William Rees-Mogg

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de noviembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

InternacionalOrden Mundial

It is 70 years since war broke out in 1939, but historic questions remain. “Appeasement” is still a dirty word, but so is “war-monger”. President Bush repeatedly used the memory of Winston Churchill in 1940 to justify his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Revisionist historians question whether Neville Chamberlain, the architect of the 1930s appeasement policy, had any choice. One witness was Sir Nevile Henderson, who published his account in Failure of a Mission.

Henderson was Neville Chamberlain’s Ambassador to Germany in the period immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War. He arrived in Berlin early in May 1937.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalEconomíaEuropaMundoOriente Próximo, ,

Dictatorships, as well as democracies, depend on money, although North Korea and Zimbabwe would like to prove the contrary. Dictators have their own constituencies and their constituencies have their own costs.

The victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have been fraudulent; it is certainly bad news for the Iranian people and the world. It means that the theocratic dictatorship of Iran will not benefit even from the modest reforms promised by Mir Hossein Mousavi. The result will alienate the young urban middle class, particularly women. It will do nothing but damage to Iran's foreign relations.

It would be pleasant to suppose that the underlying trends of the economy would bring down this oppressive regime.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaUE a debate,

Lord Hoffmann is one of Britain's most distinguished judges; he is now the second most senior Lord of Appeal, and is close to retirement. Last week he delivered a strongly felt address to the Judicial Studies Board. This speech was a serious criticism of the European Court of Human Rights, usually known as the Strasbourg court. He accused the court of considering itself as “the equivalent of the Supreme Court of the United States, laying down a federal law of Europe”.

One should take very seriously anything Lord Hoffmann says. He is widely regarded as one of the two or three finest legal intellects of his generation.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

Joe Biden has one crucial qualification to be the next vice-president of the United States, at least in the eyes of Barack Obama. He is not Hillary Clinton. Mr Obama has made the opposite decision to the one made by another young and relatively inexperienced Senator in 1960. John F.Kennedy distrusted and detested Lyndon Johnson, but he asked him to become his running- mate in the election because he thought that Johnson would help to deliver the Texas vote. He did, and Texas was one of the key states that took Kennedy into the White House.

Senator Biden is no Hillary Clinton; he presents no threat though little promise to Mr Obama.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa

I feel sure that a debate is going on between the hawks and doves in the Kremlin. I am confident of that because such debates always do exist. There must be equally patriotic Russians, in senior official positions, who see the Georgian campaign as part of Vladimir Putin's restoration of Russian self-respect or as dangerous adventurism. In times of crisis, decision-makers inevitably divide into hawks, regarded by critics as “reckless warmongers”, and doves, regarded as “cowardly appeasers”.

Such divisions exist in the EU and in the US. In Russia, there is no doubt that the hawks are in the ascendant. The leading hawk is Mr Putin, the Prime Minister.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalEconomía

Today I am celebrating my 80th birthday, an age that seems less formidable when one has reached it than when one can see it only from afar.

I was born on July 14, 1928, about 15 months before the American boom of the 1920s came to its rather abrupt end. Like everyone else, I am naturally curious to see whether the global credit crunch is going to be a brief interruption in global prosperity, or the prelude to a longer and deeper depression.

I cannot claim to have clear memories of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, which occured when I was 1year old, or of Britain leaving the gold standard in 1931, when I was 3 years old.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaConvención y Tratados

The process of ratification of the Lisbon treaty will start this week in the House of Commons. I'm against the treaty because it involves an important constitutional transfer of powers from the European nations to the European institutions, from national democracy to supra-national bureaucracy. I'm in favour of a referendum, not only because it was promised by Labour, Tories and Liberal Democrats at the last general election, but also because it would be the best way to ratify - or reject - a big constitutional change. The people should be consulted when their powers of self-government are being given away.

I was struck yesterday by an observation of the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, ,

After three centuries, this seems likely to be the year of Scotland’s revenge. In 1707 the last Scottish Parliament of the old order dissolved itself and Scottish sovereignty was transferred from Edinburgh to London.

In their hearts many Scots never accepted this English predominance. They rebelled in 1715 and 1745, but it was not until May of this year that they elected, with a plurality of only one seat, a Scottish government committed to Scottish independence. I admire Alex Salmond’s achievement as leader of the Scottish National Party.

In a month’s time in Lisbon, Gordon Brown, who is a Scottish Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, will go to the European summit to approve a treaty that will transfer many of the remaining powers of British sovereignty to the European Union.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y SeguridadMundoOriente Próximo, , ,

General Sir Mike Jackson is a soldier’s soldier. His doctrine, as told to The Daily Telegraph, is that “everything starts and finishes with the soldier”. He adds, ruefully, that he failed to persuade the Ministry of Defence of that doctrine when he was Chief of the General Staff. He has now written his memoirs that put the strategic blame, where it almost certainly belongs, on Donald Rumsfeld for the US failure to follow up their victory in Iraq with a postwar plan. He also recognises the weakness of British defence policy in its failure to match resources to commitments.

It is easy to say, as some have, that the general should have made his criticisms when he was still in office.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaDefensa y Seguridad, ,

From August 10 the Ministry of Defence imposed a gagging order on the Armed Services. Members of the Forces are no longer allowed to discuss any matters relating to defence through any public means of communication. They cannot speak at public meetings, write letters to the press, write blogs or even take part in surveys. This gagging order applies to men and women of all ranks.

