Discussing Royal matters recently, I hazarded a guess that the seemingly never-ending “romance” between Prince William and Kate Middleton may have a simple cause.

Suppose both of them are as disgusted with the state of British politics, and the crumbling of national institutions, as the rest of us. Not an outrageous proposition, I would suggest.

Might they not decide to postpone a wedding until a Conservative Government is returned to Westminster?

Way off the mark? Well, consider that both Prince William and Prince Harry went to the same school, Eton, as the next Prime Minister, David Cameron. They will have met and found they have much in common, despite Cameron’s need to play down his lineage and education in these dark, equality-obsessed times. In private, it would be different, of course.

Which brings me to the point: how different will Britain be when a Tory Government marches into Downing Street, Whitehall, and Westminster?

I think the mood will be spectacularly improved. The nation will breathe a gigantic sigh of relief at finally getting rid of the fetid rump of the most disastrous, dishonest and unpatriotic administration in living memory.

Next summer will bring an explosion of renewal and optimism across the country. Despite the ongoing depression, and the prospect of hard times to come, the lift in the national mood will be palpable. There will be the sense of a nation reborn.

We shouldn’t get too carried away, of course. David Cameron will be presented with the toughest remit of any incomer apart from Barack Obama. That the US President is still widely admired at home and abroad should give our man some sustenance.

Even Obama’s expensive healthcare-for-all plans could actually save America money when compared with the massive 17pc of GDP currently spent on schemes that leave big chunks of the population without any healthcare at all.

Counter-intuitive it may be, but a massive revamp is needed — the three giant US car companies are practically bankrupt it seems because of ongoing costs of healthcare provision for their workforces.

Thus, reform of what in Britain are public-sector leviathans can be presented as opportunities for betterment, rather than slash-and-burn operations against an undoubted culture of greed, mismanagement, and narrow self-interest.

The herd of rhinos in the broom cupboard, of course, are the big public-sector unions, which have the power to terrify ministers and taxpayers alike. Whichever way it’s done, it won’t be easy.

But back to the public mood. There’s no doubt that much will change in Britain psychologically when Brown and his ragtag camp followers depart the scene. The electorate is weary of this bunch of lying losers.

So, will the mood last, and if not, when will the clouds of British gloom once more pervade the national consciousness?

This will depend on Cameron’s ability to instill optimism into the country, despite its economic and political woes. One way to do that, I’ve suggested before.

Margaret Thatcher in her prime would instinctively and unerringly sense the once-in-a-century opportunity for a new Government now. An open goal is awaiting a new leader to negotiate a robust trade agreement with the European Union, while withdrawing from the political and legal entanglements of membership.

Nothing would give such a boost to British self-esteem and pride than the ceremonial dumping of 200,000 pages of Brussels regulation and “directives” in the English Channel.

Nothing would do more to improve the working of Parliament than ditching the rubber-stamp committee for the 75pc of laws that now come from Brussels.

Nothing would bring MPs more back in touch with their voters than ceasing to have to explain why a raft of hated laws, from “green” oddities to bin collections and alien measurements, are really nothing to do with us, guv, honest.

Cameron and the Tories need a big start. Not just a 100-day blitzfest of “eye-catching” measures that add up to less than a row of beans. We’ve been there, done that, and got the body armour.

What the new Prime Minister needs is one big idea that will shape and define his premiership — and his place in history. A mosaic of small technical adjustments will be more of the same.

Cameron should be bold and grasp the national mood for beneficial change. He should go where the cowardly Brown and the vacuous Blair have feared to tread.

John Evans

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Lots of normally sensible people are looking around them and spying green shoots growing fast in the June sunshine. In the circumstances, it’s easy to imagine the economy improving in tandem. The national mood rises significantly in the summer months.

Well it isn’t. A new report shows that far from prices beginning to rise in Britain — a sign of growing demand — real “inflation” is actually minus ten percent compared with last year.

To add to the peril out there, the European Union is about to set off another wave of the interminable credit crunch as its banking system shivers on the brink of another catastrophic fall from grace.

