FOR all the attention paid to them, political speeches rarely leave any lasting impact.
Most are just bundles of platitudes which have been forgotten even before the applause has died down.
But in Germany last Friday we heard a stunning exception — and from a relative newcomer to politics.
The address to the Munich Security Conference by US vice president JD Vance will be remembered in years to come as a pivotal moment in US- European relations.
The fact that it has caused so much upset to so many European bigwigs is testament to what it set out to achieve — to tell painful home truths to cherished allies.
These were no off-the-cuff comments in the style of Donald Trump, a man who often likes to say outrageous things as an opening gambit in negotiations.
This was a carefully-crafted speech with a devastatingly simple point at its heart — that if you are going to defend a country or a continent you first have to be sure about what you are defending.
Europe’s problem, as Vance made clear, is that it has itself been lax in defending the values that it professes to uphold.
It is no use calling on your citizens to defend freedom and democracy from external threats if you are not yourself standing up for those things.
Vance cited several instances in which Europe is failing in this regard.
First and foremost was last year’s Romanian presidential elections, which were cancelled at the last moment by the country’s constitutional court on the grounds that a number of TikTok accounts used in the campaign appeared to have emanated from Russia.
Neutered forever
This has become standard practice for Putin’s regime. Russian bots have been implicated in US and UK elections.
But for a court to use that as an excuse to annul an election is chilling — as well as being an insult to the intelligence of the people.
Yet it is all too symptomatic of what is wrong with European democracy. The EU, as well as many individual member states, have constitutions which are based on a fundamental distrust of the people.
They have powerful legal institutions which see their role as defending the people from themselves.
Take Germany, where the right-wing party AfD looks likely to make striking gains in the upcoming elections.
Europe’s problem, as Vance made clear, is that it has itself been lax in defending the values which it professes to uphold
Ross Clark
Already, the political establishment is gearing up to refuse to accept the possibility of the party leading or even forming part of the next government.
Ever since World War Two, the prevailing attitude among Europe’s elite has been that democracy gave Germany Hitler and therefore it must be neutered forever after.
Europe’s elite outraged
The people should be given a choice, but only within narrowly defined parameters which ensure the perpetual survival of social democracy.
It has led in some cases to the same parties pursuing the same economic policies being in power for the past eight decades.
Now that those policies are failing to deliver the bacon, it is hardly any wonder voters are rebelling by backing “populist” parties.
What does “populist” mean other than policies that are popular but which those currently in power wish were not?
The difference between the US European attitudes to democracy can be summed up in the wording of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was written by European lawyers and the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which was influenced more by American lawyers.
While the latter states that the basis of government “shall be the will of the people”, the former contains no such phrase.
Vance also drew attention to the numerous ways in which European courts are suppressing free speech, such as in the case of Adam Smith-Connor, who was prosecuted for silently praying outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, thus infringing a public spaces protection order.
Some people might reasonably ask what that case has to do with an international security conference but Vance is quite right to be shocked by the case.
It is alien to Americans because free speech is written into the US constitution.
In Britain and in other European countries, on the other hand, the freedom to express your views seems increasingly to be treated as a privilege rather than a right, and one that can be withdrawn at whim if some special interest group is offended by what you say.
Where, by the way, are Britain’s left when it comes to defending the right of anti- abortion activists to protest?
Europe is drifting towards becoming a dictatorship of ‘liberals’ who are not really liberal at all
Ross Clark
They wail to high heaven when climate activists are prosecuted for criminal damage or obstructing roads (never for protesting in itself), yet when it came to criminalising silent prayer outside abortion clinics almost every Labour MP, as well as many from other parties, happily voted in favour.
Vance is right. Europe is drifting towards becoming a dictatorship of “liberals” who are not really liberal at all.
On the contrary, on some issues they are positively Putinesque in their desperation to silence dissent. They treat dogma on trans rights, diversity, Net Zero and so on as unchallengeable.
Europe’s elite is so outraged because the US vice president has done just that — and challenged them.
Sorry to disabuse them, but to many of us there was not the remotest thing objectionable or “unacceptable” about Vance’s speech.
On the contrary, I wish we had more politicians of our own who were so frank.
.”
.”
.”
