Euro-Socialist and Green MEPs have tabled a motion calling on Ireland to double corporate tax rates as part of a quid pro quo for a bail-out. Not a single Irish MEP has supported the motion. Ireland should just tell them to “feck off”…

Douglas Carswell is right, Ireland should decouple and default. Coupling the Celtic Tiger to the euro was a disaster, it was inevitable that when economic cycles were asynchronous the big core EU countries would set interest rates to suit themselves. The ECB kept rates too low for Ireland’s over-boiling property market, which predictably bubbled over. Exactly as Euro-sceptics from Farage to Redwood predicted would eventually happen.

The Irish property crash has destroyed the banks, none more so than Anglo-Irish Bank, a bank run by corrupt allies of the governing Fianna Fáil party. The state guarantees proffered in the panic of 2008 to Irish banks gave them the backing of the state’s ‘AAA’ credit rating. Those guarantees have now sunk the state’s credit rating.

A World Bank report from back in May 2009 “What Went Wrong in Ireland?“ written by Patrick Honohan, Professor of International Financial Economics at Trinity College Dublin, put the blame squarely on joining the euro and having the wrong interest rates:

…the underlying cause of the problem was … too much mortgage lending (financed by heavy foreign borrowing by the banks) into an unsustainable housing price and construction boom. The boom seemed credible to enough borrowers given sharply lower interest rates with adoption of the euro … it was Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) entry that really started the housing price surge by sharply lowering nominal and real interest rates, thereby lifting equilibrium asset prices…

Honohan isn’t some obscure professor, since writing that report Honahan has been made the new governor of the Irish Central Bank. Left-wing British commentators like the Fabian’s Sunder Katawala, the Indy’s Ben Chu and even Polly Toynbee are trying to blame Ireland’s woes on low tax rates and free market reforms. No serious Irish economist attributes Ireland’s crisis to low tax rates. The reason Polly, Sunder and Chu want to present that argument is to stick it to those of us on the right who praised Ireland’s supply-side economic policy reforms, which is why they point the finger at the likes of George Osborne, Dan Hannan, John Redwood and Nigel Farage. It is intellectually dishonest of them to cite derisively the British right’s praise for Ireland’s successful free market micro-economic reforms and ignore warnings from the same about the macro-economic systemic risk of joining the euro. That is exactly what the left-wing commentariat is trying to do.

The micro-economic reforms that led to the Celtic Tiger pre-date Ireland entering the euro and were designed to improve the supply-side potential of the economy, make markets and industries operate more efficiently and thereby contribute to a faster rate of growth of real national output. Low taxes and freer markets achieved that objective – incidentally many of those reforms were championed in the 80s and 90s by the Progressive Democrats – the party of which Guido was a member. After joining the euro in 2000 Ireland had negative real interest rates, sparking an out of control property bubble.

German economic advisers from Frankfurt have been in the Irish finance ministry and central bank for nigh-on a year. Last month the ECB in Frankfurt mandated the Irish government to pay off European holders of Irish bank bonds – the European bail-out of Ireland is really a bail-out of European lenders to Irish banks. In joining the euro Ireland’s economic sovereignty was surrendered by Fianna Fáil with the support of almost the entire political class, consequently the next generation of Irish taxpayers have had their future mortgaged. Guido could cry for what the europhiles have done to his country…

Commentariat celebrities Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Rod Liddle are duking it out in column inches.

She has a letter in today’s Sunday Times objecting to Liddle calling her “boring” and “stupid” last week.  To think that if only Rod hadn’t been convicted by the PCC thought-police of casual racism he could have been editor of the Indy and Yazz’s boss.

This is one of those feuds where Guido hopes the evenly matched bloviators fight to the death in a commentariat version of MTV’s Celebrity Death-Match. Merely saying this will no doubt feed Yazz’s paranoias and provide more material for her columns. Based on past form it may even lead to a waste of police time…

In a rare move for the belligerent and hyperactive columnist, Polly Toynbee this morning apologised for the inflammatory language that Guido highlighted the other day, when she compared a slight tweak in government benefits policy to the slaughter of six million Jews. On her “final solution” comment she said:

“Yes, it was over the top, a slip of the pen, made worse by the fact that it was put in the headline. I regret it.”

