Steve Bell on the IMF and Britain's weak growth - cartoon
22.05.2012, 22:11:03
International Monetary Fund says UK should cut tax and borrowing costs to kickstart economy Steve Bell |
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Stephen Moss's diary
22.05.2012, 21:50:01
Are there tears at the demise of the Orange prize? Not from AS Byatt o Last Saturday, Meg Hillier, Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, made a surprise visit to the home of one of her constituents - miscarriage-of-justice victim Sam Hallam . According to some sources, it did not go well. Hallam's supporters believe Hillier ignored his case while he was in prison, and they're not going to let her forget it. Veteran campaigner Paul May, who helped free the Birmingham Six and Bridgewater Four and chaired the Hallam campaign, recalls going to see Hillier about the case five years ago. He says she refused to get involved on the grounds that she did not deal with third parties. "There has been nothing but hostility from Meg Hillier," says May. "On one memorable occasion she said: 'Lots of mothers tell me their sons are innocent'." Hillier says she has no recollection of making that remark, that since May wasn't at Hallam's home at the weekend he couldn't know how the visit went, and that her rule has always been to deal with her constituents directly. Nor does she think it would be helpful to the family for her to engage in a slanging match with May, or to reveal confidential details of the case. "If you drag my name through the mud," she says, "so be it." "We don't want to drag her name through the mud," says May. "We just want her to leave the family alone." o The Orange prize 's final chapter has not made everyone tearful. "I shan't mourn it," says AS Byatt, who won the Booker for Possession in 1990. "I never allowed my books to go forward, because I didn't believe you should have a prize that favoured one's sex. You would never be allowed to have a men-only prize. Women should have everything that men have, but they shouldn't have their own little sheep pens." o Leveson the Musical was a huge viral success on YouTube, and really ought to be staged properly. Most of the casting is straightforward - Gary Oldman as Leveson , Joseph Fiennes as Mr Jay , Sidse Babett Knudsen as Carine Patry Hoskins , Mr Burns from the Simpsons as Rupert Murdoch, Smithers as James Murdoch, Nicole Kidman as you know who . But who can play Jay's sidekick, David Barr? Best suggestion gets tickets to the opening night when we raise the £3m we need to put it on. o To the Chelsea flower show, as we diarists like to say, where the publicity-crazed organisers helpfully hand out a list of visiting celebs. We rubbed shoulders with Anneka Rice , Christopher Biggins , Esther Rantzen, Floella Benjamin, Lionel Blair, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Louis Walsh. And they say there are no stars any more. o "Richard Desmond - What I learned at Auschwitz", proclaims the masthead of this week's Jewish Chronicle. Just above another teaser (with pic) that salivates "It's time for cheesecake". A trifle unfortunate? o Yorkshire-based tour operator Hinterland Travel is offering the holiday of a lifetime - a two-week break to Afghanistan in October, retracing the British army's famous retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad in the first Afghan war of 1839-42. "This is a very new trek for us and subject to various problems on the ground," admits Hinterland, "but none surpassing those that the British army had in January 1842 as they abandoned Kabul. The weather was ferocious - sleet, snow, ice and intense cold - and the attacks from the Afghan tribesmen constant and unrelentingly pitiless. We begin in Kabul, enjoy the city and acclimatise ourselves before we depart to the countryside to meet our pack ponies and guides." Just £2,100 for the fortnight. See you there. o The Diary is gripped by the Olympic torch's epic journey around the UK. One is learning so much. Who, for instance, would have thought that Will.i.am from The Voice, who proudly carried the torch through Taunton on Monday, was a Somerset boy, or that rap had such a heritage there? o The shadow cabinet held their weekly meeting yesterday in the Olympic Park aquatics centre. Sorry, that's just too easy. Please write your own item making amusing use of the words waving, drowning and sinking. Twitter: @StephenMossGdn Stephen Moss guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
In or out of the eurozone, we must ditch this failed model | Seumas Milne
22.05.2012, 21:20:01
