The Czech right: culture, folk roots and a bit of fusion

Public engagement is flavour of the month just now, so when asked out of the ether to contribute something about Czech politics to the launch issue of cultural-political monthly intended to fill the gap left by the winding up of the long-established Czech intelligenstia Literární noviny I agreed. The venture is, rather unusually, being undertaken by a newly formed cultural and publishing co-operative (an institutional form rarely seen in the CR outside the housing sector)

Clearly, I should have asked for some CDs in payment as well as a small donation to charity because, as I later discovered, the moving spirit behind the project who contacted me, Jiří Plocek is a musician and sometime member of famed folk/jazz/bluegrass fusionists Teagrass. Still, readers who you want to improve their reading experience might want to click in to one of the group's performances with Hungarian singer Irén Lovász here

The topic they asked me to write on, framed in an interestingly Czech terms (since when did anyone in the UK care about the authenticty of anything? ) was:

"Is there an authentic political right in the Czech Republic?

When observers question the authenticity of the right in the Czech Republic, they generally have one three things in mind: 1) that the Czech right’s largely pro-market orientation makes it an alien import ill suited to Czechs’ Central European traditions; 2) that on a European level the Czech right is an isolated and odd phenomenon with few real partners beyond the British Tories; or 3) that right-wing parties and ideologies in the Czech Republic have, wittingly or unwittingly, been little more than a cover for corrupt and self-interested networks of politicians, businesspeople and officials. All three contain elements of truth but also strong elements of caricature.

The emergence of strong liberal-conservative right wing in the Czech Republic after was one of the early political surprises in post-communist Central Europe. Many observers assumed that Czechoslovak politics would be shaped the country’s ‘social democratic tradition’ or cultural and geographical proximity to the social market economies of Austria and Germany. A Czech centre-right, if it emerged at all, was expected to be Christian Democrat in outlook. The rise of Václav Klaus in 1990-1 backed by a coalition of Civic Forum anti-communist grassroots activists and the formation of ODS quickly put paid to such illusions – as did the early electoral marginalization of KDU-ČSL.

However, that the civic right that coalesced around Klaus did have social and intellectual roots extending back the normalization period and back to 1960s followed: the penetration of Western neo-conservative and neo-liberal ideas into Czechoslovakia during the brief window opened by the Prague Spring; the discrediting of the once strong Czech democratic-socialist tradition after the 1968 invasion; the frustration of a generation of well educated people stifled by the rigidity of the Husák regime; the isolation of dissent from the bulk of Czech society; the parallel formation of ‘grey zone’ of technocrats including Klaus and other liberal economists, who were left by the regime with little to do but read and bide their time. In hindsight, it is clear such phenomena set the scene for the emergence of a powerful civic right in early 1990s.

However, the Czech right arguably has some deeper historical roots. Despite an Anglo-Saxon Thatcherite veneer in many ways ODS was more national-liberal Contemporary Czech right-wing eurosceptic concerns with ‘national interests’ or the Czech place in an emerging federal Europe would have been immediately recognisable in Czech political debates 90 or 100 years ago. Viewed in this perspective, the unlikely phenomenon of ‘Czech Thatcherism’ is simply the latest assertion of a liberal Czech national identity in a region dominated by Austro-German traditions of corporatism and state paternalism.

Such independence can, however, breed isolation. While KDU-ČSL seamlessly integrated into broader West European family of Christian Democratic parties, Czech right-wing commentators have often agonized about whether ODS is in European terms truly a ‘standard’ authentic party. This issue has been starkly illustrated by formation in the European Parliament by ODS and the UK Tories of the new European Conservatives and Reformers group (ECR). While the Tories and ODS are well matched in their enthusiasm for free markets and dislike of the Lisbon Treaty, the remainder of the ECR is an uncomfortable mix of Latvian and Polish nationalists, Belgian populists and Dutch Christian fundamentalists. Such concerns about the inauthenticity of Czech right are, however, probably misplaced. Right-wing forces across Europe form an uneven patchwork of beliefs and traditions that defies easy categorisation. The Civic Democrats’ political pas de deux with the British Tories and lack of other major European allies suggest political weakness, not political abnormality.

A more lingering doubt is raised by the relationship between business and politics on the Czech right and the suspicion that right-wing parties’ ideological commitment to competition with the left is in reality skin deep and always set aside when money, power or political office are at stake. For many the sight of Miroslav Topolánek and other leading right-wing politicians sunning themselves on an Italian yacht in the company of a ČEZ lobbyist and a leading member of ČSSD graphically illustrated this. Those with longer memories may recall how cut throat electoral ODS- ČSSD competition in 1998 was succeeded by the Opposition Agreement, or how Václav Klaus successfully sought the support of Communist deputies in his bid to become President in 2003.

