 Mae'r fawr yn ddod o'r ffawr yn ymwneud yw'r fawr. Mae'n mynd i'r fawr, ymwneud, yw'r fawr, yw'r adegfyrd yw'r adegfyrd. Rydyn ni'n meddwl i'r teimlo, sy'n credu yw'r adegfyrd, sy'n cydnod, ymwneud ychydig ar y cerddoedd ychydig mewn gwirioneddau. Mae'r cyfeirio'r gweithio'r hynny ddyn nhw, a ddod yn fawr hwnnw. Rwy'n meddwl i'r ymwneud yw'r adegfyrd, o'ch bod yn cael ei gwasanaeth yma yn unig ac yn gweithio'r pras. Yr unrhyw gydag i'r eich cyfrifio i siarad yn gweithio'r cyfrifio erbyn yn ymweld, mae'n cael ei fydig, yn ymddangos y ddwylliant. A fwy o'i, 40 yma. Yn nhw ydym yn Yn Yn 1974, yng Nghaerdoedd Gweithio Llywodraeth, i wych yn ddiddordeb i ddiddordeb ei ailwg, o bobl ydi', ac i ddiddordeb lloddau. Fe oedd yn unig wnerd, o ffaith, feetch! Mae'r gelch y cyfyrddau yn ddiddordeb i ddiddordeb i ddiddordeb i ddiddordeb, sy'n ei fan bod yn ichi ddiddordeb i ddiddordeb i ddiddordeb, byddai weithio'r penigau. Mae wedi bod yn gymhwypen gweithio'r hyn oes, ac nid yn fwyaf armaethleuio cyffredig o'r Fwrdd Brytychol, sy'n Llywodraeth, sy'n mynd eu oedd yn fwyaf yn gweithio'i hollu. Mae'r hanfodd cyffredig, ond mae'n arddangos i chi yn rhoi i'r bobl ac yn ymddangos y dreflawn hynny. It is a great European city that you have preserved. The subject as covered in the book has moved on in the way that things do if you have the hubris. I gather that David Oewis was talking about hubris when he was here the other day, the hubris to write contemporary history. I did manage to get in just before the book went to press, a brief remark or two about the Euro, but I didn't of course foresee all the horrors that have happened since. So in a sense the book, I don't think the book is wrong, I mean I have to say. And by the way it's on sale downstairs, something that the chairman forgot to say. But I think I could have, if I was writing it now, I would be spending more time on all the issues that are involved in that crisis. And in a way that's what I want to start off with, referring to now patently the European project as it's sometimes called is now in a state of crisis. The crisis is manifested most obviously in the travails of the Eurozone, which are of course something that even the leader of the Eurosceptic Conservative Party in my country, David Cameron, has actually admitted which affects Britain just as much as it affects the member states of the Eurozone. And if the Eurozone was somehow to collapse, Britain would suffer just as much as would the member states of the existing Eurozone. And of course it's not only Britain that would suffer, the whole world would suffer. I was talking the other day, it has to be said it was after a rather liquid filled dinner at one of the Oxford colleges, the president of which is a very dear friend of mine, so perhaps we weren't all entirely sober. But I did talk to an economist, an economic commentator, since this part of the proceedings is not Chatham-Hoswell, so I don't think I have to tell you what his name is because he might not wish to be quoted, particularly since he was a bit carried away by the occasion. But we talked about it and I asked him about Greece and so on and he said, well, there's no question about it, Greece will default. And then what's next, I said, well, he said the big question is whether Italy defaults. And he thought that the odds on Italy staying in the Eurozone and not defaulting were 52 to 48, that's not exactly a mighty margin. And then just pushing it, I said, well, what do you think is going to happen if Italy does default? And he thought for a minute he said Armageddon and I think he meant Armageddon, not just in Europe, not just in this continent, but for the entire global economy. So that crisis is serious and is profound, but of course it is related to the story of Europe over the period that I cover in this book. It's not something that's come out of nothing. Now, I want to say very briefly something that will be entirely familiar to this audience, but isn't always familiar to audiences in Great Britain. It is worth just before we get ourselves into a state of lacrimose despair reflecting on the extraordinary successes of the European project since it was launched after the war by the likes of Jean Monnet and Conrad Ardenauer and Arlie Spark and Robert Schumann and the others. I don't believe that the most optimistic of these founding fathers, if you'd ask them, if you told them in 1950 that in 60 years' time the European community, then European Union, would have embraced the entire continent from the Arctic Circle to Cyprus and from the Blasket Islands to the Bielorussian border. It would have seemed wildly so ridiculously utopian as to be virtually insane. Even when I was working in the European Commission for Roy Jenkins in the Middle 70s, I don't think anybody would have dreamt that possible, and yet it happened. And it's important to remember what an extraordinary achievement this has been. Judith and I, my wife and I were in Poland a while ago, and I was sitting in an airport café waiting for our plane from Warsaw Airport back home. And