Tuesday, October 27, 2009 

The real reason for the Blair presidency.

We've heard a lot recently about self-inflicted harm and acts of suicide, mainly in connection with the Royal Mail, yet much the same could be said about the curious, perplexing campaign springing up for Tony Blair to be the first permanent president of the European Council. The power and prestige of the post is probably being exaggerated, as Nosemonkey argues, yet it's apparent it's not so much the job and the work involved but the title and impression which the person whom lands it will send.

The first, resounding and most bamboozling question which it raises is just what damaging, horrendous and career ending secret information Blair has on Gordon Brown. Despite everything we've been told about Brown's ever deteriorating relationship with Blair, he is still apparently "lobbying discreetly" for Blair to get the job. At times Brown and Blair apparently didn't talk; at the lowest point, when Brown felt that Blair had reneged again on his promise to hand over the reins, he told him that he would never believe a word he said again. A smart principle perhaps when dealing with someone as notoriously slippery as the "pretty straight kind of guy", but not one which is conducive to running a government. Why, after everything, would Brown now still think that he'd be the best man for the job? While Brown has always preferred the United States to Europe, even if unlike Blair it hasn't loved him back, he has never given the impression of wanting the EU to actively fail or to sabotage it from within. Perhaps Brown is envious at how, again despite everything, Blair has so successfully turned his hand from leader into money-maker, something which you doubt Brown when he exits Downing Street will emulate. Helping him get the job of EU president will for two and a half years at least severely undermine his earning power, even if when you're earning £12 million a year you can easily afford to take a couple of years "off". We're left with wondering just what this information Blair must have is. How terrible could it be that you have to support someone for a job who you so actively loathe?

Just as mysterious but for the opposite reason is the Conservative opposition to Blair gaining the post. Cameron and friends are still supposedly hoping that the Czech president will find a way to delay signing the Lisbon treaty, its last hurdle now that Ireland's voters were persuaded to change their mind and Poland's ratification, leaving them enough time to come to power and hold a referendum. Not because Cameron himself is viscerally Eurosceptic, but mainly become the Tory base and Rupert Murdoch demand it. Far more likely though is that the Czech president stops procrastinating and that Lisbon comes into effect long before the Tories get their shot at power, and that the other Tory promise to "not let matters rest" turns out to be as much froth as many of the other plans. How better then to undermine an organisation and institution you regard as bad for the country than by ensuring that someone as unpopular in this country and controversial elsewhere as Blair becomes its figurehead? Strangely then, despite joking about how bad it would make Brown look, William Hague supposedly would only allow Blair to become president over "his dead body". Cameron now thinks much the same, although he opposes the EU having a president, and that if it did, it should be someone who can chair meetings rather than grandstand on a global stage. This doesn't seem to be based on personal dislike for Blair: after all, Cameron was the person who made his front bench raise in applause for Blair has he left and who has actively based his entire persona on the great man. Could it be that, despite the Heresiarch's mocking, Cameron genuinely does fear being upstaged by Blair, or rather that he is much more afraid of a Europe which he would be far more inclined to agree with than would otherwise be the case? Then there's the Rupert Murdoch factor again: Blair as EU president might be someone who Murdoch would be far less likely to ceaselessly attack. Would a Blair presidency help somewhat with a reconciliation, something Cameron would most certainly not want to happen?

Strangest of all though is the apparent support of those who genuinely do believe in the European Union. The Guardian is concerned only by the fact that Tony Blair might be a war criminal; otherwise he would be the most obvious and easily the most qualified candidate. The European Union has never exactly been the most democratic of institutions, and the decision on who will become the president is certainly not with the European electorate as a whole but instead with the European council's 27 members, yet you thought even they might have seen the downsides of Blair becoming president. There are after all not many convicted criminals or potential criminals in charge of democratic nations, Italy being a notable exception, but even Mr Berlusconi, despite his involvement with the Iraq war, is only likely to be a small player in any eventual prosecution of both Bush and Blair for their role in a war of aggression, the "supreme international crime". Electing as your global representative someone who has never shown a moment's regret or pause and who declares that only God can be his judge is a difficult proposition to get your head round. David Miliband's argument was that Europe needs someone who can stop traffic in global capitals, although he probably didn't mean that those stopping the traffic would be the police in order to try to arrest him. Bush after all never showed any inclination to travel, which is probably just as well, and Blair, although he has been globe-trotting, is probably still wary of nations which could attempt to have him charged with some sort of offence. He probably couldn't get anywhere much safer than Israel, as the current representative of the Quartet, which must suit him down to the ground.