World markets are responding accordingly. Wall Street is tanking, banks hugging their cash all over again, and those Will o’the wisps, the credit rating agencies, are picking off Spanish financial institutions at will. Some 25 were downgraded by Moodys only the other day.

With EU banks needing to roll over hundreds of billions of debt this year, the picture looks very bleak, a view endorsed by the IMF over the weekend.

Enthusiasts for a “V” shaped end to the recession are already behind the curve. A “U” bend is looking increasingly untenable. A wipeout winter, leading to a wobbly “W” is now much more likely.

Former British Chancellor, Norman Lamont’s phantom green shoots of the early 1990s are once again fooling the credulous and the desperate.

It’s now clear that Gordon Brown’s hope for a heavenly reprieve is pork pie in the sky. If he delays an election announcement beyond his party conference in October, he will be forced to admit that his efforts “to save the world” were vain and costly mistakes.

This is going to be longer and harder than anyone is allowing themselves to believe — with honourable exceptions.

On top of all its other woes, Britain’s world-beating financial centre, the City of London, is now the subject of a takeover move by the European Union.

Brussels wants to regulate out all its “Anglo-Saxon” tendencies and replace them with great chunks of French law.

Who the hell do they think they are?

More to the point, why hasn’t Gordon Brown gone into battle in the City’s defence? He bled it dry for 10 years, drove it onto the rocks with his insatiable appetite for taxes to fund his super-obese public sector, and now appears to have abandoned it in its hour of need.

Lord Myners, a minor player in the business departments of state, is making squeaking noises about protecting the hedge funds. Eighty percent of the world’s funds are situated in London, mostly in Mayfair. They count for 40,000 jobs and a lot of income.

The envious politicians on the other side of the Channel would love to smite the whole wealth-creation operation of the City in favour of their own tiddlers.

You can see the Labour plan, can’t you? Myners will get a few scraps on hedge funds and Brown will make a big fuss about it.

Beneath, in the thick undergrowth, he will tacitly accept raft upon raft of EU interference in Britain’s vibrant financial services industry.

A British Gulliver will be pegged out by European Liiliputians, while Brown proclaims a triumph for his diplomacy.

The Tories will not want to be seen to support the unpopular bankers and fund managers, so will keep quiet while this outrage is pushed through.

Isn’t it time for the Conservative leadership to show some real grit over this? It was Brown who presided over the banking collapse. David Cameron and George Osborne should be fighting tooth and nail for its future and restoration to buoyant health.

St George didn’t slay the dragon with a swizzle stick.

Dan Brown’s new film, Angels and Demons, is on its noisy way to a cinema near you.

After reading, and mostly enjoying, The Da Vinci Code, despite its elasticated clangers and howlers, I couldn’t resist reading his earlier religious thriller.

Angels is actually a more gripping tale than Da Vinci, with settings inside the Vatican and the European research centre, CERN. However, back-to-back reading of the two novels show they have almost identical plots.

The hero of both is Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of religious iconography. In both cases he’s woken by a strange request to hightail it immediately to Europe to sort out a brutal, ritualistic murder, in which various symbols play a mysterious part.

In the two novels, the daughter of the murdered man plays a central role (the sex interest). In each case the plot’s main feature is to track down shadowy organizations (the Illuminati and the Priory of Sion), both holders of arcane knowledge that threatens the Roman Church and civilization as we know it.

The plots are driven by a series of ingenious clues, containing codes and allusions which only a person of Langdon’s specialty can solve. Naturally he does so, and the novels move to inevitable, breathless, and breathtaking conclusions.

For all the craft and guile with which they are written, both are as formulaic as any television soap opera.

Dan, you wouldn’t be using one of those computer programs for plotting a bestselling novel would you? If you are, could you please tell me which one?

Britain has just been treated to the first open hustings for the position of Speaker of the House of Commons, a post ranked third in the UK’s order of precedence after the Queen and the Prime Minister.

Following the dismally inarticulate Michael Martin, a host of hopefuls buzzed around for our attention.

John Bercow, a Tory supported by many Labour MPs — make of that what you will — was predictably gruesome, lacking all stature, accomplishment and gravitas. If he’s elected, David Cameron should mount a coup against him after the next election. His administration would be tarnished by a hobgoblin in the chair.