However, although shot through with an unedifying sleaze and graft – and an often brutal, pragmatism - in many respects Czech party politics is a highly conventional contest of left and right. As much political scientist have found Czech right-wing politicians and voters consistent and clear of ideological pro-market views and – quite often, at least – vote and act accordingly. The Czech right is also consistent in its social and electoral constituency: a distinct younger, better educated, better off urban electorate worked disproportionately in the private sector and tending to live in Bohemia rather than Moravia. Such a base has proved too narrow to deliver the right convincing parliamentary majorities, but is a common profile for conservative parties inclining towards market liberalism across Europe.

Over the past decade, political deadlock between left and right has repeatedly forced the Czech Republic’s major political parties of right and left, against their own inclinations, into ad hoc political co-operation. The current Fischer government is simply the latest instalment in this pattern. Pragmatic deal making or overarching left-right co-operation pacts such as the Opposition Agreement do not, however, make Czech parties of the right less authentically right-wing (or parties of the left less authentically left-wing). Indeed, co-operation across ideological and party divides has been a recognisable pattern in many European democracies, including interwar Czechoslovakia, and has often been a successful model for national development.

Taken together, this suggests that two decades after the fall of communism the Czech Republic does indeed possess a distinct and authentic right-wing rooted in the country’s culture, history and society. Authenticity is, however, in itself not a lodestone for good politics, effective government or political success. Indeed for critics of the Czech right such as Jiří Pehe the problem is precisely that it draws all too authentically on nationalistic and provincial reflexes of Czech society. Such judgements are probably too harsh, understating the liberal and modernizing impulses that have animated Czech right-wing politics.

One thing, however, does seem certain. When Czechs look their country’s right-wing they will, to some extent, see themselves reflected back. Whether that is a pleasant sight is, of course, a matter that they themselves must decide."

Fairtrade with Josef Vissionovich

Tesco's fairtrade coffee bears an image worrying reminiscent of a youngish Stalin. Somehow, I don't think Josef Vissonovitch would have approved of Fairrade - as we know, he was not one to approve of petty bourgeois commodity production. Still, no doubt this will encourage the friend of mine who always turns down the fairtrade option and asks for a cup of capitalist-explotation filter coffee, though perhaps some kind of rebranding might be in order. Freedom Blend? Capital Coffee?

Gambler Klaus knows when to fold 'em

Inwardly, I never quite thought it would do it, but stony faced and behind closed doors he did. Václav Klaus signed the Lisbon Treaty and so the whole ratification shermoz is over - at least fo rnow and until they realise that the whole hybrid federal-confederal confection that this the EU political system needs some further reform and we do the whole thing again.

If VK can draw any crumbs of comfort, it is that his profile on the European stage is higher and his reputation amongst all but the hardest of hardline eurosceptics enhanced by his last-man-standing act of the last few months. He may even pick up a few Brownie points among the Czech public for squeezing concessions, albeit of a meaningless and symbolic kind, out of the EU. Who, after all , could disagree that the Beneš Decrees need defending for all time? Not many Czech politicians and not very publicly.

A second crumb that may cause the Czech President a wry smile is that his decisions dumps British Tory leader David Cameroon, whose touchy-feeling, bluey-greem modern conservatism he is known to abhore, acute political difficulties as he will be under acute pressure tfrom his party's eurosceptics o deliver on his 'cast iron' guarantee of a British referendum on Lisbon. Cameron's only personal opt-out clause from keeping his promise - that he wouldn't do it if the Treaty had already been ratified and was in force when he entered office may cut little ice there.

Why did Klaus acquiesce in the end? The answer it seems is that once the rest of the EU gave him whatever historical guarantees he could name concerning the Beneš Decress gidt wrapped and on a plate, he had a weak hand made up of increasingly fancifully challenges to the Treaty in Czech Constitutional Court. When it contemptuously rejected the last as irrelevant question mongering, he had no more cards to play and like The Gambler in the Kenny Rogers song, he knows when to fold 'em. The Czech President's democratic mandate was simply to weak to make bloodyminded defiance in the name of the Czech nation a real option and there was always the risk the main parties might just find the wherewithall to defenestate him through some constitutional amendment.