In fact, I think I might have alighted on the real reason why Sarkozy and Merkel think Blair might be the right man for the job. Nothing would seem more calculated to further ostracise the EU from this country, where probably the only person equally as unpopular as Blair is Brown himself. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Piss off Brown even if he's lobbying for it, as it must piss him off, and help start the formal exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, as the nation's real leader, that man RM again, has long wanted. What could possibly go wrong?

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10/27/2009 10:13:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, June 14, 2008 

The luck of the Irish.

We are then back where we started. The only people to be offered a referendum, and only then because Ireland's own constitution demands it, and they make the wise decision to reject it, and on a remarkably high turnout as well of 53.1%. Little wonder then that rest of Europe has rushed to decide to completely ignore the only direct democratic will of the people on the matter.

As Nosemonkey writes, don't even begin to imagine that this is the final downfall of the EU constitution, or the Lisbon treaty as few bother to call it; it's already showed that it's the veritable Rasputin of convoluted, indecipherable legal documents. For those of us who favour the European Union but are exasperated at how utterly useless those in government and outside of it are at winning far larger public support for it, this is the best possible outcome.

Ignore the nonsense emanating from the UKIP tendency of how this was a vote against greater integration, primarily it was a vote against something which only judges, bureaucrats and lawyers can understand and a vote against the politicians who didn't even attempt to help those voting understand. Someone said you'd have to be mad to attempt to read it, let alone understand it, and they'd be right. Enough people struggle with a book like Vernon God Little, let alone something which you could break windows with were you to throw it. If you don't understand it, vote no. Who could possibly argue with such basic logic, or blame them for doing so?

It matters little that some of the other reasons why the constitution were opposed were either imaginary or scaremongering, mainly because that's exactly how the Irish government played it too, as did the other EU politicians who bothered to comment. As so often happens when something involves the EU, if you don't do as you're told, threats must be involved. Hence there was no real case made for why the European Union has been such a boon for Ireland, and that the constitution, for all its faults, is for the moment the only way forward; instead it bordered on the we must support this, but we can't really be bothered making the cause for why. Just get along to the polling station and do the right thing, OK?

Now that the wretched thing has been defeated yet again, it would be nice if instead of going through the same ritual as before, i.e. coming up with a document 95% the same but which really is different, honest, trust us, which was only always going to end in tears, the EU sat back and considered for a moment where it's gone so wrong. Not just is there such a monumental democratic deficit, there's also so little room for consultation with those outside the inner circle of politicians that everyone, with more than a little justice, sees it as a monolithic, unaccountable and completely out of touch bureaucracy that fundamentally cannot be trusted and which can't even get its accounts signed off.

The only thing that is going to save it, and get any constitution accepted by almost any population outside the mainly pro-Europe central European nations is root and branch reform from the bottom up. Strict, complete limits need to be set down that make crystal clear where EU power begins and independent nation state power begins. It needs to be decided whether we want a "social" Europe, the foremost reason why the constitution was originally rejected by the French and Dutch and one of the factors in Ireland, of the kind envisioned in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, or one where free trade and movement takes precedent, as the Peter Mandelson-types support. Most fundamentally of all, each nation state should be directly asked in a referendum whether it wants to remain in the EU at all. Let's have a proper debate on the benefits and the downsides, as free from fabrication, innuendo and the bullshit which goes hand in hand with coverage of Europe in the right-wing tabloids as possible, and make a decision for at least the next generation. Perhaps then we might start to get either the Europe we need - or the Europe we deserve.