Can I ask two questions: Why now? For whose benefit? The new censorship is a reaction to low morale in the Services, which extends from top to bottom, from general to private. The people protected are the politicians, who are responsible for the crisis in morale.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalEconomía

Many people are worried by last week’s big stock market falls; they want to know what will happen next. They want to know what it’s all about. It does not seem likely that the “sub-prime” crisis will turn into one of the big disasters of financial history. Even the sub-prime mortgages themselves would not have zero value; paper losses may total $200 billion (£100 billion) or so, but that is not in itself enough to turn the modern world upside down. World financial markets have survived much greater shocks.

Nevertheless, there is some probability that there will be further unpleasant aftershocks.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalEconomía

When presidents of the United States make reassuring statements about the stock market, investors with any historic memory prepare to run for the hills. The most famous example was Herbert Hoover after the 1929 crash: “The business of America is sound.”

Last week global stock markets fell heavily. On Friday President Bush commented that: “The world economy is strong.” Until that point, I felt fairly sure that what was happening in stock markets was a relatively minor correction, a response of the equity markets to the problems of the debt markets. Now I am not so sure. President Bush has shaken my confidence in the world economy.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalTerrorismo InternacionalEuropaUnión Europea,

The historic aims of terrorism are to disrupt society and to radicalise the community to which the terrorists belong. A terrorist campaign that reaches the scale of that in Iraq, or one that is concentrated on a key target such as the twin towers, can cause significant disruption. The terrorists of Baghdad have wrecked the economy of Iraq and caused widespread havoc in a campaign employing high levels of technical efficiency. In terms of technical aid to terrorists, Iran has a lot to answer for.

But a smaller-scale campaign can still reach the terrorists’ other objective of radicalising their own people.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaConvención y Tratados

The issue is one of good faith. At the 2005 general election the Labour Party promised to put the European constitutional treaty “to the British people in a referendum”. Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown now say that a referendum on the reform treaty will not be necessary.

The evidence is that the reform treaty is the same in substance as the 2004 constitutional treaty. Like the constitutional treaty it would greatly extend the powers of the European institutions, but would not repatriate any powers to the nation. In what might have been intended as a private letter, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, stated that the new treaty would, in law, contain the substance of the constitutional treaty, and it unquestionably does.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaUE a debate

On Thursday, June 5, 1975, the United Kingdom held its only, referendum on Europe. This was to endorse the British membership of the European Community, which had already been ratified by Parliament in 1971; the treaty of accession had been signed on January 22, 1972.

The referendum put the question in this form: “Do you think that the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community (the common market)?” It has since been objected that this formulation was biased in two ways: by referring to “staying in”, it put the public preference for the status quo on the side of a “yes” vote; by referring to the “common market”, it implied that this was all that Britain was joining.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión EuropeaConvención y Tratados

There is considerable agreement that the European Union badly needs reform, including constitutional reform, but there is a division between Britain and Brussels about the direction that reform ought to take. It is a question of who should get the power: Parliament or bureaucrats. Most British people want to to see a more liberal Europe, with more democratic values. What they now see is an increasingly bureaucratic Europe, in which power is still moving towards nonelected bodies. The proposed constitutional treaty, which will be renegotiated at the Berlin summit in June, would centralise power even further, taking it from elected national parliaments and giving it to the nonelected bureaucracies.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesTestimonios

It seems probable, though not certain, that Bob Woolmer was murdered because he was “the man who knew too much”. He had been the South African coach at the time that his friend, Hanse Cronje, the South African cricket captain, was convicted of match fixing. Cronje died in a suspicious plane crash; possibly he was killed to prevent him writing his own account of the South African scandal. Mr Woolmer later told Clive Rice, another South African friend, that he knew who had been involved in match fixing, including officials as well as players.

Last September Mr Woolmer e-mailed Osman Samiuddin, a Pakistani journalist, asking for his help in producing a projected book which would give “the honest facts”.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

From the earliest days Christianity has been opposed to slavery. In his Letter to the Galatians, St Paul wrote: “As many of you that have been baptised in Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. We were all one in Jesus Christ.” Undoubtedly Christians have compromised with slavery — as with other social evils — in the course of history, but the orthodox Christian doctrine is one of liberty and equality.

The Christian belief was the inspiration in William Wilberforce’s long campaign to end the slave trade.…  Seguir leyendo »

EuropaUnión Europea, , ,

The issue of the Roman Catholic adoption agencies, and their refusal to arrange adoptions for same-sex partnerships, I find altogether fascinating. It involves fundamental questions of liberty, of freedom of religion, of European law and of political philosophy. In our collapsing political society it may prove to be only one week’s wonder, but it is important to think it through.

The dispute all starts with a European regulation — with one of those European incursions into British sovereignty that hardly one British person in a thousand was aware of at the time it happened. We think that we are free people, but 80 per cent of our laws come from Brussels, and cannot be rejected by the British Parliament or, indeed, by the British electorate.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesTestimonios

The leading economists of history can be divided into two classes. There are those who mainly contribute to the development of economics as a science; they usually have most influence on their fellow economists. There are others who become global gurus, and have direct influence on politicians, bankers, businessmen and journalists. There is some overlap between them, though it is possible to be a third-rate economist but a first-rate guru.

The gurus are usually remembered by the world for two or three interconnected ideas that provide rules of thumb in later generations. Adam Smith is remembered for the division of labour, the benefits of competition and free trade; David Ricardo for providing the intellectual basis for the gold standard; Thomas Malthus for the view that population growth might outstrip resources; Karl Marx for socialism and the class struggle; John Maynard Keynes for advocating deficit finance as a cure for mass unemployment; and Milton Friedman for the revival of monetary theory and the advocacy of free markets.…  Seguir leyendo »