EU elites are trying to scare Greeks and Irish into swallowing austerity, but it's they who brought the economy to its knees Democracy has never been the European Union's strongest suit. It's an institution where the unelected and the barely accountable have always called the shots - and electorates are routinely made to vote again if they get the answer wrong in a referendum. So perhaps it's no surprise that as soon as it became clear the Greeks would be given another say on the austerity programme that has already driven their country into 1930s-style depression, the threats and bullying began in earnest. The entire European establishment has now lined up to scare Greeks off giving another majority to anti-austerity parties, as they did in explosive elections earlier this month . Europe's revolt against austerity has to be contained. Democratic niceties about not interfering in other countries' elections have been ditched. If Greeks vote for parties such as the radical left Syriza - now leading in most opinion polls - they will be voting to leave the euro, Europe's political elite has warned. "To remain in the euro," the unelected EU commission president José Manuel Barroso declared, "Greece must respect its commitments". By commitments, he meant the package of pulverising privatisations, tax rises and cuts in jobs, pay and services demanded by the EU and IMF in exchange for loans which cannot be repaid and are reducing the country to beggary. Knowing most Greeks both reject death-spiral austerity and want to stay in the euro, Europe's political class is ratcheting up the fear of forced exit meltdown. Most preposterous has been the British prime minister David Cameron lecturing Greeks on their responsibilities from outside the eurozone . "You can either vote to stay in the euro, with all the commitments you've made," he declared, "or you're effectively voting to leave". Fellow Tory minister Ken Clarke warned the Greeks of "serious consequences" if they voted for "cranky extremists ". This from a government that demands growth from Europe while driving its own economy into a double-dip recession with homegrown austerity. Meanwhile, the Irish are getting similar treatment, as the country's elites try to scare voters into backing the EU's permanent austerity treaty in a referendum later this month. Crucial to the campaign has been the threat that Ireland will be denied future emergency bailout funds for its own shrinking economy if the treaty is rejected. So far, that has kept the yes campaign ahead, even though Sinn Féin has mirrored the European trend by doubling its support to more than 20% on the back of opposition to the country's failed austerity programme. But in both cases, the threats are phoney. The legal basis of the treaty clause the Irish government is claiming would cut off future bailout funds is strongly contested and the prospect unrealistic. And Greeks are not voting on whether to stay in or leave the euro next month. They are voting on whether to continue to reject a shock therapy programme that even those demanding its implementation know can only drive Greece deeper into debt and destitution. There is now a strong likelihood that the country will end up leaving the euro, whichever way it turns - and that may well offer Greece the most realistic chance of eventual recovery. But it's not what parties such as Syriza are demanding. Instead, its leader Alexis Tsipras has been in Paris and Berlin this week calling for a halt to Greece's debt repayments, and negotiations with Europe's leaders on a new deal. The stronger the vote for anti-austerity parties, the better the chance that those negotiations could produce more than cosmetic results. That's because the threat of a disorderly Greek default - which could still take place inside the euro - has the potential to trigger a cascade of bank runs and knock-on crises across the eurozone whose impact could dwarf the Lehmans crash of 2008 . Greece is, after all, only the state furthest down the road of collapse. The threat to crippled Spain could already be on a much larger scale. Across the eurozone, the banking system is once again tipping towards breakdown, as self-defeating austerity deepens the crisis. As one EU commissioner told me yesterday, "this austerity union is simply not sustainable". Eurozone leaders' attempt to solve the crisis by "internal devaluation" - cutting wages and services across the southern periphery to restore competitiveness - was a "complete disaster", he said, that would deliver mass poverty and migration to the north. But despite hopes that France's new president François Hollande, now backed by Barack Obama, could shift Europe towards jobs and growth, the concessions potentially on offer from Germany's Angela Merkel are not remotely on the scale necessary to overcome the growing crisis. That would need a commitment to fullblown eurobond lending to underpin state debts, a Marshall plan-style programme of fiscal transfers and investment in weaker eurozone states, along with recapitalisation and public takeover of European banks. But Germany's leaders show no sign of being prepared to foot the bill for the costs of a currency union that has benefited German capital above all but now threatens, like the gold standard in the early 20th century , to bring Europe's economy to its knees. But the eurozone's implosion isn't only the result of a cockeyed, one-size-fits-all currency structure that was always going to buckle and fracture under pressure. It's also the product of the wider crisis of neoliberal capitalism that first erupted in the banking system five years ago and has since wreaked havoc on public finances, jobs, services and living standards throughout the western world. Asked who they held responsible for the Greek crisis at the weekend, 50% of Britons polled rightly blamed the banks , 22% Brussels - and only 4% the Greek people. But the eurozone breakdown is