Now that Frank Field is out of the running, only one candidate stands out, Sir Patrick Cormack.

Margaret Beckett would do a good job, I suspect, but really the House needs to purge itself of all Labour influence in the next Parliament if it is to regain the nation’s respect and trust.

Sir Patrick would have the right amount of weightiness, in both senses, a grasp of history and how it plays its role in the British Constitution, plus a backbencher’s drive to make his mark. The expenses row will diminish, we believe, when Christopher Kelly’s report is adopted in full, as it must be.

What the House needs now is a magnificent Speaker. It doesn’t need an elf. This is not Lord of the Rings

The other week, William Rees-Mogg wrote an insightful piece on how differently politics looks from his native Somerset.

A rural county, with a very ancient history, one of the top concerns of its inhabitants is bovine TB and what to do about the badgers thought to cause it.

David Cameron apparently gave a good account of himself on the topic at the county show when repeatedly asked about bovine TB. His own constituency of Witney in Oxfordshire has many of the same concerns.

One can’t imagine a single figure in the Labour government who would have a clue about cows.

We remember well that old townie Nick Brown in wellies and rubberized mac standing forlornly in a field of mud and muck after he was suddenly shot into the agriculture job by Tony Blair during the Foot and Mouth outbreak.

It’s the same in my own county of Devon. Westminster seems an age away in another timezone. I can’t recall the name of the Conservative agriculture spokesman, and looking it up on the internet would be cheating.

Let’s hope he (or she) at the very least sits for a rural constituency.

Hilary Clinton was wise to stay out of the Iranian election debacle. Whatever she said would only harden the stance of those seeking to retain power.

Western verbal interventions may make the intervener seem sympathetic and helpful, but do nothing for those fighting against tyranny on the ground.

Only an open free market system has the strength to topple dictators since they can’t possibly control what they don’t understand. We can’t expect ancient theocracies to turn into democracies overnight. It took us in the West long enough.

At least, that’s what we thought.

Something enormous is happening in Iran right now that may heave that process along. Bloggers and Twitterers are feeding out information from all over the country, undermining the State line. You can follow the Twitter stream at Twitter.com by clicking on #IranianElection.

New media is virtually unstoppable in the modern world. Even a clunky technology like fax served to push perestroika along in Soviet Russia as the samizdats cut through the grip of State information sources.

We in the West should stand back while new waves of freedom fighters strive to disrupt tyranny by information rather than violence.

They may just succeed, or ensure the next lot of leaders are much more moderate.

John Evans

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It’s 30 years almost to the day since Margaret Thatcher entered 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister quoting Francis of Assisi — an apt choice in retrospect.

Simon Jenkins thinks she was the precursor to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who are, apparently, latterday Thatcherites gone mad. Their authoritarianism and bits of privatization prove it, do they not?

Hmmm, privatization is meant to reduce the State, not fund its expansion. Why then did the world seem so different to the past 12 years when she was in office?

Margaret Thatcher was, above all, a patriot. She really was backing Britain, usually with the heavy end of her handbag. Labour’s pathetic claim to “Britishness”, by contrast, have many of us reaching for a giant-sized sickbag.

She also won her war decisively, while three of Blair’s (Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans) are still continuing in some form even after he has left office.

Margaret Thatcher bequeathed a country immeasurably stronger than she found it. Gordon Brown will leave it infinitely weaker and poorer.

She made one near-fatal mistake, signing up to the elephant trap we now call the Single Market Act. By extension, it became the Maastricht Treaty, which led to the Eurozone and common currency, and despite opt-outs, bound us ever tighter into a community of enemies instead of friends.

She was big enough to admit her errors. In her book Statecraft, the retired Prime Minister called for Britain’s withdrawal from the union.

Mrs Thatcher was authoritarian in one crucial respect. In response to a number of loony-left Councils, notably Liverpool, and London under Ken Livingstone, she tightened the control of Westminster over local government. With hindsight, that was a mistake, one that David Cameron will almost certainly reverse.

Loony locals also led to the Poll Tax, or Community Charge, which weakened her position so badly she was forced to agree to John Major’s idiot decision to join the ERM, effectively shadowing the German Mark.