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6/14/2008 09:46:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 06, 2008 

Long-winded post on all things EU and referendums.

The great betrayal has taken place. This was a shaming day for democracy, an act of cowardice on behalf of Gordon Brown, an event that will change Britain forever, and our so-called elected representatives have denied the people their right to a vote on a matter of national importance.

Or so some would have us believe. The whole argument about a referendum on the European Union's Lisbon treaty has been a sham, documented by ignorance and deception on all sides, with every political party outside say UKIP being far from honest about their real motives for supporting the position they adopted. The real sad thing is that such casual contempt for the average person trying to make head or tail of just what the reforming treaty does, is meant to do or whether it should be supported or not is nothing out of the ordinary in this country, a supposed parliamentary democracy which is trying to build a knowledge economy, laughable as it. It isn't however just parliamentarians that have been the key deceivers; if anything, far from it. By far the most nonsense written about the constitution and what it will supposedly do appeared in the right-wing tabloids, as per usual, with ridiculous claims that we'll lose our seat at the UN, that it provides a "blueprint" for a "United States of Europe", with centuries of parliamentary democracy consigned to history. Yep, that's right. According to certain sections of the press, MPs just voted for their own abolition.

Even I'm directly not being straight with you, and I'm also certainly biased. In order to even begin to write about or discuss the treaty properly, you need to read it, and I haven't, nor do I have any intention of doing so. I'm certainly in the majority though; something like 99.99% of the rest of the British population haven't read it either. Those that do can't even begin to understand it: even the BBC's Europe editor Mark Mardell has said that he can't even begin to work out what it means from beginning to end. It's probably indecipherable even to those who drew it up, and who knows, maybe it's even intentional. Regardless of that, it's the treaty that would be put before us, and the time to have made it legible, simple to understand or for an exact, easy list of exactly what it will do and what it won't do has passed. We instead have to rely on everyone other than ourselves to tell us what's in it, yet they haven't done even the slightest work to do so either. According to numerous politicians, newspapers and thinktanks the treaty is roughly 90% the same as the previous constitution, but can we actually rely on any of those to have read it and understood it themselves? And was the previous constitution, itself unreadable, so thoroughly bad, despite its rejection by the French and the Dutch for reasons which weren't necessarily all to do with what that contained either?

As said, I haven't read either, but one of the few facts I am certain of is that there are two main important differences between the constitution and the treaty, and one also which affects us personally vis-a-vis the treaty. Firstly, that the treaty, unlike the constitution, is not legally binding, and secondly that the treaty provides one important detail that wasn't present in the constitution. To what you would expect would be the delight of some in the Conservatives and certainly UKIP, it provides a precise and exact mechanism for leaving the EU, something that is currently completely lacking in any of the treaties that the Lisbon treaty is meant to bring together and reaffirm. Lastly, what would be the biggest benefit of the treaty, the charter of fundamental rights, an extension to the ECHR, was one of the government's red lines, mainly because of the sections on "solidarity" which so offend the business "community" and would ride a coach and horses through the restrictions on trade unions we've had since Thatcher's days.

Update: Rather embarrassingly, as Ken points out in the comments, both the constitution and the treaty contained the secession clause. I apologise for making an honest mistake. It's still the first time that the EU has offered an exact mechanism for leaving the union, and one which is both important and deserves supporting.

The biggest mistake was undeniably Labour offering a referendum in the first place. Despite what some have constantly alluded to, Gordon Brown did not personally ever offer a referendum on the constitution, let alone the Lisbon treaty. As with most other things involving Tony Blair, his decision to have a referendum was a sop to Rupert Murdoch, with it being widely rumoured that Murdoch offered Blair an ultimatum: either you hold a referendum on the constitution, or the Sun and the Times would support the Conservatives in the then fast approaching 2005 general election. Blair hastily agreed, and although he might not have envisaged that he would have been swept out so quickly after his third election win, he was also reasonably safe in the knowledge at the time that it was likely the French would reject the constitution and so negate the need to hold one anyway. With the Conservatives already offering a referendum, again without much chance of actually taking power and needing to hold one, something which would have exposed the party's continuing splits over Europe and left it without the slightest idea what to do, and the Liberal Democrats therefore the odd ones out, they had a little option but to declare they too would have one, even though they again had about as much chance of gaining power as Amy Winehouse has of being left alone by the paparazzi.