also the product of a generation of EU treaty-enforced privatisation, market deregulation and corporate liberalisation that paved the way for the crisis across Europe, including in Britain. It's that inbuilt neoliberal dimension of the EU, central to debates in mainland Europe, that has been missing from the growing political pressure for a referendum on EU membership in Britain - but has played a central role in this crisis. Across the continent, whether in or out of the eurozone, the need for a break with a failed economic model could not be more pressing. Twitter @SeumasMilne Eurozone crisis Greece European Union European monetary union Economics Banking European banks Financial crisis Financial sector Euro Europe Seumas Milne guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
British energy policy is a dark underworld of fanatics | Simon Jenkins
22.05.2012, 19:30:01
The government's decision to direct resources to nuclear and wind is typical of an institution befuddled and beset by lobbyists Anyone who claims to understand energy policy is either mad or subsidised. Last week I wrote that politics is seldom rational . It is more often based on intuition and tribal prejudice. This week we have a thundering example: the government's new policy on nuclear energy. Do not read on if you want a conclusion on this subject. For years I have read papers, books, surveys and news stories, and am little wiser. I trust to science and am ready to believe there is some great mathematician, some Fermat's last theorem , who can write an equation showing where energy policy should turn. I have never met him. The equation would start with the current market price of coal, gas, oil, nuclear and so-called "renewables". That would give simple primacy to coal and gas. The equation would then factor in such variables as security of supply, which - being imponderable - can be argued from commercial interest and prejudice. Then it would have to take account of global warming and the virtue of lower carbon emissions. At this point the demons enter. We must consider CO 2 reduction through substituting gas for coal, carbon capture, nuclear investment, biomass, wind, wave, solar and tidal generation. We must consider the application of fiscal policy to gas and petrol use, to energy efficiency and house insulation. Each has a quantity attached to it and each a fanatical lobby drooling for subsidies. As for achieving a remotely significant degree of global cooling, that requires world diplomacy - which has, as yet, proved wholly elusive. Britain's contribution to cooling can only be so infinitesimal as to be little more than gesture politics, yet it is a gesture that is massively expensive. Meeting the current EU renewables directive , largely from wind, would cost some £15bn a year, or £670 a household, and involve the spoliation of swaths of upland, countryside and coast. It is calculated to save a mere 0.2% of global emissions, with negligible impact on the Earth's sea level. Yet the government wants to commit a staggering £100bn to wind farm subsidies over the next decade, almost all to rich landowners. Northamptonshire, with England's most planned wind farms per acre (and least wind), will probably have turbines visible from horizon to horizon. Will this really so impress China and India as to persuade them to change their emissions policies? It is like a primitive tribe burning its wives and treasure to awe an enemy into submission. So complex is the mathematics of these calculations that it rapidly dissolves into naked prejudice: irrational fear of nuclear, urban hatred of landscape, leftwing loathing for oil companies. Yesterday the government was forced to pretend that it is not subsidising nuclear power at all, a fuel I can support but which is ruinously expensive on present, probably exaggerated, estimates of risk. Investing in it would require massive government intervention - with consumers paying some £200 a year above the market price of electricity - almost as much as does "free" wind power. The energy minister, Ed Davey, squirmed on the BBC yesterday morning , a politician who could not persuade people he was doing the right thing - and was therefore probably doing the wrong one. Energy policy is a dark underworld populated by fanatics and necromancers. Read through the literature and you will learn that nuclear means tsunamis, terrorists and Frankenstein monsters, or is as harmless as a local radiology clinic. Biomass is the new dawn, or threatens half the world's forests. Wind turbines are free energy, or they tear up peat and exhaust Mongolian minerals. We face a "peak oil" crisis, or we do not. We face a nuclear winter, or not. We can live for ever on shale gas, or it causes earthquakes. The world is doomed anyway (James Lovelock) or not doomed at all (Nigel Lawson). All Europe could be wired to the Saharan desert, or perhaps only in theory. We feel our way through this miasma by relying on gut instinct or on those we blindly trust. The public sums allotted in grants and price enhancements to green energy - with 8 million people facing fuel poverty - are so enormous they have bred an army of lobbyists clamouring to protect every programme for every resource under, and including, the