It was also the end of her career. Tory Heathites and Euro-fanatics chipped away until she fell. At the time, it was rather like the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein, with so many people cheering the demise of Britain’s best peacetime Prime Minister of the 20th century. They didn’t deserve her.

It’s interesting that one of the topplers, probably the best of the bunch, sits in today’s Shadow Cabinet. Ken Clarke is testimony to the longevity effects of a diet of beer, cigars and louche jazz.

Margaret Thatcher put the backbone back into Britain. True to form, Labour has turned it to jelly once again.

John Evans

So the International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes we are in a “Great Recession”. What a soggy fag-end of a phrase, like a Great Mouse or a Great Flea.

The venerable Dominique Strauss-Kahn can’t bring himself to use the D word, so invents an intermediate superlative — a meaningless contradiction.

If it’s bigger than a recession, it’s a depression. If it’s deeper or longer than a depression, it’s a Great Depression. If it’s bigger than that, it’s Armageddon. Since that’s the end of the world, it would be overdoing it to imagine a Great Armageddon — but no doubt the IMF has that pencilled in for a rainy day too.

All this brings me to the question: why do we put up with these flabby, interfering international institutions? They’re expensive to run, limit the freedom of nation States, and have the aroma of 1944 hanging over them. Foyle’s War without Michael Kitchen.

Unusually, Karl Marx was dead right about globalization. He foresaw the pitfalls, recognizing the open door to empires — statist and commercial — on the back of spurious political unity.

The British East India Company was the prototype. When it failed, the authorities picked it up, mangled the good bits, and created imperialism from the wreckage. In its day, the Empire gave more than it took, but can we imagine it now?

Today, the big supranational institutions, many created at Bretton Woods in the 1940s, have a watching brief over the planet. As we have recently come to realize, they are not doing a good job.

So what if Britain resigned from all of these bureaucratic behemoths, dealing with each situation on an ad hoc, case by case basis?

I can hear the cries of indignation already from people who go with the flow for a living. A study conducted at the Harvard Business School reported that a third of students defined right and wrong in terms of what others were doing. The professor who compiled it said, “They can’t really step back and take a critical view. They’re totally defined by others.”

Let’s consider this question with an open mind then.

Would Britain lose status? What status? The Labour government has surely destroyed all respect for the country worldwide. Even the Americans seem ambivalent about us these days.

Resigning our seat on the Security Council, and our place in the General Assembly of the United Nations, would release us from the spider’s web of socialized command and control exercised by “the international community” — a phantom beast that leaves us to pick up the tab, while others ignore the precepts.

Goodbye UNHCR (a factor in the UK’s massive immigration problem), UNESCO, UNICEF, and all other spin-offs that allow totalitarian regimes to lecture us on law and the raising of children. These global quangos reduce us to slaves in our own country.

The G8, G20 and the soon-to-be upon us G200, would not be missed either.

NATO could go too. It’s responsible for the British Army’s underfunded and unsupported agony in Afghanistan. If the Europeans won’t fulfil their obligations, why should we?

Ditching the World Trade Organization (WTO) which, if it were a nation, would be designated a failed State, would place the onus back on us to produce the goods and services others want to buy — genuine free trade.

The IMF and OECD could also be dispensed with, joining European “human” rights conventions and other busybody groupings that have destroyed our once fine legal system.

And finally, the European Union, heir to Louis IV, Bonaparte and Hitler in its zeal to bring all of Europe under its hegemony. A simple trade agreement is all the UK needs.

The result would be a short period of confusion as our over-remunerated and feather-bedded MPs, and faux lordlings, came to terms with actually running the country, not pretending to be in charge of a mock legislature.

The focus of govenance would be transformed. The Houses of Parliament would receive back the 80 percent of legislation idly handed on a plate to Brussels. Changes for the better would be enormous. Voters would vote again, ensuring the best people were elected to the House that really mattered.

It wouldn’t be paradise or utopia, certainly, but not the current dystopia either. It would save desperately needed money, even if the Security Council seat were regarded as too important to lose.

For too long Britain has followed the rest into a glum international socialist arena dominated by the bogus “human” rights agenda.

