BBC4 In Our Time: Montesquieu

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755) whose works on liberty, monarchism, despotism, republicanism and the separation of powers were devoured by intellectuals across Europe and New England in the eighteenth century, transforming political philosophy and influencing the American Constitution. He argued that an individual's liberty needed protection from the arm of power, checking that by another power; where judicial, executive and legislative power were concentrated in the hands of one figure, there could be no personal liberty.

With

Richard Bourke Professor in the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary, University of London

Rachel Hammersley Senior Lecturer in Intellectual History at Newcastle University

Richard Whatmore Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History

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Social Europe: The New EU Budget Under The Constraints Of Brexit And The Debt Brake

At the same time, a reform is overdue: Many challenges require European solutions: climate change, shortage of resources, high unemployment in many parts of Europe, social and economic inequalities as well as digitization and global instability. Keeping the status quo intact would send a bad signal about the effectiveness of the political union. Within this context, Brexit has come like any other unexpected event at a bad time. [...]

The policy-making power of the EU depends on the readiness to boost its sovereignty and on its financial provisions. Now the UK is leaving this comes over more as a ‘spending watchdog’ than as a committed protagonist of a political union. But other member states might take over the UK role. The ‘frugal four’ – Austria, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands – reject any increase in their contributions.  [...]

Looking at challenges as set out above, the strengthening of the social dimension of Europe must take first place. The EU Budget must aim for the perceptible improvement of living and working conditions of European citizens and the fight against increasing economic and social inequalities as well as the unacceptably high youth unemployment rate of up to 50%.

The most important instruments of European convergence policy, European Regional Development Fund and Cohesion Fund, are set at €273bn, the European Social Fund+ at €101bn. According to the Commission, both should be more strictly connected to the European Semester. ESF+ should be increased. However, its share of structural funds still remains too low in order to combat unemployment and poverty in an efficient manner. A shift of the Budget from direct payments to rural development (EAFRD) is the order of the day to combat rural migration.

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Jacobin Magazine: Germany’s Governmental Crisis

In this sense, everything is at stake, as the party’s strength is increasingly challenged from the right by the Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose positions and members run the gamut from right-wing populist to outright fascist. Why, indeed, should anti-immigration voters support the CSU when a louder law-and-order, anti-immigration party is available?

For this same reason, leading figures in the CSU are practically competing with one another to prove who is more authoritarian, as Bavarian minister president Markus Söder mandates crucifixes in all public buildings and introduces a draconian new police law that has been widely criticized from various sectors of civil society.

After initial hesitation, the Social Democrats also agreed, after removing some of the agreement’s most draconian wording. Germany, it seems, will close itself off and build refugee camps. Austrian chancellor Kurz responded by announcing his intention to better “protect” Austria’s southern border — thereby shifting the border even further south and leaving it up to Matteo Salvini to decide what will happen to refugees in the Mediterranean. [...]

After all, the “migration question,” which she has styled the “question of the fate the European Union”, is really a question of the EU and its economic strength in global competition. Will multilateralism continue to prevail, or are we witnessing a return to unilateralism and strong nation-states? Katrin Göring-Eckardt of the Greens sounded quite similar to Nahles and Merkel when she observed that if the “end of multilateralism” is up for discussion, then “everything is at stake.” [...]

For the CSU, all that matters is Bavaria. The party, appealing to Bavaria’s Texas-like self-image as a culturally unique and independent state in Germany, does not contest elections anywhere else and is generally to the right of the CDU. In order to save its own regional skin, it may at some point prove more opportune to cut loose from the CDU and focus on maintaining its hegemony over Bavaria, leaving Merkel to govern with other mainstream parties or call snap elections.

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SciShow Psych: Brain Hacks to Make Your Food Taste Better

The New York Times: Britain, Time to Let Go of the ‘Anglosphere’

David Davis, the British government’s Brexit secretary until he left his post this week, said in a 2016 speech on the referendum: “This is an opportunity to renew our strong relationships with Commonwealth and Anglosphere countries. These parts of the world are growing faster than Europe. We share history, culture and language. We have family ties. We even share similar legal systems. The usual barriers to trade are largely absent.” [...]