sun. They pounce hysterically on any opponent of their favoured watt or therm. For my part, I must patiently await my mathematician. Until then I will never be persuaded that the beauty of the British landscape should be sacrificed for an insignificant reduction in global warming, one that is obliterated by a Chinese power station in minutes. My view is reinforced by the Welsh scientist, Sir Roger Williams, in his 2009 British Academy lecture . He remarked his "greatest hope among renewables is of tidal power ... both predictable and potentially substantial". He supported the Severn barrage, a sacrifice of landscape preferable to putting the Cambrian mountains under wind turbines. Another trusty is Dieter Helm, Oxford professor of energy policy, who makes the seemingly obvious point that since gas is cheap and prevalent and has lower emissions than coal, the biggest carbon gain is won by a straight switch from coal to gas. As for preferring direct resources to the two most expensive energy sources, nuclear and offshore wind, that could appeal only to an institution now as befuddled and beset by lobbyists as the British Treasury. Renewable energy Nuclear power Energy industry Energy Simon Jenkins guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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Asbo facelift won't protect the vulnerable | Shami Chakrabarti
22.05.2012, 18:00:01
The asbo is dead - but a brace of souped-up new jargon is no shortcut to solving the problem of antisocial behaviour 'Antisocial behaviour" - was ever a phrase so pervasive? Umpteen home secretaries pledged to solve this terrible blight - to protect the "decent" and punish the "yobs". From begging, barking dogs and noisy neighbours to drug dealing, vandalism and violence, this euphemism posing as law covered everything from the irritating to the fatal. Section 1 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 encompasses behaviour "likely to cause harassment, alarm and distress". In our everyday dealings, we have long been used to broad and evolving concepts of what is socially welcome, acceptable, inept and unpleasant. But does such vague breadth make just or strong law? The guest who arrives late, hogs the conversation, becomes drunk and obnoxious, makes a pass at his hostess and punches his host, has obviously behaved "antisocially" according to cultural norms and the statutory definition. But exactly how much of this should be regulated by the law, let alone mediated by police, local authority and court intervention? In an attempted shortcut to policing and justice, asbos dangerously blurred moral and legal distinctions between serious criminal activity and nuisance. They created "personalised penal codes" that set the young, vulnerable or mentally ill up to fail - fast-tracking offenders into, rather than away from, custody. Asbos were doled out preventing people begging, swearing, speaking sarcastically, wearing certain types of clothing or not enough of it. In 2010 a man appeared in court for breaching an order prohibiting him from laughing, staring or slow-clapping . In 2005 a repeatedly suicidal woman was given an asbo banning her from going near railway lines, bridges and rivers. The experiment failed. From 2003 to 2009, the breach rate rocketed from 40% to 56%. More than half of those proved to have breached their order receive an immediate custodial sentence, swelling already overloaded prisons. The Youth Justice Board reported that asbos were actively sought as a " badge of honour ". So now we learn that under replacement laws new tools will be given to the police, authorities and others that are faster, easier to use, less bureaucratic and less complex. The asbo is dead. Long live new civil injunctive relief. It's true that the system will be "streamlined" - 19 measures will be replaced by just six powers. The new criminal behaviour order will be used to ban individuals from particular activities or places and crime prevention injunctions (CPIs) will give agencies an immediate power to "stop bad behaviour before it escalates" - the lower standard of proof for civil orders, meaning CPIs, can be put in place in hours. This means that the authority would have to demonstrate only "on the balance of probabilities" and not "beyond reasonable doubt" that the individual was engaging, had engaged or was likely to engage in antisocial behaviour. But the reality is little but a facelift for old thinking. Criminal behaviour orders, crime prevention injunctions, community triggers - a brace of souped-up new jargon won't protect the vulnerable. The problem was never about bad manners at the dinner table. It remains about threats, harassment, violence and inequality before the law. The shocking case of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter doesn't demonstrate the need for special civil or administrative powers. It's about a vulnerable family, threatened and abused for a decade, and the authorities' failure to come to their aid. Why should the police wait for criminal activity to be reported three times or by five different households before seeking to protect the poor? They should respond - no matter where you live and without the need for public petition. On a country estate or council estate, victims are entitled to real protection from the criminal law. The irony of successive governments is that the decimation of civil legal aid provision makes it less easy for the poor to resolve housing and neighbour issues and even harder to hold negligent authorities to account. Shortcuts around the criminal law tackle neither crime nor its complex causes. They fail to protect both poor and vulnerable victims and those permanently vulnerable to prejudice, suspicion and injustice. Asbos Police Communities UK criminal justice Shami Chakrabarti guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Steve Bell on David Cameron's intervention in Greek elections - cartoon