I suddenly had a kind of epiphany. I suddenly said to myself, my God, I am so proud, proud to be a member of this amazing union embracing 500 million people over this gigantic area, that peaceful negotiation, boring bureaucrats, tedious technocrats, wily politicians have peacefully managed to do what all Napoleon's armies and all Hitler's armies failed to do, and it's been done peacefully by consent. That is an astounding achievement, and we should never forget that. I just want to say that I feel this very strongly, and it's ought to be, I'm not sure that enough of my fellow countrymen do feel that, to be honest, but I'm sure you do. And it's something that we need to keep in the forefront of our minds if we're going to, so to speak, come to terms with the meaning of what's going on now. Now, against that background, astonishing success, it seems to me that Europe now faces, in a way, a double crisis. It faces an external crisis, and it faces an internal crisis. The external crisis isn't discussed as often as it ought to be, I think, and it's that external crisis which provides the inner meaning of the slightly alarmist title, The End of the West. What I mean is this, that certainly ever since the Second World War until the beginning of the 21st century, and actually for much longer than that, when Europeans contemplated the world as a whole, and when Americans contemplated the world as a whole, they saw a kind of polarity, a dualism, not exactly a conflict, but a difference between something that was called the West and something that was called the East. You can see a lot of this in Kipling's poems. If you think of East as East and West as West, then never the twain shall meet. Kipling was actually quite optimistic about that, by the way, at the end of the poem, but he thought that when two strong men from the ends of the earth got together, then everything would be wonderful. The first two lines stay in the mind. The West was democratic by this time, rational, enlightened, progressive, economically dynamic, and it contemplated an East which was backward, sunk in stupa, and altogether into inferior and all the areas of life that mattered to practical men to the West. There were gurus in India, and they no doubt were very impressive in their way, but they didn't matter to practical men. That was the picture of the world. It was a picture of the world when I was growing up after World War II, probably the picture of the world 100 years before too, in the 19th century, and certainly the picture of the world that dominated the mindsets of Europeans after World War II. That picture led to a conclusion which was at the time quite reasonable, indeed it accorded reasonably well with the facts, but which I suggest has now become dangerously out of date and no longer accords with the facts. The picture I mean is this, that Western Europe at least, non-communist, democratic, Europe is part of the West. Sadly, Eastern Europe and Central Europe, which were only cubiously part of the West anyway, are no longer part of it. But we have on the other side of the Atlantic, we have the giant of Western democracy, progress, liberalism, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and we in the Americans are on in some very deep and fundamental sense for the Sophical sense, not just practical sense on the same side, faced with a contest with the barbaric East in the new form of totalitarian Stalinism. And because we are both parts of the West, because we both have the same fundamental values, we the Europeans, the weaker half of the West can always rely on the stronger half of the West, namely the United States, to pull our chestnuts out of the fire for us if anything really serious happens or threatens. Of course this was symbolised in the most extreme form by the presence of American nuclear weapons. We were developing the European project in its early days, if you like, under the American nuclear umbrella. And that was the origin of NATO and it was deeply locked into the mindset of European leaders and most, though not all, European peoples. And as I say, it did accord roughly speaking with the facts. Of course on the European half of the West because we had become much less important in the world than we used to be. We had the French had lost a grandeur, the British had lost an empire, the Germans were divided and had suffered the most catastrophic defeat probably ever inflicted on any country in modern times. So we were a bit bedraggled compared to the mighty Americans and it's never very nice to be dependent on somebody else and so quite often there were outbursts of jealousy and grumbling and mean mindedness and so on, particularly between intellectuals in Europe and the United States. But still, when push came to shove, that was the key sort of axis of global power so far as we were concerned, the relationship between the United States and Europe, the Americans as our protector with the same fundamental and basic values. Now I think that that world has manifestly come to an end. The latest economic crisis in