Whither the national interest?

Back in the dim and distant past of the pre-New Labour era we used to hear a lot about the balance of payments and the national interest. They were central to government policy yet they have now both disappeared from view.

The balance of payments was the difference between the value of stuff we exported and the value of stuff we imported. Figures were broadcast every month for tangibles and invisibles. Very often we were in the red in tangibles (actual things like cars and cabbages) but in the black for invisibles (such as banking and insurance). It mattered because we were competing against other countries and needed to know how we were doing. At least we thought we needed to know, that we don't get any figures these days suggests it might not have been necessary at all.

Except that it was necessary. It was necessary so we could judge whether we were getting things right or wrong. Just as a business needs to know whether it is making a profit or a loss in order to be able to judge its performance and make any necessary changes, so the country needs to know the same if it is to address systemic problems in the economy. Of course the figures have been available, they just haven't been published as widely as they used to be.

The national interest was the overriding concern of government, however dismally any individual government protected it. The UK government held a mandate from the people of the UK and felt it necessary to act in what it perceived to be the best interests of the UK. If France or Germany or, if it comes to that, Swaziland proposed something considered detrimental to this country the government would speak against it. Act against it less often, but speak against it every time. The concept of the national interest recognised that we are in competition with other countries. It also recognises that the first priority of the UK government should be to protect the interests of the people of the UK.

We just don't hear about the national interest these days and we don't hear about how well or badly this country is doing in its economic dealing with other countries. Instead we hear all about global this and European that, as though every other country is governed to protect the interests of international organisations and ideals rather than its own people. It's ok, we needn't worry, the EU or the UN will come to our rescue if something goes wrong. All we need to do it strengthen these bodies and we need never worry about anything again. This strikes me as a peculiar way to go about things and to be fundamentally wrong both in fact and in principle.

It is wrong in fact because many governments are assiduous in protection of what they consider their national interest, the USA and France are perhaps the most obvious examples of this but it goes far wider than that. Do you think the former soviet-bloc countries have joined the EU out of a sense of altruism or to further the political strength of the EU Parliament and Commission? Of course they haven't, they have joined because they see it as potentially beneficial for their people. Beneficial in two ways. First by giving them access to markets across Europe without the handicap or import taxes or restrictions on the right to work, and secondly by giving them access to hand-outs from the EU's pot of gold. If they were to become net contributors they wouldn't give a second's thought to joining the EU. They joined because they considered it in their own national interest to do so.

The reason relying on more and more international bodies to provide protection in times of difficulty is wrong in principle is that standards differ about what is a difficulty and what is the right way out of it. It's easy enough with something like NATO, a military alliance, because dealing with a military threat does not (except in the most esoteric way) involve cultural values and different interpretations of what is a threat and what is beneficial. Once diplomacy fails, either you shoot back or you get massacred; having more people with guns on your side is plainly beneficial. But you can't apply the same universal standard to economic or social matters. What areas of the economy should the government be involved in, what part should government play in sports or the arts, how should health care be funded, how should children be educated? There is simply no single answer on which everyone can agree. What is acceptable to the people of one country can be wholly unacceptable to another because of their differing history and culture.

Once decisions are passed to an international body it can become a supra-national body. Instead of being a meeting point for heads of government to see what common ground they can establish (as is still he case with NATO, for example), the body itself starts to form its own agenda and countries are required to fall into line or suffer sanctions. Instead of EU policy being a summary of those things all the member nations agree on, it is now something the member states are required to comply with whether they agree with it or not. This creates both practical and political problems.