Britain did lead the world once, why not again?

John Evans

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In the aftermath of the Jeremy Clarkson affair (another one?) in which the Top Gear presenter called British Prime Minister Gordon Brown “a one-eyed Scottish idiot”, I’ve reached for a word from Old English to say more or less the same thing.

“Puddled” means “to occupy oneself in a disorganized or unproductive way” (OED). In common parlance that translates as, batty, off ‘is ‘ead, loony, daft as a brush.

Mind you, a few months ago I pioneered the Clarkson approach by quoting Rudyard Kipling: “There’s a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu …”

Well, Downing Street is north of Khatmandu.

So is Gordon puddled? He’s obviously quite clever, and has some abilities, none of them of a personable nature. His problem is that he carries a series of assumptions that most of us find totally barmy.

Each age has its set of assumed truths around which it frames its policies and actions. Future ages usually look back in horror at what their ancestors thought, while imagining their own assumptions to be the height of sense and modernity.

Their children and grandchildren will think otherwise.

Just read contemporary accounts of medieval witchcraft trials or the very detailed archives of the Cathar Inquisition, and you’ll visit another planet.

But that’s the point. Historical records are a kind of time machine allowing us to escape the pin-down effect of the assumptions of our age. Great figures in history are usually Time Lords who roam freely over the past and project themselves into the future with ideas ahead of the game.

Bad Prime Ministers and Presidents are stuck in the rut of “modern” thinking on a range of issues. They are so much of their time, they become ridiculous in less than a decade.

When the baby boomers came to power in the 1990s, something changed radically. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair brought the 1960s with them into office. It was all informality, “Call me Tony”, and that most typical cry from the era, by Danny Cohn-Bendit, “We have no policies, only demands, and when they are met, we will have more demands” — the wail of spoilt children everywhere.

In the spirit of the age (1960s), nobody must be offended, even if they are highly offensive. Under Blair and Clinton, society was divided into small segments. Some were chosen for special treatment, especially members of the tribe and those who could be counted on to vote for the new settlement. The rest were demonized.

The prevailing Marxism of that former era was enshrined in law as the Equality Agenda — no-one was allowed to stride ahead of the crowd on merit or effort. Every area of life was dumbed down, and continues to be in Britain under Gauleiter Harriet Harman.

Gordon Brown fits into the pattern. A baby boomer to his armpits, he devotes a great deal of time and thought to the Trotskyism and Soviet tractor plans of his youth, and runs the country accordingly. Moreover, his Scottish accountant’s mentality contributes heavily to his dour, pernickety personality.

A new generation of politicians is already taking over. They reflect society in general by rejecting baby-boomer thinking with contempt, especially as it has brought the entire planet to its knees in under a decade.

Brown’s espousal of “global solutions”, by which he means the shabby superstructure created after World War II: the UN, EU, World Bank and other doddery examples of the model, is completely counter-productive in an age of the internet and face to facebook communications.

Much looser arrangements, with greater freedom for individuals, where genuinely democratic units, like Nation States, will regain their purpose, are just around the corner. The wired age will not be pushed about by people like Brown, and the roaming political sherpas of another era. They will be seen for what they are, a branch of liberal-left fascism.

Global “solutions” will shatter into a mosaic of bilateral agreements that satisfy each party involved. The world will become a more interesting, diverse and complex place to live.

And that’s exactly how most of us like it.

So is Gordon Brown puddled? Remember the definition: “to occupy oneself in a disorganized or unproductive way” (OED).

Or in common parlance: batty, off ‘is ‘ead, loony, daft as a brush.

I rest my case, M’lud, and ask for the Court’s indulgence for my client, Jeremy Clarkson.

John Evans

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I groaned audibly when David Cameron challenged Gordon Brown in Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) today.

Cameron fell plop into an elephant trap when he complained about Brown’s dishonest phrase, “British jobs for British workers”. Brown simply retorted, “Who is not in favour of British jobs for British workers?”

Elementary, my dear Cameron. In fact, Nick Robinson warned this might happen on The Daily Politics a few minutes before.