the world is one symptom of it. Where did this crisis start? It started in the heartland of economic efficiency, rationality, progress and modernity, namely the United States. The American model of how to run capitalism was catastrophically shattered in the second worst crisis in the whole history of capitalism which started in really 2008. That was where it started. The next biggest partner in crime was, in fact, my own country, the United Kingdom. We bought into the American model. In fact, one of the main themes of speeches by particularly British chances of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown was particularly dab-hand at this, one of the main themes was to berate the backward looking Europeans and adopt it, the Anglo-American model. Of course, ironically, one of the things that has become clear when the crisis broke is that in a way they had adopted the Anglo-American model without realising it, and German and French banks were just as much involved in the shenanigans that led to the crisis as were British and American banks. That wasn't supposed to be happening, but it did happen. That's not just one dimension of the change in global power. Obviously, the most important dimension is what's called, often, the rise of the rest. Not the decline of the west, but the rise of the rest. China most obviously, India to a very considerable extent, the so-called bricks. Overdone quite often, the talk about how fast they're rising, but it nevertheless the case that they are and they have. That's, and the United States, I suggest, is going through a very, very, very painful period of psychological and political adjustment as a consequence. Britain had a similar experience around about the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when suddenly, the British began to realise that, well, yes, in a way they were still the top dogs, but there were some other rather sinister beasts in the canals yapping at our heels, namely Germany and the United States. And maybe we weren't the top dog any longer, and that caused all sorts of ructions in Britain. I mean, I think this may be a bit off the point, but still I can't resist saying it. I think the reason why the British political class were never able to carry through Irish home rule is because of the backwash of that, of the feeling of sort of loss of confidence that went with this sense of being no longer the top dog, but be a long argument. We could have a long argument about that. Anyway, I don't think there's any doubt that this is what's happened in America, and it's happened in America that consequences have been very complex. One, the initial consequence, George W. Bush, the example that springs to mind, is of a kind of hysterical determination to demonstrate that we are still the top dog. And when nasty, vicious, evil people dare to attack New York, New York, well, we're going to go and biff them and show that you're not allowed to do that, and that was what the Iraq War was all about. Under Obama, the response has been less bellicose, but I think equally marked. And I think it's very interesting if you read Obama's marvelous autobiography, what's it called, The Tales of My Father or something to that? Yeah, dreams, that's right. It's very, very interesting to try to read the subtext of what he says about Europe. He doesn't like it, but his heart doesn't warm to it. This is a man who is shaped, if you like, by the global world that we now live in, to an extent that no previous American president has been, and actually no other major leader of a Western country has been. And I think that the, you're seeing, the sense of America withdrawing into itself, which is a very normal consequence of the relative decline of what had previously been a hyper power. Now, Britain had that experience after World War One. Now, the implications of this for Europe, I think, are very, very profound, and have not really been addressed seriously or adjusted to. And it seems to me, in a very simple phrase, it seems to be self-evident that Europe can't any longer assume, as a given, that American interests, or at least Americans own perception of their interests, they're going to be identical with those of Europe. They're not, for example, in the Middle East. They're quite patently not. But what few Europeans have yet done is to draw what seems to me the obvious conclusion that if Europe speaks to 27 national voices, it's not going to be able to hack it in this new constellation of global power, where the United States is no longer automatically there to protect and guard it. A greater degree of political union seems to me to be essential for Europe as a whole face to face with this new world. Now, from there, I want to talk a bit about what I call the internal crisis. A brief word about Europe. It seems to me pretty clear that it was always a nonsense to think that you could combine monetary union with fiscal disunion. It just didn't make sense. It never made sense. I think that the main architect, or at least the main political architect of the euro, namely