21.05.2012, 21:53:42
Prime minister suggests Greece would have to quit single currency if voters backed anti-austerity parties Steve Bell |
Stephen Moss's diary
21.05.2012, 21:50:01
Child-friendly cooking? Hardly Gladstonian, prime minister, but at this stage, every little helps o Oh dear. Our chillaxed , Fruit Ninja -loving PM really doesn't need this. "Sam's brilliant at just playing with the children and having a great time," he tells Carol Vorderman in the latest issue of Tesco's in-store magazine . "Whereas I'm more of a typical dad - let's go and plant the vegetables, let's go on a cycle ride, let's do a structured activity. My biggest obsession with the kids is cooking. I do a lot of cooking, but I've got into more child-friendly cooking, such as pancakes, baking, rhubarb crumble - anything that involves getting messy and licking the bowl. As a kid, that was always the most exciting thing." Hardly Gladstonian. o These are difficult days for Mr Cameron, and he's now as short as 3-1 to be evicted from No 10 before the next election. So who should the Diary back to be the next PM? Our mole in the lobby has the answer - dull but dependable Philip Hammond. Self-made millionaire, scourge of the civil service, respected by the right, a grey man for grey times. The odds on him becoming PM have tumbled from 33-1 to 14-1 in the past few days. Remember, you read it here first. o Was it really appropriate that every radio station responded to the death of Robin Gibb by playing Stayin' Alive. Some decorum, please. o You will no doubt be going to the anti-GM wheat protest being planned at the test site near Harpenden on Sunday. The action is being cooked up by pressure group Take the Flour Back , and they've just issued a what-to-bring list: OS map; banners, placards and props; messages and photos to tie to the fence around the trial site; bakers' outfits, aprons and hats; seeds to swap; bread and cakes to share (plus "tasty stuff to go with that"). Sounds like my kind of protest. o Thierry Henry has been hogging the headlines with his plan to demolish a 1990s house in Hampstead designed by award-winning architect Richard MacCormac to make way for a tasteful new mansion (though sadly now minus the planned 40ft fish tank). But not to be outdone, Champions League hero John Terry is close to completing his multimillion-pound Dallas-style house in Oxshott, which will have nine bedrooms, eight bathrooms, eight dressing rooms, an indoor swimming pool, jacuzzi, steam room, and obligatory cinema. This is at least his third attempt to build his dream house on the site. But can it really be true he intends to call his new home "Daffodils"? What will the Ukrainian forward line make of that? o On the subject of daffodils, the hopelessly anglophile BBC New Elizabethans list has only two Welsh-born representatives - Roald Dahl, who was really Norwegian, and ersatz Englishman Roy Jenkins. Where the hell's Tom Jones? o Bad news on Kusunda . My colleague Max, who has been masterminding our attempt to shore up the imperilled western Nepalese language, has fallen off his bike and broken his collarbone. So for the moment, we have to take a break. Here is Max's moving valedictory offering: Bum: semba . Female genitalia: ghyang . Penis/horn: ipi gidzang . Copulate: ghyadn . Urinate: eneyin . Shit/dung: yang . Thanks, Max. The people of western Nepal are thinking of you. o Yang! I missed the do at the Commons hosted by the all-party parliamentary group on cannabis and children - "Sharing the Experience". Must have been a hoot. o We are very taken with the forthcoming show at the Hayward Gallery on London's South Bank - Invisible: Art About the Unseen. "You will see an empty plinth and a frame that looks like an empty frame," says gallery director Ralph Rugoff. "Lazy viewers" may reject these blank canvases, he says, but they make you ask "Where is the art in a work of art?" Good point. In the daily battle to fill this column, "art about the unseen" - otherwise known as white space - could prove a useful aesthetic ally. Twitter: @StephenMossGdn Stephen Moss guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
Ed Miliband, you stoke this anti-Europe fire at your peril | Gaby Hinsliff
21.05.2012, 20:15:01