On the practical side we have such things as current EU laws and directives on so-called health and safety. Health and safety is a balancing exercise between risk and reward. You can't just say "you must reduce the risk in this way" if that impacts so much on the reward as to make the whole exercise onerous or pointless. Of course people sometimes fall off ladders or chairs when changing a light bulb but the risk is pretty small, to require the erection of a scaffold tower and for all around them to stop work and stand well clear would be disproportionate to the risk. Did you know you cannot lawfully change a light fitting in your kitchen or bathroom without having the work certified by a properly qualified person? That's all very well for Mr Rich who would hire an electrician to do it anyway, but it's onerous for Mr Poor who saved for weeks to buy a nice light fitting and now has to fork out the same amount again for someone to fit it or check how he has carried out the most simple of jobs. There is no single standard of what is appropriate for everyone in all circumstances. Yet the more powers that are passed from national governments to supra-national bodies the more uniformity will be required and the more cases there will be of central edicts being inappropriate or absurd when put into practice.

The political problem arises from the inevitable democratic deficit of these bodies not being answerable directly to the people their decisions affect. This breeds mistrust because people don't remember the things the body got right only the things they got wrong. An ever-growing list of perceived errors combined with no effective means of changing the membership or policies of the body, can result in widespread discontent. Think back to 1979 and 1997. In each of those years a stale government was ousted and the result was that the very people who felt most let-down by the old were invigorated by the new. Yet how much actually changed about overall government policy on the 4th of May 1979 and the 2nd of May 1997? Twenty percent, ten percent, five percent? Maybe not even five percent. What changed was the general emphasis of policy much more than its details and, most importantly, all the failings of the old governors were sent out of the door and the new lot started with a clean slate. Between 1979 and 1997 the Conservative's slate filled with chalk dust, bits of fluff and dried chewing gum, and between 1997 and today Labour's slate has undergone the same transition. The mere fact that we voted to change our governing party gave continuing legitimacy to the whole system. Without the possibility of such change it is inevitable that legitimacy will disappear, thereby negating the only thing any government can rely on as its ultimate authority.

The aftermaths of the 1979 and 1997 general elections also show that there can be a radical change in certain basic aspects of policy to correct systemic problems encountered with the established way of doing things. Mrs Thatcher's central message in 1979 was that the old way of doing things wasn't working. The country was bankrupt and she argued for business and industry to be allowed to show what it could do without some of the centrally-imposed constraints which had become the norm. Not everyone agreed with her. It was essentially a matter of opinion not fact, but enough agreed with her to allow her to be given a chance to put her ideas into practice. Something else was tried because the former consensus no longer held sway. A similar change occurred after the 1997 election. Mr Blair argued that The State was doing too little and could do more to improve peoples lives. Sufficient agreed with him for his ideas to be put into practice. The system allowed new ideas to be put into practice because the old ones were no longer perceived as appropriate to modern life. Today there seems to be a sizeable body of public opinion that a change is needed again and an opportunity to vote for change will arise within the next fourteen months. We learn what works and what does not work by trying new things and seeing what effect they have. Even if 95% of policy remains essentially the same from one government to the next, the other five percent can make a huge difference - perhaps beneficial, perhaps not, that's a matter of opinion; there is always another election coming along for those who make a case against the incumbents.

How do you change the policies of a supra-national organisation when the existing ones do not suit the people of a particular country? The answer, of course, is that you can't. It is inevitably one-size-fits-all, like-it-or-lump-it; uniformity is seen as a benefit in its own right regardless of its practical effects. We often hear government ministers saying they are merely implementing EU policy when something daft or unpopular is brought in, as though that is an excuse. To my mind it shows the great problem with removing powers from Westminster and giving them to Brussels. Not only is there no way of giving EU government new legitimacy when it has lost our confidence but there is no effective way of changing EU policies that don't work.

Through all of this, we little people are concerned with how things affect our lives. Those who live in a village are concerned about how political decisions will affect their village, townsfolk and city dwellers ask the same about their town or city, they all do the same again when county-wide issues arise and we all do it on matters that affect the whole country. The national interest is not a political fiction, it is a reflection of the real concerns of the little people. When a factory closes in Birmingham there is a problem for those who lose their jobs and for those whose businesses and jobs depend on the Birmingham factory (such as shops close to the factory who relied on trade from the workers as they arrived and left each day). It is also a problem for the UK as a whole because increased domestic unemployment reduces UK tax revenue and increases the claims made on UK taxpayers. It has no effect whatsoever in Paris, Frankfurt or Warsaw, and the governments of France, Germany and Poland are too busy trying to protect their own people to worry about it.

