Don't you just love politicians? It doesn't matter who we vote into office, it seems they just don't get it. They appear to have no idea about nor connection with the lives led by those who put them in office and pay their salaries. I don't know if this comes form mixing almost entirely with other politicians, and only coming into very limited contact with ordinary mortals when a photo-opportunity is required, or if there is some other factor at work. Despite this I do not wish politicians harm; in a democracy we will soon have an opportunity to vote this lot out and the other lot in at the next election, and we all have the right to stand ourselves for office if we don't like any of the alternatives on offer.
So, who is he referring to, I hear you ask yourself? The above could apply in any major democracy. I could be referring to yesterday's mid-term review of the UK's coalition government, or even the Obama administration in the USA. The same sentiments would apply equally to both, as well as the French, German and other governments currently in office. Politicians have a penchant for spewing out statistics which they think shows them and their policies in a good light, while ignoring the statistics thrown out by the other lot to show them in a bad light. Politicians are rarely able to give a straight, honest and direct answer to a simple question. But then, their primary objective is to get re-elected, so they perceive disingenuousness and obfuscation as the path of least resistance. Objective truth is seen as being hurtful to their objective. Or, more accurately, they don't think that we, the public, who vote for them and pay their salaries, can handle the truth.
It is was not yesterday's mid-term review by the UK coalition which has exercised me recently, but rather the European authorities. I am currently finishing up some research on the eurocrisis, with a particular focus on the eurozone. My main objective was to compare the eurozone with an Optimal Currency Area (OCA), its theoretical version. Or that's what it should be. In practice, the eurozone is as close to being an OCA as the Earth is to Proxima Centauri: a matter of some light years. That the eurozone as an institution needs some re-engineering is something that even the most ardent of eurocrats seems to recognise. But in reading the thoughts of Jörg Asmussen, Executive Board Member of the European Central Bank, in his "Agenda 2013 - the next steps in completing EMU", the profound distance between politicians and the general pubic became even more stark. Unlike our MPs and local councillors, we cannot elect someone else to replace too many of our European politicians.
Let me state for the record that I am a supporter of the European Project in principle. I do not wish to see the UK outside the EU. However, I have major issues with the current structure of the EU, which in my view has led to the misconstruction of the eurozone, and will prevent the latter from being rebuilt properly as an OCA. The biggest issue is that of accountability: the European Parliament does not properly function as a parliament. It is time to remove the Commissioners and rebuild Parliament as a a true representative body of the European peoples. Until this occurs it will not be possible to have a fiscal transfer mechanism (one of the requirements of an OCA), which would require cross-border EU taxation of some form or other. And there should be no taxation without representation, a concept so basic that it was first expressed nearly 250 years ago. Unless and until there is root-and-branch reform of the EU institutional setup there will be no serious and workable attempts to deal with the eurocrisis in our time. The Great Contraction could end up as the 21st century's Great Depression. A restructuring of the EU could prove the be the engine for growth that the world needs desperately, and make the EU more attractive to its detractors. Who knows? If they can manage to do this, maybe one day we will learn to love our politicians!
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