Savour the moment, Guido doesn’t imagine we will get another half-apology any time soon…

The Cellar
House of Commons
London
SW1 0AA

Mr Paul Dacre,
Editor the Daily Mail

Dear Mr Dacre,

I would like to apply for a job as one of your columnists. As you will see below your current columnist Andrew Pierce has deemed my work worthy of your hallowed pages, he will no doubt be happy to provide a reference.

In the last few weeks Mr Pierce has found my website a wonderful resource for his columns:

Since the beginning of October Mr Pierce has seen fit to lift an entire story concerning William Hague’s former Special Advisor Christopher Myers, he didn’t even try to find a new angle on it. Two days later my story concerning the Tories putting a press officer on Newsnight was lifted almost word for word. And just this morning exactly the same happened with my exclusive concerning Steve Hilton and Rageh Omar.

Given Mr Pierce appears to simply lift my copy and scoops without any payment, perhaps you should simply cut out the middle man and get your stories from the source? You may be unaware that Mr Pierce has a magpie-like long track record of cutting and pasting the most sparkling stories that would shame those avian thieves, as indeed Private Eye reported several years ago. Despite this Pierce continues to deny he is even a reader of my “ugly and boorish” website. You will no doubt agree the evidence suggests otherwise.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Yours in middle class solidarity,

Guido Fawkes Esq.

Guido is off to the Institute of Economic Affairs to debate the whats and wherefores of the “liberal elite”. As is traditional whenever Guido goes head-to-head with Sir Michael White, Guido is wearing national dress tonight (pictured).

The Free Society and Liberal Vision will be discussing:

Who holds the liberal torch in 2010: Libertarians, Lib Dems or the “liberal elite”?

Tuesday June 29, 2010 Chaired by Mark Littlewood (Institute of Economic Affairs), speakers include Julian Harris (chairman, Liberal Vision), Chris Mounsey (leader, Libertarian party), Brendan O’Neill (editor, Spiked!), Paul Staines (aka blogger Guido Fawkes), James Delingpole (writer, journalist and broadcaster), Mark Pack (co-editor, Liberal Democrat Voice) and Michael White (assistant editor, Guardian).

Readers will be aware that Guido and Danny Finkelstein have been squabbling for years about raising the tax thresholds for the working poor. Guido was even christened a “punk tax cutter” by Fink and at one point Nick Clegg himself intervened in our argument. Fink generously gave Clegg the space on his blog to tell Fink that he was wrong saying “I’m not sure I’ve ever been called a “punk tax cutter” before. I quite like the label… Danny Finkelstein is wrong, and cutting taxes is right… Growth is what we need now.” Fink gave a fair summary of his argument in January:

Is raising the income tax threshold, paid for by other rises, a good reform?

First, there are those who argue that it is a tax cut aimed at the working poor. This misunderstands who would actually gain from the measure. The vast bulk of the money goes to those earning more than £10,000. It is a very expensive tax cut, very poorly targeted on the working poor.

Second, there is an interlocking relationship between income tax and working families tax credit. Many of the working poor would find the money they gained from the tax cut clawed back because their increased income attracted less tax credit.  Those of us who believe in lower taxes are always attracted by proposals to reduce tax bills. But there are good reasons to argue that this is neither the moment, nor the measure.

So Fink is squarely against the coalition government’s key tax pledge and we should expect to see columns and blogs by Fink resisting this policy using the rationale he has advanced time and time again.

Fink also argued in “Why the Tories Can’t follow the Lib Dems” that if the Tories followed them down the tax cutting route, it would be a total disaster, in “The tax debates: A response to Guido“ Fink argued that “the Lib Dems are in a fundamentally different position to the Conservatives. They are not offering to be the next Government and their credibility doesn’t matter. Nick Clegg has been hilariously unconvincing on the question of where the money for his tax cuts is coming from.” Is Fink laughing now?

