Thursday 24 March 2011

San Paulo

Tony Blair did not know, and possibly still does not know, that they spoke Portuguese in Brazil. But even he would not have uttered quite the howler that provides the title to this post. In George Osborne, we have a Chancellor of the Exchequer, or even a human being, who is - now, brace yourselves for this - even more ignorant than Tony Blair.

Speaking of Portuguese matters, just as we could hardly have failed to bail out a country which forms a single economic and cultural unit with this one, and more of whose citizens have always lived over here than over there, so, even if not without conditions, why not go to the aid of any ally so old that they use GMT and BST, eat Cadburys chocolate, and let us use the Azores during the Falklands War? When has anything like the last of those ever been done for us by the countries favoured, even and routinely above Britain, by the objectors, namely America and Israel?

The euro, and with it the entire Eurofederalist project, was always going to be finished as soon as the Germans refused to pay for, say, the Portuguese, or the Italians, or the Irish, or the Greeks, or the Spaniards. Not that I like the term PIIGS. But let them adopt the arrangement that one of them had into the 1980s, of issuing their own currencies, but with the values of those currencies fixed permanently at whatever that of sterling happened to be at the given time; the younger people are in the Irish Republic, the more that they support this move, whereas the singers of sentimental songs are growing older and older.

An option for plenty of other countries, too. Indeed, for as many as wanted to adopt it. Costing us nothing, as the former Irish arrangement cost us nothing. The euro has failed, vindicating those, such as Gordon Brown and Ed Balls but not Ken Clarke and David Cameron, who insisted on staying out. Deal with it. Adopting the dollar means subservience. Deal with that, too.

The Irish Republic no longer has any territorial dispute with the United Kingdom. Portugal has never had any. But Spain still has one, about which she could bang on to her heart's content in the run-up to elections, since this state of affairs would empty any such words of the slightest practical meaning. Likewise, the Greeks and the Elgin Marbles? Why not? But then there is the spiteful continued ban on the Queen's visiting Greece on account of the House into which she has married. After all, Her Majesty will be going to the Irish Republic later this year.

And after the return of the Sterling Area, beginning with countries none of which was ever in the British Empire (what is now the Irish Republic was in the United Kingdom, something quite different and the key to understanding the true history of the Irish in the British imperial period), how about the return of the Commonwealth Preference Area, again including, as the Commonwealth itself now does, countries whose accession constitutes, entirely voluntarily, their first ever tie to Britain?

But all of this requires a Chancellor a great deal more intelligent and better-informed that George Osborne, and a Prime Minister a great deal more intelligent and better-informed than to have appointed him. Not that such people would be too difficult to find.

12 comments:

  1. You'd think he'd get it right, being a St Paul's boy.

    Thank you for making these points below the line on Coffee House, where they seem to be infatuated with Matthew Hancock, known to your longterm readers as Osborne's "right-hand man".

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  2. I've never met a Saint Paul's boy whom I didn't like, and I know several. Admittedly, I've never met George Osborne. The same goes for Etonians and David Cameron. But on topic, please.

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  3. I preferred David Davis to Cameron in the leadership battle and was disappointed that the clean-cut, Brylcreem Boy, Cameron got the nod. It was a classic case of style over substance in my opinion. Blair was the epitome of style over substance and look where he took us.
    Mind you, I cannot get enthused over your boy Ed. He is entirely unprepossessing and his nasal voice just grates.

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  4. Admit it, your problem with Hancock is that he is younger than you.

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  5. Is he? Then he must have had a very tough paper round.

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  6. The Queen is probably not welcome for many things. For example in her name a number of EOKA members were hanged in Cyprus - something that enrages all Greeks to this day.

    And that is before you deal with her rather right-wing in-laws who are of course her cousins both through Queen Victoria and Queen Alexandra. Promoting Saxe-Coburg unity there are we what?

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  7. Wrong House.

    The Queen's ban from Greece is precisely and solely for the reason that I set out.

    As for Cyrpus, Greek Greeks are VERY strange about Cyprus. They like the idea of Greek Cypriots as long as they don't have to deal with them, and of Cyprus as part of Greece as long as no one ever attempts to make it happen. I expect that Turkish Turks have the same attitide to the idea of Turkish Cypriots and of Cyprus as part of Turkey.

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  8. What do you mean wrong house. King Constantine's grandmother, Queen of Constantine I was the sister of the Kaiser and grandaughter of Victoria. End of.

    So Saxe-Coburg pedigree I am afraid.

    As for your second paragraph, have you not heard of Ethninkos/Great Idea etc? Why do you think the Turks invaded?

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  9. It's the Battenberg connection that is the problem. They feel the same way in Russia, or at least used to until quite recently. (Whereas I prefer to think of Lord Mountbatten as Attlee's choice for Viceroy of India, as Wilson's first choice for the new position of Secretary of State for Defence, and as the man on whom the young Andrew Roberts made his name by writing a hatchet job.)

    Of course I have heard of it. But how many people hold it? Still a certain number in Cyprus, perhaps, though perhaps not. But in Greece? Did anyone ever, really, deep down? If Greek Cypriots are so bitter against Britain, then why does one out of every six of them in the world live here? Why have they made kebabs a staple of admittedly (and, by British standards, this is saying quite something) our lower cuisine?

    If they were honest, most people in Greece probably regard Greek Cypriots as Levantine and British, but with pretensions, in the way that there are some Greek Orthodox on the Levantine mainland who affect to be Greek, although they are in fact more likely to speak French than Greek for anything other than liturgical purposes, and are native speakers of Arabic in ordinary daily life.

    For that matter, large numbers of people from Greece itself have settled cheerfully in Her Majesty's Commonwealth of Australia, swearing allegiance to her before her picture and a flag with that of the United Kingdom in its corner.

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  10. "For that matter, large numbers of people from Greece itself have settled cheerfully in Her Majesty's Commonwealth of Australia, swearing allegiance to her before her picture and a flag with that of the United Kingdom in its corner."

    So? Many British people, including many prominent ones have taken the oath to the USA. Including some knights of the realm like Tony Hopkins.

    Anyway the Queen is not mentioned in the oath in Australia these days.

    http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/2002-03/03rn20.htm

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  11. But she was when most of the Greeks moved there.

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