English marches on in the age of Bush and Blair
Isee that some commentators suggest the newly elected Bush should hasten to make it up with Europe. Why should he? What weight does Europe (excluding Britain) carry in the world today? Less and less. I suspect that by the end of Bush's second term the pattern of the future will be emerging, a triumvirate of three great power groups: India, China and the English-speaking world. Demographic projections are notoriously unreliable, but we have to go by the available evidence, and that points strongly in the direction of an Anglo-Indian-Chinese world, with Europe marginalised. By 2050 India will have 1,628 million people, China will have 1,393 million and America, with by far the largest of the 'advanced' peoples, will have 422 million, a 45 per cent increase on the 2003 figure. By contrast the projections for Europe tell a dismal tale. I remember telling an international conference on European culture, held in Vienna 40 years ago, that Continentals should stop boasting about it and put their pricks where their mouths are by raising the birthrates. I used colourful language to stress the point and provoked fury. Alas, nearly a generation later my warnings are proving only too accurate. Germany, population nearly 83 million in 2003, will have only 67.7 million by 2050. Italy will drop 9 per cent to only 52.3 million. France will increase slightly but only thanks to an extra 5 million Muslims. Spain will be stationary, again thanks to Muslims, otherwise falling steeply. Poland and Greece will drop 12 per cent each, Portugal and the Czech Republic will each shrink by 10 per cent, Hungary by an alarming 25 per cent, Russia by 18 per cent, with the prospect of dwindling below the 100 million mark well before the end of the century. Even if the EU expands to include Russia, the USA is on course to overtake it in population, let alone GNP. Not so long ago, at a vainglorious meeting in Lisbon, EU bosses boasted that by 2010 they would he running a 'world-beating' economy well ahead of the US. The panel of experts set up then has now produced its report, and grim reading it makes. It notes that falling population will extinguish the already feeble economic dynamism in Europe completely. The magic date 2010 is just a milestone on this road to the cemetery. By 2050 the ratio of pensioners to active workers will more than double, jumping from 24 to 50 per cent. An extra 8 per cent of GDP will be required just to keep healthcare and pension costs at current levels. The report states that 'the growth-gap with America and Asia has widened and time is running out'. Productivity growth, probably the most important economic indicator of all, is much lower than America's and falling; and growth itself is predicted to fall almost automatically as population shrinks and dependency increases. Europe is falling behind in advanced sectors. The report notes that 74 per cent of the 300 leading information firms are now American, one reason why America wins so many Nobel prizes and continental Europe so few.
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Britain. I observe, does not fit into this tale of universal woe. With a strong economy and higher population increase projections, and (despite shortfalls) far better pension provisions than most EU states, Britain has chosen to align itself with the American pattern of development and (despite all the efforts of New Labour) is flourishing accordingly. So is Australia, a country which has just emphatically confirmed its identification with US policies, in economics and geopolitics alike. Australia now has one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and a projected population increase, by 2050, of 48 per cent, larger even than America's. In all the gloom for old Europe, it is hardly surprising to see a Daily Telegraph headline 'Fed-up French turning to Britain'. The 300,000 French now living in Britain form the largest French expatriate colony in Europe, and cite the greater freedom they find in England from bureaucratic regulation and restraint on small business as their reason for corning here. (There are also, 1 am pleased to see, signs of a growing German migration here, our living standards now being appreciably higher than in Germany, and jobs much easier to find.) This French preference for Britain is something entirely new in our joint history; if we except the sudden mass movement of Huguenots to England following Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, an event which did so much damage to the French economy and was of so much benefit to ours. In other ways, too, the French, though so proud of their own culture and instinctively hostile to our way of doing things, are being forced by the harsh facts of life to move in our direction. It looks as though the authorities are about to haul down the flag in the teaching of English in French schools. The recently published report on the subject by a commission of experts headed by Claude Thelot recommends that the teaching of English in all French schools be mandatory and that it be accorded the same importance as the French language and mathematics. It accepts as an unarguable fact that English is now the 'language of international communication' and that young people in France must be able to speak, read and write it fluently. What seems to have impressed the commissioners is that French youth is slipping behind other EU countries in its ability to understand English, actually regressing in the years 1996-2002. By contrast, the Spanish, traditionally monoglot, are moving ahead. Under a 1990 law all Spanish children are now taught English from the age of
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eight, and in me regions from six. In the Madrid region there are 26 bilingual schools and colleges in which courses — with the exception of Spanish literature and mathematics — are taught in English. By 2007 there will be 110 such establishments. Mr Raffarin, the French Prime Minister, accepts the logic of the Thelot report and will implement it. Mr Chirac, of course, being 'anti-Anglo-Saxon' to the bone, countered with a high-minded plea for cultural diversity. 'Nothing could he worse for humanity than to move to a position where everyone speaks the same language.' Really? Come off it, Jacques! While France hesitates about what to do, the Indians are in no doubt. The wisdom of Macaulay in pushing the spread of English during his spell as a legal adviser in India is now being endorsed by events. As India emerges as a major economic power, several million Indians are now finding English speech essential — indeed, among the vast numbers employed in outsourcing, it is their livelihood. The truth is, language is the most democratic of all institutions. People determine how they speak themselves, and they arc driven by simple self-interest.
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