced German politician Martin Schulz, a president (akin to the Speaker of the House of Commons but with more political power) with strong opinions about the current crisis, and opinions that diverge from the inflexibly austere forces that have led the EU’s response to date. Brussels sources point out that President Schulz’s strong opinions are not weakly held, not shall they be meekly guarded.

In Britain, the public seems to prize that certain sort of parliamentarian who stands tall, is independent and speaks out “for the people”. Europe’s problems are indeed largely economic, but the solutions must be political. And those solutions must be seen to be legitimate in the eyes of Europeans.

There is only one European institution that can achieve this, and therein lies the European Parliament’s unenviable, but also unmissable, opportunity. And, some might add, its duty.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

Germany has the answer to Britain’s football finance mess

Sara Benwell 7.17am

It’s not often I get to combine two of my biggest passions in the same article, but football and finance are certainly worthy of more than a passing glance at the moment. Sadly, this is because football’s finances are in a mess.

Administration

In recent days, two big British clubs have gone into administration: Glasgow Rangers and Portsmouth, the latter for the second time in two years.  Rangers’ situation is particularly eye-grabbing, considering their size, history and prestige.The club entered administration with £9 million of taxes unpaid, and could face a bill of as much as £50 million pending the outcome of an upcoming court case.

Since 2004, thirteen clubs have gone into administration, such as Leeds United and Crystal Palace. In this instance, clubs are docked league points, but it is questionable whether the points deduction is an effective deterrent. While it is something of a financial professional foul, very few clubs hit liquidation and it is believed that some can opt for administration as a sound business move. It allows them to restructure their finances, to find a new owner and to eliminate existing debt. After which, the clubs can be in a position to borrow more money.

The downside is that once a club goes into administration, the appointed administrator must attempt to pay back any creditors as much money as possible.  This is achieved by selling off the club’s assets, including players, grounds, training pitches, merchandise and anything else that can be sold to raise funds. 

“Fit and proper persons”

In 2004, the Premier League, Football League and the FA introduced the ‘Fit and Proper Persons Test’, which must be passed by any director of a football club, or any owner of more than 30 per cent of a club’s shares.  It was introduced following concerns that anybody, even those who had been convicted of fraud, could take over football clubs.

The test means anybody with an unspent criminal conviction involving dishonesty, or who has run a football club into administration twice, cannot take over a club. Yet the test is could be seen as ineffective because it does not examine what plans potential owners may have for a club or whether they have sufficient funding.

The Fit and Proper Persons Test has been called into question in both the Rangers and the Portsmouth administration cases. Portsmouth’s owner Vladimir Antonov has been arrested on fraud charges (which he denies), eight months after the test cleared him. The Football League claims that Antonov tricked the test by supplying misleading or fraudulent information.

Rangers’ administration has also prompted an investigation by the SFA, because despite Craig Whyte’s being ruled “fit” to buy Rangers last year, it has since emerged that he did not inform the SFA that he was a previously disqualified company director.

Out of control expenditure

Clubs have spent millions on player transfers and most Premier League clubs are weighed down under heavy debts. Premier League clubs’ net debt in 2010 stood at £2.6 billion (Chelsea is currently the highest with £733 million). For more on this, see Nik’s Total Politics article last year about football’s debt problem.

UEFA Fair Play Rules

UEFA has issued its Financial Fair Play Rules, meaning that this financial year all European clubs must at least break even.

This seems already to be prompting some change as many experts put the 70 per cent fall in spending in the January transfer window down to clubs’ attempting to meet the UEFA requirements.  The biggest disclosed transfer this year was Papiss Demba Cisse’s £9 million move to Newcastle United - quite some drop from last years, when Chelsea paid £50 million for Fernando Torres and Liverpool paid £35 million for Andy Caroll. Blunt business, followed by even blunter shooting.

That said, the UEFA ruling could help reduce player fees but it will do nothing about rogue owners, and there is some concern that the ruling may lead to the clubs making the most money going unchallenged. In addition, the true impact will depend on how strictly it is enforced. How likely is UEFA to ban the likes of Barcelona from European football if their balance sheets don’t add up?

Salary Cap

One suggestion that has been made is a salary cap. It operates in rugby union, for instance, but how would this play out for British football? One serious concern is whether clubs could retain the best talent if British leagues went it alone.  A cap would only really work if it were implemented across the whole of Europe, which seems unlikely.

The German way…

One solution might be to operate a system that is closer to the German way of doing things, something Nik has brought up on these pages and elsewhere before. 