This brought us to the situation today, where all the parties are accused of betraying their manifesto promises and therefore misleading the people and treating the public with contempt. This is again of course, a nonsense. No one again seriously expects the voters to actually read each parties' manifesto; that would probably be an act of individual thinking that would deeply offend against the average politician and journalist, and also lead half of those seriously thinking of voting to not bother after the realise how little difference there is between all of them. It's also not as if this is the first time that Labour has directly broken a manifesto promise: there are so many they've either not bothered with or half-heartedly attempted to make up an entire post on its own. 1997's promised electoral reform; they've repeatedly promised to reform the House of Lords; and in 2001's they directly promised not to introduce student top-up fees, so they did the exact opposite.

As stated at the beginning, not a single one of our magnificent parties are being honest with us for their reasons for either changing their minds or sticking with them. The Sun is right in saying Brown won't have a one because he knows he'd lose, but Labour also doesn't want one because besides all the talk of re-engaging and devolution, the party is also still monolithic and a firm believer in the superiority of parliament, rather than in asking the people every five seconds what they want in a plebiscite. The Conservatives are for the most part in favour of a referendum because it means they tap further into popular discontent; it doesn't matter that the party itself has no intention of getting out of Europe altogether, which is what those most in favour of a referendum truly want, including a good proportion of its backbenchers. Not even Cameron's that silly, regardless of his petty decision to move out of the European parliament's main grouping of conservative parties, itself a sop to the headbangers within the ranks. Despite all the opprobrium directed towards them, the Liberal Democrats have actually been the most honest with both themselves and the public. Rather than wanting a referendum on the treaty, which is in reality just a front for one on the EU itself, they've come out and said let's have this debate in full about whether we should stay in or not. This removes all the charades, nonsense and deception surrounding the treaty and asks the adult question: is staying in the EU good for us or not? As they have also argued, this would also be the first time that anyone under 50 had been directly asked for their input on the European Union, since the vote on staying in the EEC back in 1975. Yes, it's true that this is also partly a response to the fear of a referendum on the treaty being lost and that this would be one that would be more winnable, but the consequences of either referendum being lost would be broadly similar.

A no vote here on the treaty would be entirely different to both the French and the Dutch no votes were back in 2005. They were decisive in killing off the treaty precisely because both countries had long been at the centre of the EU and instrumental in its initial conception, as well as both broadly pro-further integration. It's because of our long recalcitrant attitude towards the EU that such a vote resulting in a no would be dismissed in such an easy fashion; rather than being Europe's problem, it would be our problem. Whatever the feelings we should have about that, it's long been established that it's better to be inside the tent pissing out than it is be outside the tent pissing in. Without attempting to reform Europe our way, and by being as strong as possible in attempting to influence the organisation, influence which only comes through respect, we might as well give up entirely and go our separate way. For anyone who believes in small things like the Human Rights Act, which although not connected with the EU would never have happened if it were not for our membership, that's a bitter pill to swallow.

If all this sounds like an argument against a referendum on the treaty, it isn't one. I actually think we should have had and should have one, mainly because despite the politicians, I think it could still be won. We routinely underestimate pro-EU feeling, and also overestimate the influence of the tabloids' incessant propaganda over the institution. It would certainly be easier to win one on continued membership, and that would be a far better question to ask the country to decide upon, but the treaty itself, for all its faults, is to streamline the EU, reform it appropriately for its current expansion and possible further expansion, and also institutes rights which we have long been denied in this country. That was the argument that should have been taken to the country, but the politicians were too pusillanimous to even try and risk the wrath of the Murdoch press, the Telegraph and the Mail. I certainly won't however be losing any sleep over not having one, nor is it a disaster for the country or a betrayal. A far better use of a referendum would be to have one on electoral reform, one that was promised back in 1997, with ironically the elections for the European parliament, which are on proportional representation, being the fairest that are conducted in England, if not in Wales or Scotland which do use a form of PR. Instead, the whole debacle has just been the continuation of the usual biases and manoeuvres which politicians have always used and will always use. It has been ever thus, and will be ever thus, and no amount of huffing and puffing from the press, threats from the Sun to hold Brown to account for it or not will change that.

