Friday 29 December 2023

Delors and Wine bottles

Jacques Delors, the former president of the EU Commission died this week aged 98. He played a huge role in the creation of the single market and the single currency and his passing is a reminder of what great statesmen looked like. I imagine he could look back with some satisfaction at the creation of two of the most significant and lasting improvements to Europe's influence and power in the last fifty years. His detractors (and there are a lot on this side of The Channel) are still waiting for both to collapse, events they have been predicting for decades.

Some wag said if you read the British press you would think his life revolved around Mrs Thatcher and The Sun.

Even Boris Johnson eulogised Delors but said his vision was "never right for Britain."

We'll see whether his vision was right for Britain or not, but at least Delors had a vision and realised it, Johnson never had one at all. He only wanted to destroy what Jacques had built without any idea of what to put in its place. That's the difference. And it's becoming ever clearer that Johnson's policies are proving rather less permanent and consequential as the growing majority against Brexit shows.

Ken Clarke, the former Tory chancellor said Europe had its “most powerful and reforming leadership” during the era of Helmut Kohl as German chancellor, Francois Mitterrand as French president, Mrs Thatcher and Mr Delors."

He told the BBC: “Jacques Delors was one of the most reforming and creative of the four and when they worked together, or when one of them managed to prevail to get an idea, Europe developed as never before.

“Margaret’s own contribution was the single market because Margaret was in favour of economic Europe, she was in favour of a total free trade Europe, she never talked about leaving the European Union, she saw it as an economic thing to make us more prosperous by giving us a big free trade bloc.

“She suspected Jacques, as she revealed in that extraordinary outburst in the House of Commons, of going beyond that and being in favour of a political Europe, which she was against, which was going to be a sort of united states of Europe, a superstate and all the rest of it, which I agree with Neil [Kinnock] – I don’t think Jacques was interested in that at all.”

Isn't that always the case? We in Britain misinterpret or misunderstand, sometimes deliberately for political advantage, what continental Europeans want to achieve. It's always Britain being dragged kicking and screaming into modernity.

Until we get statesmen and women in this country with the quality, stature and vision of people like Schuman, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Kohl and Delors we will remain outside the EU and in the slow lane.

Britain bottles it

If there was one thing you could point to as an example of British small-minded stupidity it's the announcement over Christmas about new pint-sized bottles for wine. It looks almost like it was dreamt up by a satirist. 

The government is probably the most unpopular ever, facing multiple crises left, right and centre and headed for a massive defeat next year and it comes up with pathetic change presented as a Brexit win. It’s hard to suppress a laugh. Think about all the upheaval of the past seven years, the lost trade, the businesses relocating to Europe, the worry and inconvenience suffered by millions of citizens and all to enable wine to be sold in pint bottles.

It was left to the unfortunate Kevin Hollinrake, MP for Thirsk and Malton and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Enterprise and Markets, to release the good news, which he did on Twitter:

This is Olympic-level straw clutching. The press release reads like trolling with a single paragraph tucked away at the bottom on metric measurements:

Units of measurement

The consultation was published in June 2022 and received over 100,000 responses.  Analysis showed 98.7% of respondents were in favour of using metric units when buying or selling products, either as the primary unit of sale (as currently) or as the sole unit of sale (purely metric). After careful consideration, the Government has decided not to introduce any new legislation at this time.

I love the bit about the decision coming after 'careful consideration' being given, don't you? If it took longer than a few milliseconds it was a waste of time.  Goodness knows how many man-hours went into the whole exercise.

Nobody seems to think any wine producer is actually going to make use of the new ‘freedom’ and spend money producing 568ml bottles as opposed to the usual (and globally standard) 750ml.  You can buy wine in 500ml or 750ml (plus other sizes) and we are expected to believe that being able to buy 68ml more or 182ml less is somehow a Great Leap Forward. This is assuming any bottler decides to do it, which I doubt.

Bizarre as it may seem, this sort of nonsense is what some people voted for in 2016. Look at this from Peter Hitchens:


Presumably, if there are an odd number at lunch or dinner you need to buy several bottles and chuck half of one away?  Does it make any sense at all, even if they ever appear on supermarket shelves?

Finally, in a government press release on 19 December about importing wine we get this:

Labelling wine imported into England from 1 January 2024 

From 1 January 2024, new labelling rules come into effect for all wine imported into England. Wine imports will have to show the name and address of a business that: 

  • is based in the UK, Channel Islands or Isle of Man 
  • markets the wine under its own name 

The name and address will be that of the Food Business Operator (FBO), or the importer, if the FBO is not based in the UK, Channel Islands or Isle of Man.

If you import wine into Wales or Scotland you don't need to bother.

I really think the government is going mad.

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