President Trump may agree to a new trade deal with Britain, but it’s unlikely that Britain would decide the terms, a prospect that is fraught with political risks for the British government. Such a deal raises the specter of British voters eating chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef while watching the revered National Health Service being opened up to American multinationals.

For Australia and New Zealand, trade links with China and Asia are much more important than those with Britain. And Canada, as a member of Nafta, has long been oriented toward the massive American market. Security and intelligence cooperation among these states and Britain in the so-called Five Eyes group is critical, as is NATO membership, but this kind of cooperation does not require a new Anglosphere bloc.

In reality, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand show no inclination to join Britain in new political and economic alliances. More likely, they would rather continue to work within the existing institutions — like the European Union and the World Trade Organization — and remain indifferent to, or just perplexed by, Britain’s calls for some kind of formalized Anglosphere alliance.

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The Guardian: With criticism of May's Brexit, Trump detonates a diplomatic grenade

His outburst to the Sun – a Eurosceptic tabloid newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News channel supplies many of Trump’s views and staff – could certainly be seen as bad manners, perhaps an act of revenge for the baby blimp set to take to the London sky on Friday. [...]

He is aware that May, like Merkel, is weakened and vulnerable domestically, and his past record suggests that he despises weakness. He has consistently expressed admiration, by contrast, for dictators such as Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un and Rodrigo Duterte.

More than a year into his presidency, no one is quite certain whether this is due to an instinctive fascination with autocrats and the great man theory of history – or a deeper, more sinister effort to reorder the world in favour of rightwing demagoguery. [...]

May, meanwhile, standing before the media and live TV cameras, will face calls to emulate Hugh Grant’s prime minister in the 2003 film Love Actually, who informs the American president: “A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward I will be prepared to be much stronger.”

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Bloomberg: Trump Isn’t Getting the Brexit He Wanted

That trade deal is prized by Brexiters as proof it was all worth it. The U.S. is Britain’s largest single-country export market, though it is well behind the EU, where about 43 percent of U.K. goods and services exports go and which is the source of 54 percent of imports. But it’s difficult to believe it matters that much to Trump. The U.S. does more trade with Canada, Mexico and China. A U.K.-U.S. trade agreement would be nice, especially as a reward for Britain’s security support. But it’s not the kind of deal that is going to keep Trump up at night. [...]

It’s becoming clear now to Britons that the promised benefits of Brexit aren’t likely to materialize, and that the best they can hope for is a divorce settlement with Europe that minimizes the disadvantages of leaving. [...]

May’s plan is so offensive to hardcore Brexiters that two senior ministers resigned in the days after her plan was revealed to the cabinet, and many more have been plotting to undermine it. And yet, it’s just an opening bid in negotiations that have a long way to run. There’s every possibility that the EU — which insists that its single market freedoms of goods, labor, capital and services cannot be turned into an a la carte buffet — will reject the offer. There’s still a possibility that the U.K. and the EU will not reach a deal, in which case a very harsh Brexit that exposes Britain to hostile economic relations with longtime allies indeed is possible.  [...]

Both Brexiters and Trump channeled dissatisfaction with the status quo and capitalized on the emotional draw of a clean break with an established order. But both movements lacked a workable vision of a new order. Trump stumbles from border-control edicts to tariffs to summit-wrecking. In the same way, British hard-leavers still haven’t articulated a vision of Brexit that is workable, as the new Brexit minister Dominic Raab noted on Thursday.

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The Huffington Post: Trump Says Europe Is ‘Losing’ Its Culture Because Of Immigration

“And I don’t mean that in a positive way,” Trump told the paper in a sit-down interview. “I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad. I think you’re losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist 10 or 15 years ago.” [...]

“You have a mayor who has done a terrible job in London. He’s done a terrible job,” Trump said of London Mayor Sadiq Khan, with whom the president has had a long-running feud. “Take a look at the terrorism that’s taking place. Look at what’s going on. He’s done a terrible job.”

Trump continued, “I think that all of this immigration has really changed the fabric of Europe. Now, I speak as an outsider when I say that, but I speak as somebody who loves Europe, and I think it’s too bad. I think he’s done a very bad job on terrorism. I think he’s done a bad job on crime.”

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