Sweet 'n' sour legacy of the Czech EU Presidency

A sad little footnote to the Czech Presidency of the EU. Právo reports that three tonnes of sugar lumps complete with individual wrappings with Czech Presidency logo and slogan - We'll Sweeten Europe (if only, but a Czech did invent the sugar lump in 1843), y'know - are now left over at government ministries in Prague. Czech civil servants may have to put up with all manner of cutbacks, but at least they can rot their teeth having their coffee and tea as sickly sweet as they like...

BNP on Question Time: Kilroy wasn't here

I sat in the front of the TV with one eye on a sheaf of article from the Czech press and one eye on BBC TV's widely billed, controversial edition of Question Time, it flagship panel discussion programme featuring British National Party leader Nick Griffin: the first time the far-right has been accorded the accolade of such recognition, although the BNP has had relatively easy access to the airwaves with its representatives regularly being interviewed on the radio. And, of course, British far-right parties have regularly been exposed and infiltrated by TV documentary makers since 1970s.

To make up for the howls of protest, the programme makers decided to make Nick Griffin's appearence on their programme the central issue, so the format largely shifted from multiple current affairs questions and familiar party ding-dong to a series of critical uestions about the BNP and its leader: specifically were its views whacky, extreme and racist and its leader someone who cannot explain away his earlier public record as neo-fascist and Holocaust denier.

The answer, of course, is that they were and he couldn't. All in all, it was reassuringly unimpressive performance by the BNP leaders, lacking not only any credible answers but also professionalism, poise or personal charm. I remember once watching Jean Marie Le Pen comprehensively outmanoeuvre a left-wing opponent on TV discussion with a mixture of sure footing cunning and avuncular bluster on French TV in the 1980s. Happily, the BNP leader clearly wasn't in this league.

I was just about to turn back to Prague municipal politics, however, when suddenly I caught flash of the kind of leader the British radical populist far-right probably does need and the kind of politician we probably should fear: it was Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrats' spokesperson for home affairs - up to that point a grey and totally forgettable presence on the panel, - launching into an eloquent tirade about how Britain should have closed its borders to citizens of new (that is predominantly, East European) EU member states for as long as possible and wasn't it awful that the government that the government didn't do this and lots of them came over here... Open borders in an opern liberal Europe. What a disaster.

For a fleeting moment, I though Mr Huhne, an unsuccessful contender for his party's leadership in 2007, was making a pitch for the BNP leadership, which to judge from his poor performance Nick Griffin might soon be vacating. Then I realised, of course, that, having slipped out of anti-fascist mode, he was simply illustrating the well established truth that immigrant-bashing and playing up to the public xenophobia is OK provided you are a respectable person from a resepctable mainstream party. And, Mr Huhne, - public school, Oxford, the City, economist and financial journalist, long-serving MEP, policy expert - is certainly that.

And then it struck me that, here - not necessarily in the person of Mr Huhne - but some of some ambitious, well educated, well spoken, reasonably well known figure public figure gone maverick that the real threat of more articulate, credible and dangerous far-right lies. No of burden of neo-fascist pedigree or a penchant for anti-semitism tor seeing the positive side of Hitler that, fortunately for us, encumbers Nick Griffin (and later held back Le Pen and Joerg Haider). Political or media skills already honed. Stock of political respectability already laid in.

Such figures seem to be media personalities with a certain political-cum-academic commentators (Pym Fortyn, Robert Kilroy-Silk) or frustrated members of existing parties, who turn maverick or decide to air views on race, minorities or immigration they have previously kept to themselves. Interestingly, Liberal parties, typically often under electtoral pressure from bigger competitors of left and right, whose identity is often a rather unstable mix of anti-establishment, pro-market, pro-market and pro-little person/geographical periphery appeals, seem especially vulnerable to such occasionally odd mutations: Haider's Austrian Freedom Party was originally a liberal grouping, controversial anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders was once an MP for Holland's Liberals the VVD; Germany's FDP was hit by accusations of anti-semitism in 2002-3 because of statements of one its then rising stars, the late Jurgen Molleman; in the mid-1990s factions in the FDP associated with the nationalist Neue Rechte intellectual (unsuccessfully) sought a Haider-style transformation of the party.

I don't, of course, expect to see Mr Huhne leading the BNP or indeed some populist confection (although I'm sure he'd do an excellent job if he did), but as the comedian Alan Davies pointedly pnoted on the This Week programme that followed Question Time's BNP-fest, Griffin's party are not a hugely successful or professional outfit and don't deserve high profile controverst treatment and still less the back-handed compliment of being banned from Question Time.