A referendum on EU membership will tempt the Labour leader. But a yes campaign would be short of arguments Well, who would have thought it? Riding high in the polls, touted as a prospective prime minister even in the rightwing papers, finally Ed Miliband is having a moment. As the coalition teeters on the edge of an economic cliff, David Cameron finds his best qualities - easygoing confidence, close-knit family , not being Gordon Brown - suddenly twisted against him. A new hunger for intellectual seriousness, for more than the thin gruel of austerity politics, is now working in Miliband's favour. You can feel Westminster wondering whether the geek really shall inherit the earth. But this new tipping point brings with it a dilemma. How far should Labour now go in consummating some of its racier new friendships? The biggest reason for the Tory-inclined broadsheets' change of tone is that they're simply reflecting their readers' mood. But they are unlikely also to have missed Labour's new and frankly come-hither signals over the British right's great cause celebre: a referendum on EU membership . It's still mostly teasing, of course: a flash of Jon Cruddas's ankle, a never-say-never quote from Ed Balls, a flirtation with the Tory mutineer David Davis. But what better way to trigger Conservative civil warfare than outflanking Cameron on his rebels' pet cause? It sounds bold, simple and popular. It reminds voters of the two Eds' early reservations about the euro. And the idea of a referendum - whether staged by Labour, or the coalition under Labour pressure - conveniently happens to delight large, still powerful swaths of the media. No wonder some in the shadow cabinet are tempted. But it's worth examining where temptation leads, given that talk of a referendum some years hence - when the crisis is over - may not hold for long. The attraction for the pro-European left is to settle the question once and for all, proving that Britain would still rather be in Europe (and moaning about it) than left out. It's a gamble on mainstream opinion being neither rabidly sceptical nor federalist, but somewhere in the middle. But even a grudging yes requires having good reason to believe in Europe. And the trouble is that even many of us who feel instinctively pro-European increasingly struggle to articulate precisely why. It used to be easy. If you were irresistibly drawn towards florid men sporting pound sign badges and complaining about "political correctness gone mad", then you might be pro-withdrawal. Otherwise, not so much. But these days, the "out" brigade is no longer confined to the lunatic fringe: a ComRes poll at the weekend found nearly half of us would vote to quit . Hearts are hardening; as Greece draws closer to an exit from monetary union, the chorus of "I told you so" grows louder, and lifelong pro-Europeans grow more chastened. What's new is that it's no longer unthinkable even for liberals to wonder if the European project as a whole is in peril. Nor is the banking collapse solely to blame. It's many years since British politicians routinely and enthusiastically made the pro-European case, perhaps because once the prospect of a referendum on the EU constitution or the euro faded, there seemed no urgent need. Peter Mandelson aside, a generation who routinely banged the drum - Robin Cook, Stephen Byers, Charles Clarke, Patricia Hewitt, Charles Kennedy, Tony Blair himself - left frontline politics, some under a cloud. Like a married couple who stopped making the effort, Britain and Europe drifted apart - with Brussels doing little to help, failing to reform its decision-making or budget in good times, and visibly floundering in bad. Any future yes-to-Europe campaign is now seriously short of compelling arguments. The old mantra that membership brings jobs and inward investment remains historically true, but a hard sell with youth unemployment running at 50% in Greece or Spain. Trade with EU partners remains critical to British businesses, but that's changing slowly as recession here drives companies towards China or Brazil. And arguing that EU membership helps us to access these new markets is perhaps too complex a point to get across amid all the shouting. The crisis has arguably strengthened the original case for Europe - as a means of keeping the peace: while conventional warfare on EU soil still feels unlikely, the rise of neofascist parties does send a shiver down the spine. And as the coalition shreds job security with talk of making it easier to fire people, social Europe could come to be seen as vital protection for workers' rights in a recession. But the core argument for a united Europe remains the feeling, often engendered by a crisis, that together we are more than the sum of our parts - with a new twist: that Britain is no longer just in the club, but inextricably of it. No referendum can remove us from an international banking system that has welded one country's fortunes to another's through a complex chain of lending and borrowing across borders, a distant echo of the moral obligations binding one human to another. Pace George Osborne, we really are all in this one together. But until he can articulate that case with confidence, Ed Miliband should beware playing with fire. It's immoral to refuse a vote on Europe lest the people give the "wrong" answer: but it's certifiably mad to start this fight without knowing you could win. Twitter: @gabyhinsliff European Union Ed Miliband Labour Europe Gaby Hinsliff guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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