Even though we are trapped within the money-sucking vampire known as the EU, we still have a national interest and there are still a few ways in which it can be promoted. Currently, all over Europe, national interests are being asserted afresh from the bottom-up. More of the same centralised power cannot answer these interests because British, French, German, Polish and all other EU manufacturers and other businesses are not playing for the same team, they are in direct competition. Our countries as economic units are also in direct competition.

I hope we hear a lot more about the UK national interest in the run-up to the next election. It is far too important to be left in the hands of the EU or the UN. We are best at deciding what is right for us. We might not be very good at it, but we still do a far better job than any unaccountable body concerned more with its own power than with improving life for us.

"International Commission" ... it's bound to be bad

For many years people unconcerned by hi-falutin' concepts like human rights and international courts have argued against the imposition of new criminal laws in the name of the "war on terror". It was only a matter of time before the smug intelligentsia of world crime followed suit. Lo and behold, at last the penny has dropped.

Objections to many of these so-called anti-terrorism laws come in various shapes and sizes and more than one line of criticism is often applied to a single measure. Generally speaking it is probably fair to say that the arguments against fall into one or more of four categories: (i) we already have laws that are quite adequate for the purpose, (ii) it won't have any effect on terrorism, (iii) it will be used to outlaw activities for which it was never intended and (iv) it will be used disproportionately to enforce existing minor regulatory offences.

So, we have the police given the power to stop people, search them and ask for their name and address. Something like 300,000 such stop and search incidents have occurred in the name of the war on terror and not a single arrest for a terrorism-related offence has resulted. We have laws outlawing the downloading of, for example, bomb-making instructions from the internet with the result that legitimate research and harmless seeking of knowledge are prevented. We have investigatory powers given, quite bizarrely, to local authorities who use them to enforce petty bye-laws on litter and recycling plastic bottles.

The report from the International Commission of Jurists has taken three years to research and compile and tells us nothing that has not already been analysed and commented on a thousand times. The one difference between the ICJ report and most commentaries is that we little people look at these matters in terms of what actually happens in real life whereas the big wigs of world crime are more concerned with the effect of bad national laws on airy-fairy one-world ideas such as "international human rights" and a particular aspect of "international law".

The concept of "international human rights" is one that causes my addled, flabby brain to fry. Omit "international" and I can just about understand the principle of it. There are certain things The State should not do to the little people and these are classified as "human rights" which should not be infringed save in exceptional circumstances. The problem I have with that proposition is that it is based on standards developed over hundreds of years in just a few countries and, even in those countries, the importance of the principles depends on context and on the historic and cultural values of the particular country concerned.

None of the so-called "human rights" is unqualified. Whether it be free speech, freedom of assembly, the right to a fair trial or whatever, both cultural forces and practical necessity operate to ensure there is no absolute standard. For example UK laws restricting free speech are different from those in France whose laws are different from Germany which applies different principles than the USA. Those differences result from the individual histories of the countries and the different standards applied by their law makers. Each country has to set its own standard. The French have a tradition of not disclosing the sexual peccadillos of prominent figures, whereas we tend to thrive on reading about such things. Would the world be a better place if the French learned of Mitterand's affair(s) or if we didn't know about David Mellor and Robin Cook's unlikely dalliances? Maybe, maybe not. The thing is, no one can tell because it is nothing to do with whether the world would be a better place it is all to do with cultural history and contemporary politics in each country. I defy anyone to promulgate a universally applicable principle about when disclosing prominent politicians' extra-marital affairs will be of benefit and when it will be of detriment to the world in general. Life simply isn't like that.