The real threats lie elsewhere. We clearly had a lucky escape when ex-Labour MP and chat show host Robert Kilroy-Silk proved too maladroit and egomaniacal to take over the UK Independence Party in 2004. Celebrity populists and mavericks peeling away from already opportunistic mainstream seem a potentially far more potent force than the wafer thin veneer of respectability and normality of a welfare chauvinist niche party that can't escape its neo-fascist roots like the BNP.

Klaus relents on Lisbon - but how far?

Today's Times reports that Václav Klaus has relented - or is about to relent - and will sign the Lisbon Treaty in the coming weeks if some Irish-style deal to assuage his concerns about possible legal challenges to the 1945-6 Beneš Decrees expelling and expropriating Czechoslovakia's three million strong ethnic German minority under the Charter of Fundamental Rights which forms part of the Treaty are specifically ruled out.

The report is on an interview with Klaus published in Lidové noviny two days earlier in which VK makes clear he doesn't want a new Treaty that would have to be re-ratified by all 27 member states; that he 'cannot and will not wait for the British elections' even though David Cameron wrote to him in July urging him to do so (or, actually, in Mr Klaus's careful phrasing the letter'more or less suggests something to this effect (více méně neco v tomto duchu naznačuje) '; as you might guess the letter did not say 'Hang in there, Václav' or something to that effect). Most importantly, the interview conceeds that the Treaty will come into force because 'the train has picked up such speed that it cannot now be stopped or turned back...' but it is not the end of history: 'the dispute over freedom and democracy in Europe will surely continue. It must continue, otherwise things will turn out very badly for us'. Lutta continua.

But check out carefully what he says, or rather doesn't say. He doesn't say he will sign the Treaty or even mention himself signing it. This might, of course, be simple facing saving. The iimage of Europe's arch eurosceptic and last man standing putting his name to the hated document may simple be too much to put into words, especially for those who make up Klaus's (now rather limited) domestic political base. It is perfectly conceivable, however, that the President himself is pragmatic and hardheaded enough to do having stood out against it as Last Man Standing and dragged out final ratification for a few more months. Klaus has in the past been prepared to do pragmatic deals with domestic political opponents including the Czech Republic's reviled Communist Party, so why not with the rest of Europe? In the interview, he certainly realistically - and for the first time - accepts that Treaty is likely to come into force. Perhaps he has made an assessment that the countries main parties will get their act together and sink their differences sufficiently to constitutionally strip him of some powers, if he holds out too long. His departure as leader of ODS in 2002 showed a similar sudden pragmatism when he realised the odds had clearly shifted against him.

The five question interview i(no probing interrogation, this; more of a brief audience) however, a classic piece of Klaus position shifting (he accepts the Treaty will probably come into force) combined with well crafted ambiguities that seem to say one thing, but - on closer reading - don't actually. Domestically, will he actually sign the Treaty or perhaps negotiate for some form of ratification without his signature? There is, as mentioned, a view (and a fewlegal precedents) for legislation and international agreements coming into force without a presidential signature? He is and will not be waiting for the British elections (consciously or a tactic) but what if things happen to end up dragging out that long anyway despite VK's newly reasonable and realistic views as confided to Lidové noviny ? The Czech Constitutional Court needs to rule (decision slated for 27 October and it can (although probably won't) surprise, the EU's politicians still have to negotiate a quick fix to Klaus's objections at their summit. Will they be quick enough? Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico has already suggested that it the Czechs get a Beneš Decrees opt-out, well, darn it, the Slovaks want one too. Cue Slovak-Hungarian difficulties.

Perhaps Klaus will end up with his opt-opt signed, sealed and quickly delivered on on a plate, but 'end up' is really the key word here: Klaus is taking things move-by-move playing his way through an end game in a match that he knows he will probably lose, waiting for a sudden slip-up by tied opponents or a sudden turn of events which will generate a position that no one anticipatied

The interview - and,what it seems to say - is also a brilliant tactical move in deflating the mounting Europe-wide and domestic pressure, winning a brathing space and putting opponents off guard.

Checkmate in how many moves?

Czech Republic and Lisbon: The wisdom of crowds?

Anyone in any doubt about the mobilising power of the Lisbon Treaty as an issue in the Czech Republic should check out the size of the crowds in the recent demonstrations (for and against President Klaus) outside Prague Castle.

Universities: A Wordle in your ear...

I read an article in the new giveaway Evening Standard on the train yesterday. It was by Steve Smith, Chair of Universities UK, writing about the future of higher education. At first just it seemed a meaningless jumble of jargon and buzzwords. Now, however but having fed it into Worldle.net, I find I understand it perfectly.