Under the German Bundesliga’s rules, no ‘outside’ investor can own more than 49 per cent of a club’s shares and at least 51 per cent must remain be owned club members. The Bundesliga has the lowest ticket prices and the highest average attendance of Europe’s five major leagues. It is also the only major domestic league whose clubs make a collective profit.

Another benefit of the way the German system is run is that the sport is more attractive to sponsors, particularly since games are free to air, and therefore  highly televised meaning that popularity remains high.  The German system remains closer to the fans, and decisions are made which honour both the sport and the spirit of the game.

The Conservative MP Elizabeth Truss had an op-ed in yesterday’s Times calling for us to “rebuild Britain’s economy the German way”. Maybe we should rebuild our ‘beautiful game’ their way too. At the moment at least, it is something to aspire to.

Follow Sara on Twitter @sarabenwell

Western decline is not inevitable as long as we learn from our mistakes

Aaron Ellis 12.13pm

The West has had a tough time these last few years, flying from one crisis to another as if in a pinball machine and some of the levers seemingly controlled by the Chinese.

Some believe that the ongoing sovereign debt crisis is not only a crisis of globalisation but also one of Western identity. Given the alarm with which many in Europe reacted to the possibility of Beijing coming to their financial rescue late last year, they might be onto something.

Yet it is not the rise of countries like China that is dispiriting. Rather it is the self-pity that their rise has engendered in the West. Our public discourse has a melancholic tone, often combined with morbid humour: such as the gag that Chinese leaders only visit the United States to collect the rent. This kind of talk about Western decline is exaggerated and I reckon that we can reverse our relative decline by learning from some of the mistakes of the last decade.

First, we need to take a step back from the West’s day-to-day crises and look at the bigger picture. Professor Julian Lindley-French, an associate fellow at Chatham House, has done this, and in the passage below he displays typical common sense:

Whilst it is certainly the case that the emergence of China, India and others on the world stage is leading to a new balance of power, neither the West nor Britain are in terminal decline.

However, unless the despond of defeatism that seems to affect and afflict much of Europe is overcome decline could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy…[T]he zero sum game and with it the idea that if power rises on one part of the planet it must by definition decline elsewhere, is a compelling and neat academic treatise. Unfortunately, it is wrong.

There is no automatic reason why an increase in the power of China, India et al should automatically lead to a loss of Western power. Power and its wielding are subject to many factors.

In the context of American decline vis-à-vis China, an interesting article has pointed out that…

… Many studies note that the growth rates of China’s per capita income, value added in high technology industries, and military spending exceed those of the United States and then conclude that China is catching up. This focus on growth rates, however, obscures China’s decline relative to the United States in all of these categories. China’s growth rates are high because its starting point was low. China is rising, but it is not catching up.

There are things we can do in the West to overcome the challenges we face in the 21st century. For example, there needs to be a fundamental change in the way the United States leads the Western Alliance.

American hegemony is a Good Thing, in my view, but it has also had two harmful effects on Western cohesion. The almost universal power of the US military is a disincentive for the British and Europeans to spend money on defence with their security more or less guaranteed by others. Dan Trombly explained this point in more depth some months ago.

Because of the US hegemony, Washington also excludes NATO governments from its policy-making; the US decides on a policy – after bitter bureaucratic struggles – and informs its allies of the decision after it has been taken. This process wastes NATO governments’ expertise, leads to miscoordination and prevents British and European co-ownership of US policies.

President Obama has begun to remedy the first problem with his decision to “lead from behind” in Libya, but Afghanistan and the New START negotiations are perfect examples of the second one. A more inclusive policy making process will help the West overcome the challenges ahead.

There also must be clearly defined national interests separate from Western ones.

Western malaise is partly caused by an acute sense of overstretch, which was partly caused in turn by what I have called on these pages the “internationalisation of the national interest”.

This is the belief that the world is so globalised and interconnected that every crisis is a threat to our security and it is vital we are involved in sorting out the problem. Try having a coherent foreign policy with this belief as your framework!

If the Western Alliance is to be strong and united on the issues that matter to all its members then we also must appreciate there are issues where our interests are not at stake and cooperation must be more flexible. Germany’s position on Libya and, to a lesser extent America’s, is a perfect example of this.

It has been said that self-pity destroys everything except itself. The self-pity of many in the West about our supposed decline is destroying our chances of being relevant in the multipolar world of the 21st century.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis