Tabassum Rasheed, VP European Affairs Society

“Blair has clout and experience”

Now, I’m no great fan of Tony Blair. It wouldn’t even be an understatement, in fact, to say that I despised him by the time he left office. But I’m still convinced that he’s the right man to head the EU Presidency. I can understand the worries: Blair is technically a centre-left politician who would be trying to head a centre-right Europe; he comes from a country that continually rails against the supposed restraints of the EU; he listened to Bush and American interests over the advice of European leaders when considering the war in Iraq.

Those worried about Blair’s past record might be comforted by the fact that this time around, he won’t actually have a defence force at his beck and call, nor the power to override everyone else on the EU council. And despite the Iraq fiasco overshadowing everything else during his term, he did seriously consider marrying Britain into the Euro, and was in fact, the most Eurofriendly British premier since Ted Heath. But most importantly, he’s also one of the most widely known politicians in the world, and one who, for good or ill, has elicited strong reactions from across the globe.

And it is this factor that’s important. As even President Sarkozy has pointed out, any EU President needs to have the clout and the experience to deal with the rest of the world. The role of the President is as of yet largely undefined and the onus is on the first person to hold the role to set the tone for the future of Europe. The EU after all, makes up 20% of the world’s GDP, but its international standing is far far less; what is needed is a high-profile politician, one adept at speaking and communication, one used to the world stage. This especially becomes clear when you consider that Blair’s nearest rival is a man called Jean-Claude Juncker, the current Prime Minister of Luxembourg. ‘Who?’, you may ask. As would the rest of the established world.

In an age where the world looks to be dominated by the US and China, and the emerging BRIC countries, Europe doesn’t need a diplomatic, small-time, self-effacing champion of domestic harmony. What Europe needs is someone who has worldwide contacts, who already commands media attention and will be listened to by other officials and governments and who is willing to speak, negotiate and bully his way into raising Europe’s profile on the world stage.

Louisa Stoppard, Union Secretary

“Blair is an entirely discredited figure”

Let’s look at Tony Blair’s record: he repeatedly misled the country and lost the trust of a once hopeful electorate; he failed to live up to the expectations of those of us who initially supported him; and he helped to tear apart our relationship with moderate Arab allies. In 2007, the people of Britain and around the world bid him goodbye. Just two years later, this man is being touted as the first ever President of the European Union.

Whatever its formal power, the role of European President is going to be one with enormous influence around the world; he or she will be able to “stop the traffic in Beijing and Moscow”. The Union has 500 million citizens. Does the Union really want to tell the world that we have no one better to represent us than this entirely discredited figure?

The two key international issues that the President will be involved in are the Middle East Peace Process and the ratification of a new Climate Change Accord. Blair cannot, and will not, be trusted on either. Our allies in the Arab world do not trust him. Iran, Iraq and most of the Palestinian people are openly hostile towards him. As Bill Clinton showed, the vital ingredient for any progress on the MEPP is trust; is there honestly anyone in Europe who believes that Blair, viewed by many in the Arab world as a reincarnated Crusader, can persuade people to trust him? Whatever his intentions and commitment to a two state solution, Blair’s reputation remains poisoned by Iraq, and he will not be able to make any progress on this issue. So while Europe will finally have a figurehead who can represent its collective influence, Blair will blunt whatever moral authority that figurehead may have had.

On Climate Change, Blair’s record speaks for himself. For 10 years he led a country which, unlike so many others in the world, was convinced of the science behind climate change and, crucially, had the energy and will to do something about it. The dynamism of groups like Climate Rush, the surge in support for the Green party and the thousands of small but significant ‘green initiatives’ in businesses, schools and societies throughout the country, attest to Britain’s readiness to tackle climate change. Under Blair’s premiership, we gave in to petrol strikes, did not improve our public transport and, ultimately, saw emissions rise. So while Europe will finally have a figurehead who can represent its collective influence, Blair will prioritise words over action.

Tony Blair is not, despite what the Daily Mail thinks, devoid of any moral authority whatsoever. But the choices he made throughout his premiership, for better or for worse, have enduring consequences. Those consequences mean, unfortunately, that he simply will not be able to make use of the huge good that this role could do.

What caused the Wall Street Crash in 1929?

It is not a complicated story of finance or economics, but a very human one – people driven by greed and reckless exuberance, who made choices they believed to be good ones but turned out to be bad. While every crash is unique – the human behaviour at the centre of them is almost always the same. Overproduction and saturation of new markets were lowering prices and threatening profits. The stock market had been rising throughout the 1920s, drawing in more investors and driving stock prices ever higher. Monetary policy was also lax, making cheap money readily available. Stock market prices had disconnected from other fundamentals such as property prices but speculation continued to inflate the bubble. Eventually there was a correction. Stock prices collapsed in October 1929 and continued declining thereafter.

What were its consequences?

In terms of the stock market, the results were profound. The Dow Jones Index lost over 90% of its value over the next three years and did not recover its 1929 level till the 1950s. In terms of the wider consequences,while the Crash and the Great Depression were correlated, a causal relationship is disputed. The direct consequences of the crash were bankruptcies, foreclosures and higher unemployment – diminished confidence and negative consumer sentiment. A lack of flexibility in the economy, credit constraints and banking failure, deflation,mass unemployment further lowered the productive capacity of the economy. Policy choices such as adherence to the gold standard and protectionism made matters much worse.

Why can’t we avoid these economic problems?