And so it goes with all of the so-called human rights. Take the right to a fair trial as another example. Many European countries have examining magistrates who both guide the police investigation and have to decide whether and what charges should be sent for trial. Nothing could be further from the English system in which investigation and the decision whether the evidence justifies a trial are separated. Which is right, which is wrong? The answer is that neither is right and neither is wrong because there is no single standard against which they can be judged. At the same time, each is right because each has been developed within the countries concerned and is accepted by the people of those countries as an appropriate way to do things. Does a fair trial require a jury of ordinary people or is a trial by three judges better? It all depends on what is accepted as the better system in a particular country. There are no absolutes.

We mustn't forget the right to life. Abortion, is it murder or is it not? Ask the Pope and his followers and you will get one answer, ask others and the opposite opinion will be expressed. Each country has to take a position. Whatever position it takes will meet disagreement by many of its citizens, some vociferously or even violently. That's what happens when people in civilised nations are allowed to express their views. There is never a single, once-and-for-all answer. The debate never ends on abortion and it never ends on countless other subjects which are matters of personal opinion and belief.

So, what are "International Human Rights"? The most they can ever be is an expression of hope that all countries will adopt general standards that have been developed in various ways and with various results in western democracies. Try to impose them on countries that do not have a political culture that can absorb them and you have a recipe for disaster. Try to impose them on a political culture that can absorb them but has not yet absorbed them and you are guaranteed to meet resistance. The very fact that a political culture can absorb them but has not yet absorbed them means it is taking its own time to develop principles suited to its culture and people. Any attempt to tell them to adopt certain principles into their law will be seen as a disrespectful imposition. That leaves only one option, to impose them on countries that already have them. Ah, bit of a problem there, if they already have them the imposition is pointless. And that is exactly what "International Human Rights" are, utterly pointless. Actually, I might have overstated my case there. They are not pointless if they are a point of reference for developing countries. And therein lies the problem. Therein also lies the link to my earlier point about so-called "International Law".

International law has an important part to play in international affairs. There are four aspects to international law. Much of the earth and much of the sky is not "owned" by any country. If ships are to sail and planes to fly across the bits no one owns, there have to be rules to minimise risk. The first part of international law is about movement of people and goods through non-national territory. The second part is about war. Left to its own device war is indiscriminate. With a view to trying to restrict the damage done by armed conflict, there is an international law of war. The third part is about the relation between nations. There is a body of international law about diplomatic relations. The fourth part is where the problems occur. The fourth part is all about supranational bodies and their power over sovereign nations.

The very idea that an international body should be able to dictate what a sovereign nation does or does not do is anathema to me. We have enough trouble here, a country with one of the longest histories of continues democratic rule in the world, in getting the government (of either party) to debate issues fully and pass workable laws. Having laws imposed by a body even more remote from the people than their own parliament strikes me as a bad idea.

The International Commission of Jurists seems to disagree. It is more concerned that bad national laws undermine the authority of international law than that they undermine the condition of life for the people directly affected by the offensive laws. The aspect of international law they address is the power of supranational bodies. Oh, do I see a bit of personal interest here? Do I detect the fear that countries making their own laws might undermine the authority of the International Commission of Jurists and the supranational ideas they promote?

There is an important role for international bodies to play in matters labelled "human rights", but that role is purely advisory. Any other role is, by definition, a role that bears powers of compulsion. In practice, compulsion can only be exercised against those who are playing on the same field. Only the most developed countries have sufficiently advanced social and political structures to be able to incorporate principles of so-called human rights into their law. Once those nations create supranational bodies to promote so-called human rights there is only one inevitable result. The supranational bodies will seek to justify their existence. Advising developing nations will not be enough and compelling developing nations will be impossible, the only thing left is to compel the very countries that set them up to adopt laws that those (by definition) sophisticated and developed countries have not felt it appropriate to adopt.

Just as the EU has taken on a life of its own and developed its own agenda, so all supranational bodies do the same. They might do some good at the margins, but that just encourages them to demand more powers, powers which will be exercised without democratic control and with no regard to the cultural sensibilities of the countries subject to their commands.