The Brookings’ Institution’s Justin Vaïsse takes apart the Eurabia myth in this excellent short piece inForeign Policy.
He points out the concept’s stylistic links to fear of “Eurocommunism” in the 50s and general anti-European and anti-internationalist sentiments on the American right, and correctly positions Melanie Phillips as “on the fringe far right” in European debate.
Here’s some of the good stuff:
If these books insist so much on the future, it is because current [evidence for Muslim take over is] unimpressive. According to the higher range of estimates by the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC), there are already as many as 18 million Muslims in Western Europe, or 4.5 percent of the population. The percentage is even lower for the 27-country European Union as a whole. The future will certainly see an increase, but it’s hard to imagine that Europe will even reach the 10 percent mark (except in some countries or cities). For one thing, as the same NIC study indicates and demographers agree, fertility rates among Muslims are sharply declining as children of immigrants gradually conform to prevailing social and economic norms. Nor is immigration still a major source of newly minted European Muslims. Only about 500,000 people a year come legally to Europe from Muslim-majority countries, with an even smaller number coming illegally — meaning that the annual influx is a fraction of a percent of the European population.
Finally, though the Eurabia books describe Europe as committing “slow motion suicide”, reality begs to differ — and increasingly so. According to demographers, in 2008, fertility rates in France and Ireland were more than two children per woman, close to the U.S. (and replacement) level; in Britain and Sweden they were above 1.9. And though in the 1990s European countries set an all-time record for low fertility rates, figures are now rising in all EU states except Germany.
– perhaps a little past its maximum hotness, this libertarian-paternalist tract will still have a big influence on Conservative political thinking in 2010.
– what Nudge is to the Conservatives, this book will be to progressives: a well-presented and simple set of Big Ideas that can be crafted into a whole political platform.
– in an age of irrationality, Ben Goldacre is one of the most prominent resistance fighters. This book demolishes homeopathy and the pharmaceutical industry with equal gusto. Despite the title, it isn’t a collection of his Guardian columns.
– Iain Dale’s new political magazine has established itself in 2009, and here presents policy and political information ahead of the General Election that has to be held by June next year.
– the book to have by your side on election night, if you want to win the quiz or just impress (or scare) your friends.
– not quite a politician, but always political, Thomas Cromwell is the subject of this historical novel, which won the 2009 Booker Prize
– the diaries of Labour backbencher and former minister Chris Mullin show that unsuccessful politicians are often the best analysts of politics
– not very ancient history, perhaps, but Gillian Tett’s account of the financial crash of 2008-9 is thorough and easy to read. As a senior journalist at the Financial Times, she has had long-term access to many of the prime movers in the debacle.
– a layman’s version of his earlier academic work on the “Radical Enlightenment”, Jonathan Israel’s new book sets out a history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that highlights the radical and revolutionary origins of modernity and democracy.
– Malcolm Tucker, foul-mouthed British spin doctor, is the star in a film which unpicks pretentions on both sides of the special relationship (
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– with a real Democrat president in the White House, this box set offers you the chance to see how a fictional one got on back in the ’90s. Much loved (and copied) by Whitehall movers and shakers back in the day.
, which shows that war, homelessness and snocones for everyone are the key elements of a kid-friendly platform.