Chindamo Case Points to Loss of Control Over Immigration to EU

I blogged yesterday at The Huntsman (here) on the Chindamo case underlying which there is a serious anti-EU point to be made.

I downloaded a copy of the Judgement (a link to which is here) and within about half-an-hour had worked out that it is only marginally based on the European Convention on Human Rights and has everything to do with an EU Directive with the catchy title “DIRECTIVE 2004/58/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 29 April 2004 on the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States”.

The first point to make is that it was most unwise for Mr. David Cameron to launch a major assault on the Human Rights Act 2000 and to call yet again for a British Bill of Rights to replace it on the back of this case which does not depend on the ECHR for its basis. One wonders whether he bothered to speak to any of the many lawyers in the Shadow Cabinet or on the front bench before doing so. As it is he opens himself up to the joint accusations of opportunism and being wrong.

Secondly, this taken with the apparent fiasco of the attack by Mr. Cameron on the hospital closures issue, raises the question of what is going on in the research element of the party at CCHQ. One is bound to ask if people with the right qualifications are being employed and whether they are being properly paid. We wish to be led from the front, but troops will not follow commanders if they think that they and the Staff Officers are not doing their jobs properly. It is immensely frustrating.

Thirdly, there is a valid point to be made which is that this Directive starkly reveals the extent (all but complete, I am afraid) to which the United Kingdom and its people have lost control of the ability to control who does and who does not live here and in effect we no longer control our immigration policy. The Chindamo case is one which should be used to assault the EU and those who wish to cheat us out of a Referendum on the enormous further surrenders of power which the Constitution Mark II entails.

Fourthly nothing I have read or said makes me resile from the proposition which I made yesterday that we ought to withdraw from the ECHR and enact a new progressive and modern British Bill of Rights which reflects the world in which we now live not that of 1950 when the ECHR was drawn up and which is consonant with the Common law and the British way of life.

Labour Voters Hostile To Brown On Referendum

Meanwhile more than 80% of the electorate wish to have the right to give or withhold their whole-hearted consent to the Constitutional Treaty Mark II which Vanity Blair may have left as a well-concealed booby trap in Downing Street for the man he and his tinselly, gimcrack wife love to hate. This is the finding of an ICM poll in the Daily Mail published yesterday. This is a truly remarkable figure, even if one was to lop 3 or 5% off either side to allow for the vagaries of human beings and their answers to pollsters.

Set against a determined campaign, perhaps the longest and deepest period of Official mendacity, deceit, evasion and duplicity ever undertaken by any Government at any time in the past, this figure is quite astonishing and gives one a great sense that the British people are fully capable of understanding the true nature of this Constitutional Treaty and are not taken in for a moment by the cynical and treacherous lies of this utterly dishonourable Prime Minister and his cohort of fellow-travellers.

It is possible that his continued disgraceful refusal to allow the British people their say on the matter means he is beginning to enter backlash territory. This is certainly one conclusion that might properly be drawn from other figures which lie within the Poll like a poison pill for Macavity and his Labour Cats. For a quarter of Labour voters may refuse to vote for him if he continues to deny the referendum promised by Labour in their last manifesto. Even more worrying for him is the figure of 13% of Labour Voters who are inclined to vote Tory at the next election if he continues to persist in his refusal and the Tories make holding a referendum a manifesto commitment. All of us will be pleased to be reminded that the Labour Party does have a patriotic wing after all, even if it does keep itself hidden for most of the time.



The Conservatives now have nothing to lose by making a clear commitment to holding a referendum. This need not be presented as a matter involving Euroscepticism but as a simple matter of honour and dishonour, as a matter of breaching a promise given in clear and unambiguous terms.

In the longer term all of us who believe that the EU is a pernicious and baleful entity which gnaws at the vitals of the UK's body politic like a vast parasite will take great heart from the message that is given by the final little gem of this poll: 60% of the electorate believes that the EU already has far too much power over us. Clearly the British public has not in the least been hoodwinked by the Government and the FCO's campaign of lies, dissembling, and obfuscation over this shameful treaty.

We are going to win this battle. We must win this battle.

And so we say to Mr. Brown: why are you not prepared to listen to the people as you promised when you came into office? What do you have to fear from the people?

The Really Big Lie

Conduct worthy of Dr. Goebbels

In order to hoodwink the voters of the United Kingdom and in order cynically and deceitfully to deprive the people of the United Kingdom of their right, promised to them by the Labour Party in its manifesto for the 2005 election, to give or to withhold their whole-hearted consent to the Constitutional Treaty (which was decisively rejected by the people of France and the Netherlands in 2004 and is now reinstated almost in its entirety by the Draft Treaty Amending The Treaty On European Union and The Treaty Establishing The European Community), The Prime Minister, Ministers of the Cabinet, other Government Ministers and, to their eternal shame and utter disgrace, senior members of the Foreign Service at the Foreign Office have concocted a big lie, worthy of and such as only the Master Exponent of The Big Lie, Herr Doktor Josef Goebbels, could conceive.