Related post:
Nosemonkey - Cameron, the Tories’ confusing EU politics, and a chance for reform

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3/06/2008 10:02:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, November 17, 2007 

The clunking fist's return to control freakery.

David Miliband, in advance of making his first major speech on the European Union, lets his colleagues brief the media on what he's going to say. The Grauniad and Financial Times both run stories indicating that he was to suggest, along the lines of Nicolas Sarkozy's recent proposals, that the EU should expand its defence capabilities and also become a model global power. When Miliband makes the speech, the part about the defence was dropped entirely, and while the bit about being a model global power stayed in, he also said the following, via Nosemonkey:

“The EU is not and never will be a superpower. An EU of 27 nation states or more is never going to have the fleetness of foot or the fiscal base to dominate. In fact economically and demographically Europe will be less important in the world of 2050 that it was in the world of 1950.”

Hardly the optimistic, praising and strengthening speech that was set out in the briefings. So what happened? The Times ecstatically informs us (while the Scum has a similar article):

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, was humiliated by the Prime Minister yesterday when he was forced to remove pro-European passages from a speech and drop his policy initiative on European defence.

Gordon Brown’s intervention, hours before Mr Miliband was due to speak in Bruges, again demonstrated the willingness by the Prime Minister to overrule his ministers at short notice, as well as having a more cautious attitude towards Europe.

Mr Brown ordered Mr Miliband to drop explicit references to an “EU military capabilities charter”, which would have identified targets for investment, research and training.


In a reminder of what happened all too often during the Blair years, Brown was terrified of the reaction of the Murdoch press. Already under fire for failing to supply the referendum they demand, journos on the Murdoch papers, as Martin Kettle writes, demanded an explanation for Miliband daring to go "off message":

The story about changes to the Bruges speech had emerged from Thursday's regular lobby briefing at Westminster, at which the Downing Street press secretary Michael Ellam had been quizzed by the Sun about that morning's previews of the Miliband speech in the Guardian. That doesn't mean Ellam was wise to say what he did to the lobby about the speech. Nor does it rule out the possibility of further private anti-European briefings to the Murdoch papers from No 10. Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Yesterday's Sun editorial certainly made clear what it thought of Miliband. Since disappeared, it argued that Miliband's proposal endangered Nato, which I might paraphrase slightly from memory, "had ensured 60 years of peace and seen off the Soviet Union." Both of those claims are highly arguable, with the EU and its predecessor organisations having just as much a hand in keeping the peace as Nato, and the Soviet Union collapsed in on itself, not through the actions of any other individual, but both the Scum and the Times had sent a message to Brown that the infantile Euroscepticism they both espouse was not to be endangered in any way by the actions of such an inexperienced whippersnapper as Miliband.

While Brown was never going to fully abandon the incestuous relationship his predecessor had with the Murdoch press, even though it helped towards his downfall, his attempts to woo his friend Paul Dacre instead suggested that no longer would the Sun be the house journal of Downing Street. As with much else, Brown appears to have had to row back, stung by his current weakness, into returning to his all too well-known control freak ways. First he told Alan West to change his mind immediately on extending the pre-charge detention limit, another topic close to the Sun's heart, which was enraged by how West might have undermined the whole policy by his failure to be certain in his defense of the Sun's pet project, then he humiliates Miliband by briefing against him and making him look like a fool by ordering changes to his most important address so far. The lack of change from the man who was so certain of how it was needed for the country of large has never been so apparent.

