EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, ENGLAND

        

 

In praise of ... senior backbenchers

More Labour veterans should emulate the example of Mr Straw

What should a senior politician do after the ministerial car and red boxes recede into memory? In too many cases, the Labour way – like that of many Conservatives before them – has been to get out too quickly. Some, from Tony Blair down, chose to leverage ministerial experience for a comfortable career in the private sector. Others, of whom Gordon Brown stands out, have found themselves stranded in the Commons without purpose or enthusiasm. Several of his last cabinet still seem undecided about the future. It is because it is so unusual for a former minister to return to the backbenches with a healthy appetite for parliamentary work that Jack Straw currently stands out. Mr Straw was, to say the least, a controversial minister – foreign secretary during Iraq, cautious on constitutional reform, instinctively conservative on law and order – but there is no question he has turned himself into a formidable senior backbencher. Regularly in the chamber, his interventions are independent and searching. On Monday he used his heft as a senior figure to create a stir over car insurance reform which no junior backbencher could hope to equal. Plenty of Conservative ex-ministers – Stephen Dorrell, Peter Lilley, Malcolm Rifkind for three – also stayed the unglamorous course in the Commons to the benefit of their party and parliament alike. More Labour veterans should emulate their example, and that of Mr Straw, by staying in the Commons to wield their not insignificant power as senior backbenchers.

 

 

 

China and the EU: The longest of marches

The Chinese are coming, and for some, like the workers at Saab's Trollhättan plant in Sweden, they cannot come fast enough

Forget the Russians. The Chinese are coming, and for some in Europe, like the 3,800 workers at Saab's Trollhättan plant in Sweden, they cannot come fast enough. Unable to pay its suppliers, or now, it seems, its workers, Saab was thrown a short-term lifeline yesterday by an order for 582 cars for which an unidentified Chinese company will pay upfront. Nor is this an isolated example. A report to be issued shortly by the European Council on Foreign Relations estimates that China's purchase of public debt in Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain may be of the order of €15bn-€20bn, peanuts in comparison to the $647bn in which China's holdings in US treasuries have increased in the last three years, but, when coupled to its direct investments, which will grow to $1tn by 2020, significant enough to the distressed periphery of Europe.

China is not shy of using its growing economic clout. A Hong Kong Airlines contract to buy billions of euros' worth of Airbus aircraft has been put on ice, because the Chinese government is unhappy about EU emissions trading legislation which will force Chinese carriers to pay more for flights landing in Europe. There will be more of the same as two business cultures clash. China's export of its surplus capital is both unavoidable – because it is diversifying from its US holdings to invest in Japan and Europe – and welcome. But whereas public contracts in Europe are open to China, Chinese public contracts are anything but to European companies. European companies can only get Chinese public sector contracts under stringent conditions.

For this reason, the most significant meeting that prime minister Wen Jiabao will have on his European tour will be today at a joint meeting of the German cabinet. If anyone can speak for Europe and provide leadership on the need for reciprocity in trading relations with China, it is Angela Merkel. The crisis in the eurozone has provided rich short-term opportunities for the Chinese, but it is in the medium and longer terms that European interests in transparency, a level playing field and the rule of law should be brought to bear.

Either the EU gets tough in its demands, by threatening to shut out firms from countries like China that remain closed – barring them from tendering for public contracts in Europe – or it allows China to pick off one country with a tottering economy after another and use companies like Airbus as proxy lobbyists to derail Europe's emissions standards. It is clear what should happen to establish parity in trading relations in the long term. Making it happen in conditions where member governments are scrambling for cash is a more challenging but just as necessary task.

Wen said that China would not tolerate finger-wagging lectures on human rights and that the UK and China should respect each other as equals. Regular crackdowns on activists and lawyers, in the form of arrests and extrajudicial disappearances – the latest being in response to the Arab spring – are one symptom among many of how bumpy the process of internal reform is. It will get a lot bumpier in next year's leadership changes, which will usher in a new generation of leaders, the so-called princelings like Xi Jinping, who are sons of the heroes of the Long March. If, as we are constantly told, China's annual growth rates are unsustainable and the world's second-largest economy could yet hit its own Japanese-style brick wall – as an export and property boom collapses in stagnation – China has a clear interest in seeking European high technology and expertise in transforming its economy. An economy that seeks to become green, innovative and sustainable will also have to tap the strength of its own ecologists, lawyers and civil society. Mutual economic dependence is a good place to start, but the dialogue must not end there. China and Europe have a lot to give each other.

Ministry of Defence: Too many chiefs

No battle plan, it is said, ever survives the first contact with the enemy. It seems to be a bit like that with British defence planning too

No battle plan, it is said, ever survives the first contact with the enemy. It seems to be a bit like that with British defence planning too. This country is often on the verge of finalising the large strategic debate about national security, and the forces and structures required to protect it. But then events kick in and everything is bent in new directions, leaving the theorists and planners stranded and the old interest groups intact. Inevitably, there is suspicion that the latest internal recasting of the MoD, though triggered by 10 months' work by Lord Levene and the defence reform unit, has also been shaped at the 11th hour by Downing Street's extreme anger at recent unauthorised public complaints by the service chiefs about the sustainability of the Libya mission.

British defence thinking, planning and organisation often remain stubbornly out of sync with both the strategic and defence needs of the United Kingdom and with the ability to pay for it in tight times. Monday's statement by the defence secretary, Liam Fox, in response to the Levene report may in time come to be seen as pivotal in correcting this. Inevitably, that was how Dr Fox presented it in his speech to the Reform thinktank and then, later, in the Commons. But the proof of these things is in how they work out in practice. Past experience, and the current destabilising arguments over Libya, inescapably means that the claims made on behalf of the Levene reforms have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The Levene reforms look right on paper. As Dr Fox made clear to MPs, the defence establishment is top-heavy, bureaucratic, and has an inbuilt tendency for counterproductive and expensive haggling. The reforms at the heart of Monday's statement – reduction in the numbers of commanders, better co-ordination through a slimmed-down decision-making structure, and service accountability for spending decisions – all make eminent sense in easing those problems. But, as the Libya arguments have shown, these good intentions struggle to survive big new commitments or shocks, some of them generated from 10 Downing Street rather than an external enemy.

National security strategists rarely have the luxury of making defence policy in isolation from dangerous and volatile events. Yet, as Afghanistan winds down and as the action in Libya evolves and, hopefully, concludes, this country needs to pause and take better stock of its future defence needs than it has done in the recent past. It is a debate that our national politics needs. And it is a debate in which the military, however self-interested and disruptive their rivalries can sometimes be, need to be heard too.