THE HEART OF THE MATTER

Europe doesn't believe in democracy (Janet Daley, The Telegraph, November 17th, 2004)

Europeans and American Democrats in denial. George Bush has just got the mandate for pursuing his global policy on terrorism that he did not have in his first term: his position is stronger, not weaker. For the domestic market (which is all that matters to an American president), he has less need than before for the spurious credibility that European approval might offer.

The other side - as Jacques Chirac so sublimely demonstrated in his grandiloquent comments this week - is even less interested in a rapprochement. For Mr Chirac, too, the home audience is all that matters, and his supercilious dismissal of the "cowboy in the White House" is going down a treat with the French public.

Mr Blair is the only world leader who sees much point in trying to find common ground between the Chirac world view and the Bush one. That is because the home market is the most important audience for him, too, and he is determined to sell himself as both an Atlanticist and a pro-European. It is he who must square the circle, not the White House or the European Union.

The Prime Minister still hopes that the great triumph of his premiership - his lasting historical testament - will be taking Britain into full-hearted participation in the EU. Somehow, he must reconcile this with his equally passionate conviction, not only that the United States is Britain's most important ally, but that its present foreign policy is ethical and sound.

But, even given Mr Blair's own political vested interest in this undertaking, it could still be worthwhile in itself. After all, if you believe (as I think Mr Blair genuinely does) that the right way to bring lasting peace is through the Bush doctrine of spreading democracy to the regions of the world which now lack it, then surely it must be right to try to get everybody on board.

The more countries that participate in this democracy outreach programme, the more effective it is likely to be. That was what Mr Blair's Guildhall speech was trying to invoke: what Mr Bush would call "the free peoples of the world" should be joining together in this great task, in the liberation of those populations which do not enjoy what Mr Blair described as the "rights we take for granted".

Surely on this, he suggested, we could all agree: it must be the goal of the great democracies to deal with those failed states that "injure rather than protect" their own citizens. This must be the shared moral obligation of the fortunate nations of the Earth, the great thing that unites, rather than divides Europe and America.

What we share - an unfailing belief in democracy - has to be deeper than any present disagreement.

This is all very fine and very eloquent. The trouble is that it is quite wrong. Europe (particularly in the incarnation of Mr Chirac) does not have a deep commitment to democracy, at least not in the sense that the English-speaking tradition understands it.

The American Constitution may have borrowed much of its frame of reference from French revolutionary ideals, but the historical outcomes parted company pretty quickly. The United States ended up with a federalised system and an iron-clad Bill of Rights while France was descending into the Terror. We do not have a shared reverence for the robustness of democratic institutions because, in continental Europe, democratic institutions have been anything but robust.

That is why the EU is busily moving away from the idea of government being directly and transparently responsive to the popular will.

The monstrous global crimes of the 20th century - the collective guilt which is still the motor force of European political consciousness - were all thought to have been generated (or at least condoned) by popular will.

The political instincts of the people are far too inflammable and mercurial to be trusted. Better leave the serious business of law-making and governance to a professional class of administrators, an enlightened elite who will not be subject to the whims and volatile passions of the mob whose vicissitudes have brought such disgrace on our countries.

Public opinion manipulated by national political leaders has to take the rap for the hideous events of the two world wars and the Cold War that followed them, and so they will all be cut down to size. Democracy is all well and good in its place but the power of the people must be sieved, regulated and heavily supervised if it is to come to the right conclusions.

It may sound apocalyptic, but I do believe that the democratic experiment in continental Europe, begun just over 200 years or so ago, is coming to a close.

The European Union is creating what it hopes will be a benign oligarchy. Real political power will reside once again within elite circles (as it does already in France) which will conduct their business in the corridors rather than in the assemblies.

Meanwhile, the United States will persevere with the belief, which Europe regards as crass, that giving ordinary people power over their governing class is the only hope for peace and security. Democracy, and what it entails, is not what unites us, Mr Blair. It is what divides us.