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11/17/2007 09:32:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 07, 2007 

Scum-watch: 1 compared to 29,000.

Remember how the Scum comprehensively failed to report on the news that MySpace (prop. R Murdoch) was found to be teeming with sex offenders, with 29,000 having their profiles deleted? Well, it finally got round today to reporting on how one man had used a social networking site for his perverted needs:

A SEX beast was jailed indefinitely yesterday for abusing two girls he met on the Facebook website.

Jonathan Percy, 29, posed as a 15-year-old to groom the girls, aged 12 and 13, then plied them with alcopops and took them to a wood for sex.

Percy, of Mannington, Dorset — jailed in 2003 for a similar offence — pleaded guilty at Bournemouth Crown Court.

He must serve at least three years before he is eligible for parole, and was banned from using a computer.


Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that this also didn't involve MySpace. Surprising, huh? The article itself is followed by the usual array of user comments about castration involving two bricks, etc, and about the length of the sentence, even though Percy has been jailed under an IPP. Judging by how the prison system currently can't cope with the number being given the new indeterminate sentences, with the courses that those sentenced under them have to complete before even being considered for release being hopelessly oversubscribed, with those unable to get on them likely to have to stay inside long after their tariff has passed, it seems unlikely that he'll be out within 3 years, even if he's no longer considered a danger to the public, something also doubtful, as it's his second offence.

Elsewhere, the Scum is having yet another go at Malloch Brown, Brown's appointment as foreign minister, who you might remember as being the man who gave Fox News a tongue-lashing and as result is person non grata in the Murdoch press:

TROUBLESOME foreign minister Mark Malloch-Brown wants Brussels to take Britain’s seat at the UN top table — and the sooner the better.

Downing Street insists this is a personal viewpoint, not policy.

But Malloch-Brown is no junior upstart who has not learned to guard his tongue.

He is one of Gordon Brown’s closest friends whose pungent views were known before he was catapulted into the Lords and ministerial rank.

He is a vain and arrogant man, accustomed to speaking as if he were in charge of British policy, not Foreign Secretary David Miliband.


Just one problem with all this: Malloch-Brown's comments on the EU taking a permanent security council seat were made last October, while he was still deputy security-general. Are he and Brown really so close? Not according to this Grauniad profile, which doesn't even mention his relationship to the new prime minister. Notice how the Scum leader also makes it look as though Malloch-Brown had made his comments now, rather than nearly over a year ago.

So while we condemn Malloch-Brown’s outburst, we must thank him for blowing the gaffe.

Gordon Brown is now exposed as the fervent pro-European it seems he has always been. Indeed there is not a sceptical bone in his Government’s body.


Please stop! It hurts! Could this fervent pro-European Brown be the same one that stopped Blair from taking the UK into the Euro with the five economic tests? The same one that went on the warpath when Blair acquiesced with Sarkozy's apparent attempt to water down the free-market aspects of the reform treaty? The same Brown that holidayed every summer in the United States, and had by far the most links with other politicos in that country? The same Brown that Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission last year challenged to set out his true priorities over Europe, because he and others feared that Brown was a natural Atlanticist because he rarely bothered turning up for EU meetings? The same Brown with a reputation for being highly suspicious towards Europe? The Scum isn't usually either this disingenuous or obtuse when it comes to politics, making one wonder whether the usual leader writer is away. Either way, the conclusion is the same as usual:

That, more than anything else, makes it essential for him to deliver the referendum he promised.

And give ALL sides the chance to add their voices to this crucial debate.


Yawn.

Finally, deport 'em all:

FOURTEEN foreign criminals are still loose after breaking out of a centre where they were “awaiting deportation”.

Why were they waiting?

Having abused our hospitality by committing serious crimes, they should have had their bags packed as they completed their sentences.


The most "serious crime" any of them had committed was robbery. As other reports suggested that some of those being held at the centre were in limbo, with at least one having spent a year at the detention centre, it's hard not to fault them for taking the opportunity to leg it once it had arose.