The challenging of that simple slogan placed the Opposition Leader in Peter Mandelson’s lap, just as John Major was once depicted as a ventriloquist’s dummy perched on the knees of an enormous Helmut Kohl. Oh, dear!

No doubt Brown was cynically lying when he said it, but the point is a valid one, especially in dangerous times like these. Cameron should have given the impression he is on the workers’ side, if for no other reason than it was the skilled workers who supported the Tories under Margaret Thatcher.

So, is Cameron endorsing EU law and court judgements that effectively allow discrimination against qualified British workers in their own backyard? Shouldn’t he be creating merry hell against this outrage?

Apparently not.

I was determined to keep a little distance from Simon Heffer’s piece in today’s Telegraph, but Cameron’s performance took down the barriers.

Syntagma will punish the Tory Leader by voting UKIP in the European elections in June.

We will, of course, vote Conservative in the General Election, but with the fervent prayer (if it’s not illegal now) that he changes his tune when in Number 10.

Dear oh dear.

John Evans

The tyranny of the European Union marches on. Two stories graphically illustrate this state of affairs.

Not only are the “no” votes on the constitution, by France and the Netherlands, brushed aside by the ruling elite, but the Irish, who also voted “no”, are being made to vote again next year.

Britain has been denied a vote at all by its own Brezhnevian Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and by his predecessor, the egregious Tony Blair.

Tyranny grows when a majority of people simply refuse to believe it’s happening. Well, it is.

Here’s an example, reported by Christopher Booker, of the extraordinary treatment of brave President Klaus (pictured) of the Czech Republic in his own country. Read and be warned:

Czech leader in shock after EU assault.

John Evans

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I have been re-reading the works of Goethe. Not required reading these days, and almost certainly ignored in the UK’s State school system, where ticking boxes is the main curricular activity.

Goethe was the great psychologist, always looking beyond the outer shell of life to source-material of which most people are unaware — material that opens us up to archetypal situations which appear as recurring patterns in human history.

Take Goethe’s most famous work, Faust, in which the eponymous university professor makes a pact with the devil in the person of Mephistopheles. Faust sells his soul in exchange for receiving everything he’s ever desired, including the incorruptible Gretchen. Mephistopheles craftily defers his own gratification by putting off the day when he will collect Faust’s soul.

Reading the famous play again, I’m reminded of Gordon Brown’s new-found soulmate Peter Mandelson, recently rehabilitated to the Brownian universe by the PM’s aching desperation to win a general election.

Brown’s stodgy performance in power cries out for a mastermind to guide him to at least one electoral victory on his own terms. With Tony Blair out of the way, Brown has foundered badly.

The pact with Mandelson, to drive power and its trappings to his putative master, gained new intensity this week with news of the Machiavellian scheme to deliver Britain into the euro currency, whether its people agreed or not. British voters have always been cruelly deceived on EU matters anyway, and were sold out on the constitution by Brown and Blair, who both ratted on a promise of a referendum.

Dumping Britain into the failing Eurozone was probably part of the pact the new Business Secretary extorted from Brown as his fee for helping win the next election. Mandelson is now Deputy Prime Minister in all but name.

Which brings me to the School of Leonid Brezhnev.

Brezhnev was made Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet after helping to sack the former incumbent. He became the first man in Soviet Union history to hold both the leadership of the party and of the State.

Apart from his clunking Politburo totalitarianism, he is best known for the Brezhnev Doctrine, which asserted the right of Soviet intervention in cases where “the essential common interests of other socialist countries are threatened by one of their number.” Or indeed no-one in particular.

In his eleven years of high office, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer for a decade, and now Prime Minister, Brown has reserved the right to interfere in all aspects of national life, and to micromanage the thoughts, activities and behaviour of every individual in the land.

The Brown Doctrine dispenses a pin-down band of control around everyone, enforced by law. It is acutely sensed by anyone outside the tribe that rules us. Those who are not paid off by State benefits, or non-jobs as “outreach workers” in the public sector, are still dazed by the extent of the country’s descent into elective dictatorship.

Nicknamed “the big, clunking fist” by his predecessor Tony Blair, Brown lives up to it, despite constantly asserting his “moral compass”.

