EU to seize control of sport

When the campaign for the 1975 referendum on the EEC was ongoing, no one suggested for a moment that, one day in 2007, the institution would arrogate to itself the right to control sport across Europe, any more than anyone suggested that employment policy, justice policy, environmental policy etc. etc. would become the province of our Euro masters. Had anyone been candid enough so to do, the result have been a resounding defeat for the Yes camp.

Yet that is precisely what is about to happen according to the Telegraph (here). We never consented to this.

At the same time EuroNabob Margot Wallström, the European Commission vice president, rapidly becoming a hate-figure for all right minded and freedom-loving Britons, has plunged yet another knife into Macavity's 'no referendum' stance by telling us what we suspected already: that Blair's supposed opt-out from the Fundamental Charter of Rights (which, inter alia, would give back to the bully boy unions many of those powers which they so abused in the 1960s, 70s and 80s until Margaret Thatcher brought them so forcefully to heel) is not worth the paper upon which it was written, as most of us warned at the time.

Almost the only people who now seriously suggest that the Constitutional Treaty recently agreed in Brussels does not amount to a significant transfer of power and sovereignty to the EU are the government, the LidDems and one or two has-beens in the Conservative Party. Yet still Macavity digs his hole.

If one was being particularly Machiavellian, one might be inclined to hope that we do not get our referendum. On the basis that 80-90% of the population want such a referendum, refusing it will help build up a steam of disaffection for the EU that will eventually boil over into such outrage that we get a referendum on something and win it so handsomely that the only honourable thing for HMG would be to get us out of the EU.