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8/07/2007 08:07:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, July 24, 2007 

EU talk bull.

With a good portion of England underwater, you'd think that the Sun would have other things on its mind than the EU reforming treaty. After a faltering campaign of sorts demanding a referendum on what it calls the constitution, set to wreak havoc on our nation with a fury which would make the deluge last Friday look like a light shower, the Scum's today asked wee Willie Hague to write a self-regarding article addressed more to Scum readers than anyone else.

IN 2005, just before the French voted on the European Constitution, Tony Blair made a pledge to Sun readers. He said, “We don’t know what is going to happen in France but we will have a referendum on the Constitution in any event — and that is a Government promise.”

Blair and Brown broke their word. The French rejected the Constitution and British voters never had the referendum they were promised.


What exactly would the point of having a referendum on a document which was dead in the water have been? It would have wasted resources, had a derisory turnout and proved absolutely nothing.

Now the Constitution is back under another name — a treaty. Last week, Brown admitted the con when he accidentally said he and the Irish leader Bertie Ahern had been discussing “the European Constitution and how that can move forward”.

Oh God - the plan has been exposed! Even if the constitution had recommended abolishing the EU altogether, it seems likely that the Tories and the Sun would have opposed it on principle. The reasons for its rejection by the French and Dutch voters were not for the reasons that the Eurosceptics loathe it; their main fear was that it in fact entrenched Anglo-Saxon neo-liberalism, destroying their own social models. Throwing the whole thing out and starting again would have been idiotic when the EU desperately needs reform. It may be 95% the same document, but it still isn't a constitution, as it isn't binding.

There would be a new EU president. There would be an EU foreign minister with his own diplomatic service. Brussels would get new powers over our criminal justice system. And the EU would have more powers over asylum and immigration. Blair and Brown claimed to have won key concessions — but these are hollow. The guarantee of Britain’s independent foreign policy would not be legally binding. And legal experts say the European Court of Justice would find ways to implement the Charter Of Fundamental Rights, which Blair and Brown promised to stop.

Hague buys, or rather pretends that the Scum's claims that we won't be able to run our own foreign policy are true, which is complete and utter nonsense. Would "new" and "old" Europe, with their vastly different agendas have really signed up if this was the case? The Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is incidentally a fine document, is legally binding, but is not "justicable" here because of Blair's objections. Blair also secured an "opt-in" on majority voting on criminal justice matters, meaning that it can only vote and get involved when it chooses too. Ironically, Brown recently pleaded with the EU for more data sharing on terrorist suspects, something presumably that Hague and the Scum would like but which is inhibited by the opt-outs and distance which they both demand.

All this is a distraction from the real issues facing Britain and Europe. Our leaders should have been concentrating on the things that matter to ordinary people, like making our economy competitive, dealing with climate change and fighting global poverty.

Not the floods then, eh? Or crime, immigration, terrorism, the public services, civil liberties? How about Iraq? It's just ever so slightly rich for the party most obsessed with Europe to suggest that the EU is somehow a distraction from everything else.

Britain should be the leader of a new Europe — more modern, flexible and outward-looking. But our Government has failed to lead the fight for reform.

Which the Tories will lead, from the err, Movement for European Reform, having decided to leave the European People's Party grouping. So far the MER has a grand total of two parties when it finally forms after the 2009 European parliament elections, the Tories themselves and the Czech Civic Democratic Party. Better start manning the barricades.

This could not be more important. So The Sun is right to campaign to let the people decide, a campaign David Cameron and I are proud to back.

Labour promised time and again that the British people would have the final say on the Constitution in a referendum. It was in their manifesto. It was in our manifesto. It was even in the Lib-Dem manifesto.

It is time to honour those promises.


Even though Kenneth Clarke, one of the more sensible Tories when it comes to the EU, said he felt it was less important than the Maastrict Treaty, which the Tories didn't offer a referendum on. I think many would be prepared to have a referendum - as long as it was what on what the treaty actually contains and not what the Scum and Tories say it does. As it is, the lies have already been coming thick and fast.

