In the spirit of looking on the bright side, it occurs to me that with all the frequent flying between Britain and Brussels/Strasbourg the chances of Nick Griffin being involved in a plane crash have just multiplied several hundred times…

First there was the BNP with its slogans about “the new battle for Britain” and “British jobs for British workers” all illustrated with the photo of a Spitfire piloted by Polish airmen, the American workmen, and the Italian pensioners.

Next there was the UKIP leaflet, dominated by the slogan “Say no to European union” and a photograph of Winston Churchill who was advocating European union before most other people had even thought about it.  As a special bonus, the description of Nigel Farage says “He is Britian’s leading MEP…”

That’s right: they can’t even spell Britain!

At last there was the Green Party/Sarah Lucas laflet, like a breath of fresh air.  Obviously I would prefer people to support Labour.  I have met the top three candidates on our list: Peter Skinner is a good MEP already and Janet Sully and Bob Fromant are enthusiastic about Europe and what can be done within it.  Unfortunately a few (very) bad MPs have turned a lot of voters off the main parties, so if they are going to go out and cast protest votes I would rather they did it for a party with a positive agenda.

Apart from their more obvious shortcomings, the BNP would do nothing but go to Europe and complain about it.  Even if they were capable of achieving a positive outcome on any topic, they wouldn’t want to do that as it would lend credibility to the whole European Parliament.

UKIP are similar in that respect, and they make no secret of milking the MEP expense system for every penny they can so they can put it in their party funds.  Think a moment: would we forgive an MP who claimed expenses for  a house they didn’t own because he gave all the money to his party?   In the local elections would we bopther voting for a county council candidate who promises to turn up at meetings and just moan that the council even exists as an entity?

Conspiracy theories are doing the rounds that Green Party support is growing but unreported in the various opinion polls.  I would prefer that to the alternatives.

A few more bands that might make Eurovision enjoyable on a level other than campness:

Ojos de Brujo from Spain.

Tonton David from France.

Lykke Li from Sweden.

Horsham Labour Party members about to set off in Broadbridge Heath, May 9th

Undeterred by all the doom and gloom, we had a busy weekend in Horsham, delivering European election material, and we are all pleased with our efforts.

We took a large pile of newspapers and worried that we were being over-ambitious, but with delivering sessions on Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon we got through all of them easily.

The European elections are important to us because the person second on the party list for the South East is a local person, well-known to us all: Janet Sully.  If we get enough votes for a second seat it means there will be an MEP office in the Crawley/Horsham area.

So it is true and the past is, indeed, another country.   How strange that all these things that were actively popular with so few people are now not only commonplace but are so accepted there would be considerable resistance to changing them back.

40% of the readers were actively against shops being open on Sunday, for example.  How different to today’s rampant consumerism.  Ironically, our shops are now open more than in France where Sunday opening is largely reserved for designated tourist areas.  Was there really such hostility to having pubs open all day instead of closing right after lunch?

Can it be that, in Borg-like fashion, we have already been assimilated into European culture without realising it?

Of more immediate interest was this passage:

In 1930, the year Heath had his first continental epiphany amid the gateaux and Citroen showrooms of Paris, Winston Churchill wrote a pioneering article for an American magazine, calling for a United States of Europe.

By the Second World War, having moved from the margins to the centre of British politics, Churchill was able to set out his European vision more publicly and and more concretely.  In a 1943 broadcast, he put before Britons the prospect of an ‘integrated life of Europe that is possible… without destroying the individual characteristics and traditions of its many ancient and historic races‘.

Three years later he made a high-profile speech in Zurich, addressed to the public and politicians right across the battered post-war continent.  He urged the creation of a united Europe based, just as the future EEC would be, around a partnership between France and Germany.  He concluded: ‘We must begin now‘.

Would this be the same Winston Churchill that UKIP have plastered all over their website and leaflets to symbolise Britain’s separateness from Europe?   Perhaps, like the BNP with their Polish Spitfire, they should do more research into what they choose as the symbols of their campaign.

Which will be the better tactics?  I think most juries are swayed by the performance and not the song – although tribal loyalties famously outweigh both by a long way.

Now my command of the French language is patchy at best, but it looks to me as if they are saying more or less the same things as us over the channel.  “après des années de résultats quasi humiliants…”   Sounds like our media talking about years of humiliating results doesn’t it?

Even my rough translations reveal that the French are taking it all very seriously this time round.  They have picked a singer who not only has a long and illustrious career, but has sold shedloads of records across Europe¹  and toured extensively, including shows in Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Germany in support of her new album.  They are gung-ho for it: just look at the link to another story at the bottom of the page – La chanteuse Patricia Kaas va à l’Eurovision “pour gagner” Even I can work out what that means!