One final claim that Fink never deigned to justify, despite repeated attempts by Guido to get him to, was that:

If the Tories were now to cut taxes immediately upon on entering office, what would happen? It would, erm, destabilise the economy, wouldn’t it.

Gilts are up a point since the coalition agreement, including Clegg’s tax cuts, was published. Game, set and government to Guido.

Guido was under the impression that MPs lost their seats because they are unpopular and people were fed up with listening to them. So of course BBC feel the need to turn two such washed-out LibDems into permanent pundits – unelected failures still preaching.

Dr Evan Harris and Lembit Opik haven’t been off the air-waves ever since the delicious news of their defeats emerged. If anyone thought we might finally be free of Harris’s evangelical atheism then think again. Though his new career path is more respectful than his previous choices…

The  Liberal Democrats have been notoriously short of talking heads in the past and as they are thrust into the limelight their lack of decent people to push their line is becoming painfully clear. Laughing-stock Lembit is hardly a reassuring presence on the screen. At least we can still keep an eye on him this way. Due to their imminent oblivion, at least it isn’t Labour losers the cameras are turning too. Being lectured by Jacqui Smith and Shahid Malik would be a step too far…

Guido is increasingly fascinated with the coverage of EU affairs by the Thunderer.  Last month it crowned Tony Blair president of Europe on  the front page.  Guido said at the time this was a delusion.

Yesterday it reported on a great British diplomatic triumph over the damned French in Brussels.  “French foiled” ran the headline:

The Times’ Brussels correspondent David Charter then turned around 180 degrees and today reports a British defeat by the French.

This is the kind of insight they are going to put behind Murdoch’s pay-wall?

It was only a few weeks ago that the papers were full of punditry warning that Tony Blair was about to become the President of Europe.  He would, we were assured, stop the traffic…

The Thunderer front-paged the news that “Tony Blair is in line to be proclaimed Europe’s first president within weeks if the Irish vote “yes” in today’s referendum. Senior British sources have told The Times that President Sarkozy has decided that Mr Blair is the best candidate and that Angela Merkel has softened her opposition” written with authority by the paper’s chief political correspondent, Philip Webster.

“Tony Blair’s star in the ascendant as presidency chances grow.” “EU prepares to welcome President Tony Blair” wrote David Charter in Brussels for The Times. Blair “is now a front-runner to become the second most powerful man on the planet after President Obama” claimed a breathless Andrew Pierce. “Number 10 believes that Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, will add her support to the move if she is allowed to choose a German for the other new role created by the Lisbon Treaty, the high representative for foreign affairs” said Porter, also in the Telegraph.

The idea that Tony Blair was the favourite for the job was taken as read by most of the serious broadsheet pundits from across the political spectrum (and James Macintyre).  A form of parochialism that was much more than just a collective fantasia of social-democratic and europhile wishful thinking.  How did the pundits get it so wrong?

Broadsheet pundits are quick to dismiss bloggers, but the error of their ways was pointed out here:

“…overlooked by our somewhat delusional and europhile media elite is one glaring inconvenient fact; centre-right parties are politically dominant in Europe currently, the President is likely to come from their ranks.”

And what happened?

UPDATE : Co-conspirators have pointed out some more missing names from the directory of the deluded; even Fraser Nelson succumbed, Simon Richards frothed “Blair is The Only Man for this Job“, Oliver Kamm, Jackie Ashley, Matthew d’Ancona (“the former PM is certainly the best candidate available”), John Rentoul “Yes, Oui, Ja”.  Who called it right?  The Telegraph’s Dan Hannan, who has a day job as a eurosceptic MEP.  Perhaps he understands the EU reality better than his chattering-class critics…

UPDATE II : The Indy’s John Rentoul emails to protest “I said he SHOULD be.  I said he WOULDN’T be.  Get me out of that list of losers.”

Do pay attention chaps, PMQs is at 3pm, not midday today…

The PMQs live-chat will be live on this blog starting at 2.55 pm…