Helmut Kohl, probably knew this perfectly well. He was not a fool. I think he knew that if you had monetary union but combined with each country pursuing its own independent fiscal policies, this would come unstuck. It couldn't go on. I think what he thought would happen is that over time it would become obvious that you had to move further towards fiscal union as well. If you were going to maintain monetary union and that fiscal union of course would imply a degree of political union much greater than it happened so far. I think that's what Kohl thought. It was a reasonable kind of calculation to make probably when the euro was sort of coming up to be adopted. What Kohl couldn't do was to foresee the effects of the long boom of the noughties and the late 90s and the feeling of wild euphoria that gripped policymakers right across the western world. Why bother to think such awkward and difficult thoughts as the incompatibility of fiscal disunion and monetary union? Why bother your head with that when there was vast sums of money to be made from gambling in all kinds of extraordinary securities? From the point of view of governments being able to enjoy effectively painless growth and painless satisfaction of the demands for living standard rises by their populations. You don't think about nasty things when everything is so lovely in the garden. But of course that period is now over and as it's ended with a horrible crunch I think one of the things that has sort of become plain is that it actually was absurd to think that you could combine monetary union with fiscal independence and that that is the very heart of the crisis of the euro. I'm not an economist and I'm sure there are plenty here who will dispute that statement in discussion but that is the way I see it. And then in conjunction with that has become clear another flaw in the project of monetary union as it was conceived and as it's been pursued. And that is the dangerous gap between the, if you like, the rich economically competitive heartland of the eurozone and the not so competitive, not so rich, not so successful periphery mainly but not entirely in the south of the Mediterranean area. And this is of course the nub of the political problem that we now face it seems to me. I don't see how the eurozone can survive without their being significant transfers, fiscal transfers from the rich heartland to the not so rich periphery. And that's very, very easy for me to say here not elected to anything and not going to run for anything. But if I was a German candidate for the Bundestag or a French candidate for the presidency I wouldn't find it very easy to say those things because again is the sort of paradoxical consequences of economic crisis. Economic crisis makes it all the more necessary to do that and it makes it all the more difficult because German voters clearly think that they have done enough. They have put their hands in their pockets enough and they're not going to do any more to bail out a lot of lazy, feckless Greeks, Latin's all over the Mediterranean. Why can't these people sort of get down to work and become hard sober Germans in Italian clothes? Because they can't, but looked out from Germany I can quite see that you wouldn't think that. Anyway that's where we are now. Now I think there are two possibilities emerging from this and I mustn't talk for too long sorry. Possibility number one is that there will develop in effect a kind of two circle Europe. Circle and inner circle which will be if you like the more successful members of the existing eurozone plus I think Poland for sure maybe one or two others. It will be like the original six only with Austria, with Poland maybe in a bit longer with Hungary and when eventually the Czechs get rid of their peculiar president with the Czech Republic. And probably not Italy, a question mark over Spain, that would be the inner circle. Whether Ireland would be part of the inner circle or not is not for me to say. That's a decision for the Irish but anyway that's the inner circle. The outer circle would be the rest of the European Union. Now that prospect is actually quite agreeable to what I might call soft Eurosceptics in my country. The idea that you could have a wide free trade area which would allow the United Kingdom to join in the benefits of free trade. The benefits to our exports and so on and so forth and the prosperity that in theory free trade will bring in the long run. Without having to have a lot of tiresome horrible Brussels bureaucrats telling us what to do and in the more slightly more extreme Eurosceptic version without having to have a lot of horrible judges sitting in the European Court of Justice telling us what we're allowed to do and not to do. So for that kind of as I say soft Eurosceptic in Britain this prospect of a two tier Europe is actually quite attractive. But of course what they would like is I think completely impossible and indeed nonsensical. They would like there to be this inner Europe which accepts which in fact does move effectively towards fiscal union