Britain is ruled by the Brezhnevian Brown Doctrine, supplemented now by a Mephistophelian vision of unlimited Continental power, driven by Lord Mandelson’s moth-like attraction to control in all its forms.

Goethe has the angel chorus in Faust sing the following verse:

Woe! Woe!
Thou hast destroyed
The beautiful world,
By a mighty fist …

That should be Gordon Brown’s epitaph. Let it be required soon.

John Evans

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In the days of sail, when ships were built of wood and were vulnerable to hostile warships and pirates, each ship had many bulkheads to isolate parts of it that were hit.

In the later days of giant ocean liners made of iron, wealthy passengers demanded large ballrooms and restaurants so the bulkheads disappeared from the upper decks. One of the first of these new vessels was the Titanic. It hit an iceberg and the rest needs no retelling.

We’re having our own Titanic moment now in the world’s financial system, where the bulkheads that protected us have mostly been removed. In the 1930s, America had the Great Depression, but Britain was comparatively unscathed. In 2008 we share the pain.

As David Brooks puts it in the New York Times, “We’re living in an age when a vast excess of capital sloshes around the world fueling cycles of bubble and bust. When the capital floods into a sector or economy, it washes away sober business practices, and habits of discipline and self-denial. Then the money managers panic and it sloshes out, punishing the just and unjust alike.”

Francis Fukuyama points out that globalization masks the flaws in economic policy. “Foreigners seemed endlessly willing to hold U.S. dollars, allowing the U.S. Government to run deficits and enjoy high growth. That’s why early on Dick Cheney reportedly told President Bush that the lesson of the 1980s was that ‘deficits don’t matter’.”

Globalization is not new. The 250-year British Empire was a globalized trading system, depending on the might of the British Royal Navy — which had 50 percent of the world’s warships and most of its merchant fleet. It had the muscle and authority to protect its own national interests. That has been lost in modern times.

Transnational private-equity capital, almost all of it borrowed, has swept in and bought up most of our major corporations — on both sides of the Atlantic. These highly-leveraged buyouts seem benign in times of rampant expansion. However, it only takes a small twitch in the markets for the dust-thin financial structures to become sickly.

That also applies to banks that have followed suit and lent much more than their capital should allow. When the assets on their books are impossible to value because of the extent of toxic debt, the game is over.

The biggest question we will have to answer once the financial system has been stabilized, and the toxins isolated like nuclear waste, is: how much should we retract from globalization? In the age of the internet, is that even possible or desirable?

Even in regional terms, there’s no doubt that Britain’s membership of the European Union has degraded the country’s ability to be itself — a quality that has always paid off in the past.

On the other hand, staying out of the euro currency has shielded us from lower interest rates than we needed during the boom times. It also leaves us free to set optimum rates instead of relying on blunt fiscal instruments as the Irish, Spanish and Italians are having to do. This is one bulkhead that has more than proved its worth.

The EU’s decision to adopt the accounting standard of “fair value” or “mark to market” is having a devastating effect on our banks, whose diminishing capital is daily undervalued by the system, especially in hard times. The standard is as toxic as American mortgage securities.

While the U.S. is planning to ditch it, the EU’s directives will take years to repeal, and would need 27 countries to agree to it. Britain, should, as a matter of urgency scrap Brussels’s hold over our financial markets.

On some estimates, 84 percent of British laws are now made in Brussels. Most of them are counter-productive in a British context, obsessively bureaucratic, prescriptively inefficient and despised by the population. This heedlessly dispensed-with bulkhead is deeply desired and its absence bitterly resented. We should restore it as a matter of urgency.

I suspect that globalization has passed its peak. Without descending into full-blown protectionism, most nations will consider rebuilding some of the bulkheads that gave them their national characteristics, while minimizing restrictions on free trade. With tariffs low across much of the world, there is no need for global institutions to gum up the works with legalistic complexity.

Much of globalization is unnecessary and faddish, urged on us by old international Marxists and student Trotskyists like Gordon Brown and New Labour. They should be rejected.

America too should beware of whom it is electing to office in November.

It’s time to return to simplicity, fleetness of foot, and self-reliance. We would be much better nations if we did. And happier too.

John Evans

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