The crisis in the Euro Area is enmeshed in an evolving global, and European, financial and economic crisis. Its dimensions are profound, historical, and structural. It raises the stakes in European integration to new heights.
There has been much sound and fury but little progress in Euroland in the days following David Cameron’s veto at the meeting of the EU heads of government in Brussels on 11 December. Far from them saving the Euro, they agreed to differ on some things, and agreed to delay on others.
Merkel’s actions over the EU fiscal pact have been likened to a game of chicken. They are more akin to tightrope walking while composing an opera. Lurking in the background is the threat that the markets will lose faith and tear the whole edifice down. Either way, this pact will not be the last word.
When making sense of the weird things currently happening in the northern hemisphere, such as the London riots, one trend should not escape our notice: a deepening crisis caused by bankers’ greed is beginning to rip the guts out of democracy. Four years into the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, governments of vital parts of the capitalist world are running on empty.
In the coming weeks as the Libya drama comes to a climax and as the debate on Afghanistan sharpens on what happens next, the European nations will have to make a decision on what kind of transatlantic relationship they want, or need, or value. The option of grumbling dependency is over, an era of shared responsibility and mutual contribution is about to dawn.
The recent royal wedding was marketed as a charming British romance. Next year will be the diamond jubilee when citizens of the Commonwealth will be asked to ‘celebrate’ the fact that the Queen has been an unelected Head of State for 60 years. Republicans should seize this chance to challenge the dominant narrative of the monarchy.
Modern Iran represents one of the biggest waiting games of the world today. A beautiful, civilised, and hospitable country containing one of the nicer peoples on earth, and with a distinguished history to boast, has become one of the world’s most rejected nations ruled by those with standards and practices more suitable to the middle ages than the 21st Century.
The relations within and between the British and Irish islands are now routinely described as never having been better; a description regarded as a cliché. A cliché? Good. It was not so long ago that such a belief would have been dismissed as an attempt at humour.
In today’s world the prosperity, security, liberty and civil liberties of those at home cannot be separated from events beyond our borders. The era of a global recession and the global threat of terrorism prove that to any residual doubters. A belief that you have responsibility beyond your borders is not, as some would have it, ideological, but, a necessary response to the world in which we live.
The existing perception and enforcement of multiculturalism is hindering social integration in Britain. The slow process of social integration, which is caused by some multicultural policies, is intensifying the fragmentation of British society, thereby jeopardising the future of diversity in Britain. Multiculturalism promised to bring social inclusion, but has failed and is becoming a justification for exclusion
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