The Big Lie is this:

“whilst there was a Constitution, that was rejected in 2004 by France and The Netherlands, and, as a result, the Constitution is dead and we are able to assure you of this because that is what the EU says”.

What they are careful to do is to repeat, endlessly, the mantra which appears in the Inter-governmental Conference Mandate:

The constitutional concept, which consisted of repealing all existing Treaties and replacing them by a single text called "Constitution", is abandoned.

What is true is that having a single document has been abandoned.

What they do not tell you is that there is another ‘Constitutional Concept’ which consists of introducing a Constitution for the EU so that almost all of the original single document is made part of the law of the EU by amending piecemeal two of its treaties, sometimes Article by Article, sometimes Clause by Clause, sometimes line by line and sometimes word by word. The Big Lie is that the constitutional concept has not been abandoned, merely buried in mounds of legal jargon that even former Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke could be forgiven for not reading.¹

If you listen to any Minister, the mantra is what they trot out: The Constitution is abandoned.

It is, no more and no less, a bright shining well-varnished lie.

¹You may remember him: he is the individual (I forebear to use the word ‘gentleman’) who once said:

'I look forward to the day when the Westminster Parliament is just a council chamber in Europe.'

He also took perverse pleasure in telling the nation that he had not bothered to read the Maastricht Treaty, which, for a Minister of the Crown and member of the Bar (so he has no excuse for not understanding it)represents as gross a dereliction of duty as could be imagined.

Referendum News

Authors of New Treaty Say It is the Same As the Old One

If you want to understand the issue as to whether the document signed by Vanity Blair at the fag end of his Premiership which The Weasels try to call a Reform Treaty or an Amending Treaty or whatever dishonest name that they give to it to conceal its true identity, is or is not a wholesale revival of the EU Constitution, you do not have to listen to or read the critique of Eurosceptics, though we earnestly hope that you will.

Instead it is enough to listen to or to read the musings of those people who work so hard to ensure that the Constitution is adopted, especially those who are working so hard to deny the British people the right to give or to withhold their whole-hearted consent to this Treaty which will put an end to a thousand years of independence for these islands.

So another group of the EuroNabobery has given its view. This is a shadowy group called the Action Committee for European Democracy, a cabal of European Federalists who have been hard at work devising a replacement document for the Constitution which was so decisively rejected by the peoples of France and The Netherlands (and would have been equally decisively rejected by the people of the UK).

Who are the members of this Camarilla? Well, some are well-known faces, others less so. Jean-Luc Dehaene will be remembered not so much as the former Prime Minister of Belgium (after all, who would want to keep the names of former Prime Ministers of that country at their finger tips) but as the candidate of a Franco-German stitch-up for Presidency of the European Commission. So Federalist was he that John Major was moved to one of the few moments of decisiveness of his Premiership when he decided to veto Dehaene’s elevation.

Wim Kok is a former PM of the Netherlands, and a committed European. Chris Patten is a former European Commissioner, last Governor of Hong Kong, failed Conservative politician and notorious Europhile. Two are European Commissioners: Margot Wallstrom, EU Commissioner for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy (which means that she is in charge of the all the obfuscation and spin designed to pull the wool over the European public’s eyes about the true nature of Le Grand Projet) and the other is Danuta Hübner, Polish EU Commissioner for Regional Policy (her portfolio is one which attracts the particular attention of those who want to halt the onward march of Federalism as it that which would divide Europe into a whole set of new regions, many of which transcend national borders, which, of course, will soon disappear if they get their way). Guiliano Amato, its Chairman, is a former PM of Italy.

The rest are a motley assortment of used Euro politicians and one academic. All are committed to the Constitution. In June 2007 they issued a Declaration on the process of getting the Constitution back on track. In it they cannot bring themselves to mention the French and Dutch Referenda which rejected the Constitution, instead referring to them as “drawbacks that have led to a period of reflection”: how’s that for a lemon-sucker’s weasel words!? Why should they bother to acknowledge these painful Waterloos when they are going to ignore the results anyway?

This group has been at the heart of the process of coming up with a document which preserves all the important changes and wholesale transfers of power so earnestly desired by the Federalists and turning it into something which can be passed off as innocuous. The document signed up to by Vanity Blair in June is essentially their document (or rather documents: part of the deceit has involved splitting the Constitutional Treaty Mark I into a series of protocols and reforms of existing treaties that are largely unintelligible when read separately and which only the sterling work of such as OpenEurope and EU Referendum has enabled people to comprehend amount to a complete reinstatement of Mark I) and they are very very pleased with their handiwork. So pleased, that they have been unable to contain their hubris at the bowdlerized Constitutional Treaty Mark II:

“The proposed new treaty and supplementary protocols take over almost all the innovations contained in the constitutional treaty. They only leave aside the symbolic changes which were introduced by the constitutional treaty – such as the title of the treaty or the symbols of the union.”

