Tories gave a big cheer to hairy old Leftie Corbyn
BRUSSELS is suddenly not such a great look, as we fashion experts say. The European Commission (and Germany) had few champions in the Commons yesterday when George Osborne discussed the Greek excitements.
Not long ago it would have been routine for numerous Europhile MPs to have leapt up and uttered oily praise for the Brussels commissioners.
Being ‘communautaire’ was The Thing To Be. It was the position adopted by various elastic careerists who wished to Get Ahead and show 10 Downing Street what ‘good Europeans’ they were.
This Establishment swallowing of the benefits of Europeanism was echoed across Britain by certain types of civil servant and quangocrat and even a few idiot journalists (mostly broadcasters). They tried to create an irresistible momentum for the EU. We ‘Little England’ sceptics were denounced as xenophobes (a Greek word, as it happens).
The significance of the Greek crisis, for Britain, may not have anything to do with debt. The reason the Greek story matters here may be that it punctures that Establishment aura – propaganda – that Brussels’ sway was insuperable. The bell has been cracked.
Andrew Tyrie (Con, Chichester), head of the Commons’ Treasury select committee, yesterday said that the Greeks were unlikely ever to pay their creditors and that the best thing Mr Osborne could do now would be ‘to encourage Greece to re- create its own currency’. Hear-hears from the Conservative benches. Mr Osborne hesitated to impose his view on the sovereign will of the Greek people but did say that ‘if you join the euro you are joining other states and you cannot take a unilateral course’.
The Chancellor sounded pretty bleak about what will happen in Athens. The European politicians were not moving nearly as fast as the financial facts of life, he said.
Kate Hoey ( Lab, Vauxhall) thought Greece should dump the euro – ‘there’s a really bright future outside the eurozone’. David Winnick (Lab, Walsall N) recalled that the Greek people had in the past said ‘No’ to Mussolini and had stood up to ‘the Nazi barbarians’. ‘ They should be treated with respect and not humiliated day by day,’ said Mr Winnick.
One of the biggest cheers of the day from the Tories went to hairy old Leftie Jeremy Corbyn (Lab, Islington N) when he said Germany and the EU should wake up to the fact that Greek debts were unpayable. When Mr Osborne said that Mr Corbyn would ‘be an excellent leader of the Labour party’, Mr Corbyn tried to pull a severe face but it did not last.
Peter Lilley (Con, Hitchin & Harpenden) said profligate Greece was only to blame as much as the reckless lenders who had so foolishly given it credit. Sir Bill Cash (Con, Stone) recalled that the post-war London Debt Agreement had helped Germany clamber its way out of debt.
Criticism of the Greeks was rare, although Crispin Blunt (Con, Reigate) talked of ‘this intransigent and unrealistic government that so unhappily seems to represent the views of the Greek people’. Mr Blunt chairs the Commons’ select committee on foreign affairs.
KENNETH Clarke (Con, Rushcliffe) predicted that if the Greeks did try to reintroduce a currency of their own, it would prove an instant failure. Greece’s only future was with the euro, said Mr Clarke, for so long a supporter of Brussels that he may have foregone his right to be thought a balanced observer.
Old Ken sat on the Tory backbenches with those two ridges of tired skin under his eyes. He might feel more at home over in the House of Lords, where some of the ranks of Europhiles – including Lib Dem Lord Dykes and Labour’s Lords Kinnock and Tomlinson, who both once had juicy jobs with Brussels, were banging the pro-European tomtoms during a brief session in Questions. It was left to Lord Lamont (Con) to note that Lord Dykes spent years saying we should join the euro and that anything the blithering nincompoop (I paraphrase) now said should be discounted.