I would argue that two great crises in a century is not a bad record. In a globalised world, capital flows freely and markets have become more integrated. This means shocks are transmitted universally and quickly. Global imbalances have been created with excessive savings in Asia lowering interest rates, creating cheap money which feeds overconsumption in the west, creating distortions and forming bubbles in asset prices. This is an overarching problem though regulation can help curb excess. Also we know a lot more about dealing with crises and one reason we have avoided a repeat of the Great Depression is the different polices that have been employed – we didn’t make the same mistakes. There are plenty of lessons to be learned here too which might abate future crises.

Are we in a similar situation today?

The question is quite revealing – there is a general tendency to equate the stock market with overall economic performance or societal well being. So while the stock market did suffer significant declines last year, it has more or less recovered with the Dow recently passing 10,000. However this recovery is not shared by the overall economy where growth is anaemic in the US and Europe and has not returned to the UK as yet. The recovery of the stock market may be largely illusionary. When adjusted for inflation, lower dollar value, the stock market has not reached the heights of the dotcom bubble. In addition the recovery is driven by pumped up financial stocks (though mostly on the investment banking side, less so for retail banks) which have received enormous government bail-outs. Also with large multinationals deriving much of their wealth from overseas markets – it is not a reflection of recovering demand in Western markets. The robust performance has also been driven by cost savings from blue chip companies – less spending and less employment – so while this has been good for investors, it has not been good for the economy.

How worried should we be for our economy?

The world economy will do fine, but the distribution of growth may change. The ascendency of Asia seems to confirmed by the crisis as it has exited quickly and resumed its impressive growth led by India and China. Europe and the United States have undergone a transition in their economy over the last decades – manufacturing has all but disappeared. Services and consumption have filled the void, but there is only so much consumption that an economy can afford. The success of the financial sector seems to be rather artificial – a reflection of churn rather than innovation. Growth generated over the last ten years was probably due to increased liquidity, not increased productivity – most of this growth was simply not real – and brings into question how we measure economic performance. While the stock market has recovered, the underlying picture is not good – unemployment is rising, credit is still not freely available, corporate debt and government deficits are spiralling. As was the case in 1929, the financial economy can not be divorced from the real economy for long.

William Hynes is a researcher and analyst in Economics and Economic history based at Jesus College.

Chris Baraniuk, who’s writing a history of Cherwell, came to interview me the other day as one of the most ancient ex-editors still extant. And immediately you ask yourself (and him) whether even five years, let alone 50 years, down the road, there’ll be a print Cherwell, at all – or, indeed, any student newspapers left anywhere?
It’s that infernal internet question that journalists with mortgages to pay ask themselves every day. Can blogs do the full Monty job? How many Tweets make a scream of alarm?

At which point, there are three things for a columnist who follows these things to say. One, loudest, clearest, is that nobody knows. Nobody so relatively early in a digital revolution can be sure of what’s right and what’s best left up a gumtree. Mr Rupert Murdoch, able to call on the best technical advisers around, seems to change his mind every six months. No industry writer (me included, looking back over a wasteland of duff predictions) has any claim to infallibility.

Always remember, too, that the means of delivering internet news – via Kindle, Apps, TV screen or whatever – changes and expands almost year by year. We don’t know what the state of that art will be in five or 50 years, therefore we can’t be remotely certain what will supplant what.

But we can – that second thing – be sure that there will be a continuing hunger, in universities as elsewhere, to find out what’s going on, and to try to wield a bit of influence over events. You only need click onto Cherwell.org to see that anxiety to keep in touch made manifest.

A university the size of Oxford always needs a means of talking to itself, of defining its own sense of community: and the student press is crucial there. Local papers only do a bit of the job. Specialist websites are narrow by definition. Cherwell, always has, and hopefully always will, offer some of the information that binds Oxford together.

Point three, though, is the really difficult one, the dead-forests or super broadband thing, the basic dilemma about the future of journalism itself (for readers and those who want a media job). And I think we can be a little more conclusive here.

We used to see newspaper websites as the first markers of total transition. One fine, imminent day, print would be gone and screens would rule our world. Now there’s far more of a mix and match. When the Guardian routed the legions of Carter-Ruck the other day over the gagging of its reporting in Parliament, print began the job, showing readers that something was wrong – and sparking the blogosphere into action so vibrant that the legal wet

blankets retired hurt. When some talking point happens – say, the death of Michael Jackson – the thirst for news comes in all forms, print, online, TV. Audiences don’t make distinctions.

And when you compute audience figures themselves realistically you also get realistic answers. At first sight, the top UK newspaper online at the moment, the Daily Mail, has 28 million unique users and only 2.1 million buying its print version every morning. But that 28 million figure is the total for the whole of a month.
Strip out Americans clicking through and British visitors following a bit of celebrity action from site to site, and the Mail reckons that only 300,000 users a day are UK readers who stick around for 15 minutes or so: less than a twelfth of the number that read the print copy thoroughly on a single day.

Here, perhaps, is the crucial clue to where we are on a long road of tumultuous change – much akin to the contrast between 300,000 viewers watching BBC News 24 at any one time and six or seven million tuning in to the 10 o’Clock News.

It’s not one or the other that matters here. It’s both, doing complementary jobs. It’s not print Cherwell, once a week that can rule the roost, but the paper you can read in the JCR plus the news that rolls across screens.
More jobs, not fewer, in the end. More news, not less. More voices, and horses for courses. And more chapters of history for Chris Baraniuk to add for his second edition.