On then, to the Scum's own leader:

The new document is designed to deceive. But clouds of waffle cannot conceal the truth.

We WILL play second fiddle to an EU foreign minister at the UN.


Ignorant misinformation. How could we possibly "play second fiddle" to an EU foreign minister at the UN when we have a permanent seat on the security council and the EU most certainly doesn't? Are the French also prepared to play "second fiddle"? I somehow doubt it.

We WILL risk being outvoted on our own foreign policy.

Rubbish. As the treaty itself explains on how each state still will be able to exercise their own foreign policy:

“The Conference underlines that the provisions in the Treaty on European Union covering the Common Foreign and Security Policy, including the creation of the office of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the establishment of an External Action Service, do not affect the responsibilities of the Member States, as they currently exist, for the formulation and conduct of their foreign policy nor of their national representation in third countries and international organisations. The Conference also recalls that the provisions governing the Common Security and Defence Policy do not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of the Member States”

We WILL be bound by EU human rights laws.

Seeing as the Charter of Fundamental Rights is meant to be the EU version of the ECHR, most of the laws which the Scum already objects to are enshrined in our own Human Rights Act. As previously mentioned, the charter isn't "justiceable" here, although it might be challenged in the courts.

We WILL give up our veto over employment laws, energy and transport.

Not those affected by the Charter, while it's true we probably have over energy and transport.

We WILL give unelected European judges power over our police and law courts.

Again, as above, simply not true.

Britain once warned ALL these measures were unacceptable.

Experts have yet to unravel the text, but every other EU leader admits this is the old constitution in all but name.

Ireland will hold a referendum. Holland and Denmark are certain to follow suit. Many Sun readers voted Labour in 2005 because Labour promised them a say.

They might not do so again if Gordon breaks the promise he made during his campaign for PM.


Ah yes, I can just picture the Sun readers' marching into the polling stations, at one in their belief that they were voting Labour because they knew they'd have a referendum on the EU constitution. This is a fiction on a par with Michael Jackson's insistence he'd never had plastic surgery. Brown also never said anything about giving a referendum on the constitution during his abortive campaign. All the little lies add up to one big one.

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7/24/2007 06:54:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, May 09, 2007 

Skewed priorities part 3.

Yesterday was, as the BBC informed us, quite possibly the most momentous and historic day in a century in Northern Ireland. Against all odds, and after 30 years of terrorism and indiscriminate violence, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, the least likely bed-fellows since, well, ever, are now respectively the first and deputy first ministers in the devolved Northern Ireland assembly, the never surrendering Democratic Unionists and the never forgetting, let alone forgiving Sinn Fein sharing power and apparently determined to make it work.

What then, you may ask, did the two middle-market tabloids decide to splash on their front pages this morning? Surely celebratory pieces that a previously thought intractable war was finally at an end, that talking to terrorists can work and that Blair, despite all his other legion of failings, has at least one thing that will in future years be looked back on as being worthy of the highest praise?



No such luck. For there was a far more important story, one which everyone except the most anal, tedious anti-European had forgotten about: the European Commission has finally, predictably, came to the conclusion that the imperial system of measurement can be continued to be used alongside that of the metric system. The back-story to this is that selling in imperial measures only was outlawed in 2000 - but as long as you put the metric equivalent price on the label/ticket, you could continue to do so. From 2009 it was proposed that we should go metric only, 9 years after the event and, as Nosemonkey points out, decades after the policy itself was originally proposed and agreed upon. This was however an obvious outrage and a Brussels diktat that had to be resisted. How dare those Euro-loonies demand that we change over to a measurement system that actually makes sense and which children have been being taught in schools now for who knows how many years?

So there we are. Instead of headlines about peace in our time, we have the Daily Mail informing us about having an ounce of sense and the Express telling us that obsolete measures have been saved. I, meanwhile, am off to drink a yard of battery acid.

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5/09/2007 09:26:00 PM | | | links to this post

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