with some kind of political union at the end of the road but which doesn't in any way interfere with or exert control over the interdependencies of the wider circle free trade of the wider circle. I just don't think that's on. It seems to me quite obvious that if Europe does develop in that way the inner circle is bound by the nature of economic life to determine fundamentally the fundamentals of what happens economically speaking in the outer circle as well. I just don't see how you can avoid that conclusion. So that that scenario I think is to be honest an absolute disastrous one. It would it seems to me what it leads to is a core Europe prosperous when the nastiness of the present crisis goes away prosperous secure behind a kind of fortress walls. And then on the periphery are a whole lot of other countries who are not in that not in the core jealous comparatively speaking impoverished feeling humiliated because they're not part of the inner core and subject to all kinds of nationalist rivalries and who are competitive evaluations and God knows what going back to the 1930s. That seems to me to be where that scenario leads. And it would mean it would really now here I saw that I'm being emotional not not not not intellectual. It would really mean saying that despite the enormous achievements of the last 60 years of European integration the motors are now going to go in reverse. And I just find that an appalling prospect one that I cannot bear the thought of. But that I think is where the two tier version of Europe would get us. The other alternative I think now this may seem pie in the sky. The other alternative I think is for Europeans to seize the opportunity which has been created by this crisis. Crises create opportunities. The opportunities are not always taken. Sometimes the crisis makes things unmitigatedly worse if you look at the development of history. But there are times in history where with the imaginative and courageous leadership it is possible to seize the opportunity created by a crisis and turn things around into a more optimistic direction. That's what Franklin Roosevelt did when he became president of the United States in 1932. The United States in 1932 seemed to be absolutely on its uppers. Banks were closing all over the country. Marches of unemployed were gathering in Washington. It was facing the most terrible crisis in its entire history apart from the crisis that led to the Civil War. Roosevelt turned it round by the exertion of will and courage fortified by imagination. Now I think what we need right now is a European Franklin Roosevelt or a series of Franklin Roosevelt because I think there is an opportunity nestling in this crisis. What we could have if we had the will and courage and imagination it seems to me is a kind of European New Deal which would abandon the foolish pursuit of self-flagellating and growth inhibiting austerity which is now being followed by all the major governments of Europe headed by my own. This isn't working. The way to get out of a slump is not to choke off demand. Cain's was actually right fundamentally is to increase it but not to increase it by tax cuts and a rag bag of public sector investments. To get out of it via a coordinated New Deal essentially of a green kind developing the technologies, the skills and so on that are needed for Europe as a whole to compete in the world that is now emerging. And of course that would necessitate some kind of fiscal union and it would necessitate some kind of political union down the road. That seems to me to be a feasible, just feasible, just feasible if there was somebody or group of people with the courage and will to pursue it. It would produce some interesting consequences for Britain and being British. I actually think of myself more as Welsh and European than I do as British as a matter of fact. You may not realise that in fact I am Welsh by background even though I don't have a Welsh name and my accent isn't very Welsh either. I could see the following scenario just to tease you a bit. The United Kingdom stays outside of this dramatic move towards a federal and New Deal expansionist Europe. But the prospect of staying outside it fills the Scots with horror and the already existing appetite for more economic powers in the hands of the Scottish Parliament becomes much stronger. And effectively we see the beginning of the breakup of the United Kingdom which arguably began when you became independent after the First World War. Maybe the final stage on this long road started by you or your ancestors culminates in the secession of Scotland from the United Kingdom and the secession of Wales a little bit later than Scotland. The Welsh are always a little bit timid and they never do things first but on the other hand when they see Scotland doing something they think to themselves well if they can do it why can't we do it too. So this I think could be the unexpected consequence of Europe following the path of a European New Deal that I would like it to follow. I hope you don't think that's too crazy. Thank you.