Clearly the competition is going to be won by an East European country or one of the Baltic states, but it will be interesting to see how things go between France and England in the fight for 20th place.   Will the famous composer beat the famous singer?

Here are the two entries for comparison.  The French one sounds OK, but I’m not sure it is Eurovision material: a bit too serieux.  She would have done better with something jazzier like Tropic Blues Bar from her Scène de vie album.  Maybe she is just giving us a chance?  I think it is better than ours though.  What do you think?

One thought though.  If we really were serious about winning why didn’t we just get one of our national treasure singer-songwriters to do a song for us and forget about all the phone-in competitions?  Robyn Hitchcock, or Elton John, or Damon Albarn, or Jarvis Cocker… any of them.  And didn’t Morrisey express an interest a few years ago?

1. Even I have got one of her albums

Not that I wholeheartedly approve.  As a piece of art I think it has a good concept, but that some of the individual depictions of countries are unnecessarily offensive in a quite childish way.  Is it big or clever to put autobahns in a formation that suggests the swastika?   Leaving the UK out completely because we don’t seem to participate fully in Europe is fair enough: a mildly amusing conceptual joke.

This could have been a great piece of art if the individual countries were done in a less broad way.  The way it has been done is necessarily offensive – how many countries can be depicted in a sympathetic or even neutral way if they are represented by a single defining characteristic or stereotype?

The artist says that the work is satire, but it is not particularly subtle satire is it?   Surely satire requires some sort of subtlety and its a cop-out to try and claim some sort of subtlety at a meta-level in the process of creating the art under false pretences.

I reckon it would have been better if he had just done the framework and inserted individual components that had been done by artists from each country.  Not that it would have given any guarantee of non-offensive stereotypes.  It could have been even worse, depending on the artists involved as they would know which buttons to really push.  Can you imagine, for example, how someone like Banksy might have depicted the UK?   It would, however, have contained less lazy stereotypes.

But at the end of the day the work has generated a lot of comment.  After the initial flurry of knee-jerk objections (which even if they have some grounds are still knee-jerk) it could stimulate some debate about the nature of Europe and the relationships between the parts.  The whole analogous structure of an Airfix-type kit could lead to speculations about whether Europe is still just a collection of parts with the potential to something much better when assembled.  Any piece of art that people are going to talk about instead of just saying “ooh. That’s pretty” can’t be all bad can it?

It also meant that we were free to root for anyone we wanted to, and even change allegiance halfway through a game.  At first I was all for Croatia, as I had them in the office sweepstake, but I also wanted to see Holland and Sweden do well – largely due to very happy memories of both places – and enjoyed Spain’s style from the start.  Right up to the last minute, even seeing how Spain were outplaying them, I expected Germany to win because they are Germany and that’s what they do.

All that’s left is to dish out a few informal awards:

Manager of the tournament: Slaven Bilic.  No contest.  Euro 2008 will have done wonders for his CV and Croatia will be lucky if he is still in charge by the next World Cup, let alone Euros.  He was entertaining to watch on the touchline, obviously had a great rapport with his squad, and got some good results.  Runner-up would have to be Terim.

Hairstyle of the tournament: Puyol of Spain. His name sounds like it should be some sort of Spanish swearword, but what a great mass of hair!   Special mention to Metzelder for that beard.

Most dangerous moment: giving Aragones the bumps after the final.

Goal of the tournament: Germany’s first goal against Portugal.  Not just for Schweinsteiger’s finish but for the whole move that led up to it.

Best anthem: Seven Nation Army, although it got to be quite annoying by the end.

Team of the tournament: Turkey. They just never gave up.  After losing their opening game, they went ahead and won with a 90th minute goal against Switzerland and then came back from 2-0 down against the Czechs with three goals in the last quarter of an hour. In the quarter final they were down and out until equalising in the last minute of extra time to force penalties, and in the semi-final they were unlucky to lose against Germany.  They also deserve the ‘Colditz’ award for escapology.

Underachiever of Euro 2008: Christiano Ronaldo.  Didn’t look much like the ‘best footballer in the world’ over the last month.

Player I want to see transfer to West Ham: Despite not having a good tournament, I would like to see Frank Ribery¹ in the claret and blue.   Failing that, Bastian Schweinsteiger: imagine him up front with Dean Ashton, opponents would think they were seeing double.

1. easy to forget that France were ever in the tournament now