So there you have it: forget about whether the new treaty is 90% the same as the original or 98%. For the Amato Group only the cherry on the cake has been removed to leave the cake 99.9999% the same as before. The people charged with writing the replacement say, in terms that even a dishonest Labour Minister may find hard to evade, Constitution Mark II is the same as Constitution Mark I

Yet the Government and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office continues to insist that the new treaty is something completely different from the Constitutional Treaty. One doubts, in the face of all the evidence, all the outside comment and, if they have bothered to do so, a casual reading of the document, that they actually believe this, but repeat it at nauseam they do.

Of this big lie, more anon.

1975 Referendum News

Rooting around, as one does, on the Internet occasionally throws up little gems of history. I found today the text of the pamphlet that was distributed to every household in the UK prior to the 1975 Referendum on staying in or leaving the Common Market. You may find the whole text here and I commend it to you as a fascinating read. Much of it seems so dated today, expressed as it is in deeply patronizing terms and touching upon matters which seemed so important them but which have long since ceased to exercise us, perhaps because we no longer have any control over them anyway.

For example, there is a section onwhat effect that our being in the Common Market would have on our relations with the Commonwealth. We were then much exercised about this and how our relationships with our kith and kin would be sundered if we were part of the Common Market. Nowadays it is difficult to believe that anyone would be in the least bit bothered one way or the other, or that we would bother to consult the Governments even of Australia or Canada.

Another was this gem:

As a result of these negotiations the Common Agricultural policy (known as CAP) now works more flexibly to the benefit of both housewives and farmers in Britain. The special arrangements made for sugar and beef are a good example.

Did we really go about worrying ourselves to death over whether Wilson and his crew had sorted out the price of sugar? It seems another, much more innocent world.

I have, however, selected two quotes which I believe bear revisiting.

Under the heading “Your right to choose”, the pamphlet opened thus:

The coming Referendum fulfils a pledge made to the British electorate in the general election of February 1974.

The Labour Party manifesto in the election made it clear that Labour rejected the terms under which Britain's entry in to the Common Market had been negotiated, and promised that, if returned to power, they would set out to get better terms.

The British people were promised the right to decide through the ballot box whether or not we should stay in the Common Market on new terms.

And that the Government would abide by the result.

That is why the Referendum is to be held.

How unlike our own dear Gordon Brown. Harold Wilson was, we all thought, a slippery customer and a most devious man, but as a consummate politician he well understood the value of a promise of this kind. Then there was none of the dishonourable evasion there is today: a promise was a promise and so we had our referendum. How satisfactory it was is another matter, as we shall see, but we got what the Prime Minister promised.

The second little gem is this:

Fact No. 2. No important new policy can be decided in Brussels or anywhere else without the consent of a British Minister answerable to a British Government and British Parliament.

The top decision-making body in the Market is the Council of Ministers, which is composed of senior Ministers representing each of the nine member governments.

It is the Council of Ministers, and not the market's officials, who take the important decisions. These decisions can be taken only if all the members of the Council agree. The Minister representing Britain can veto any proposal for a new law or a new tax if he considers it to be against British interests. Ministers from the other Governments have the same right to veto.

All the nine member countries also agree that any changes or additions to the Market Treaties must be acceptable to their own Governments and Parliaments.

Remember: All the other countries in the Market today enjoy, like us, democratically elected Governments answerable to their own Parliaments and their own voters. They do not want to weaken their Parliaments any more than we would."

That was, indeed, the position then: “The Minister representing Britain can veto any proposal for a new law or a new tax if he considers it to be against British interests.” In the thirty-two years which have passed since that referendum, it is important to consider for a moment just how that has changed. Our ability to veto that which is not in the British interest has been progressively and comprehensively stripped from us. If the Treaty which Vanity Blair so casually signed in June ever comes into force, the UK will be able to veto almost nothing and certainly not anything important. Yet this was the basis upon which the whole-hearted consent of the British people obtained. The politicians effectively promised us that we would be able to retain control over anything, anything at all which we considered to be in British interests. It was untrue as I am sure they knew then.

In retrospect we can see that it was a promise they had no intention of keeping and that they have been betraying that promise ever since with every new cession of power to the EU. Blair’s Treaty pretty well completes the process. In other words our whole-hearted consent was obtained by a wholly bogus and fraudulent promise which went to the absolute heart of the Referendum, nay WAS the heart of the Referendum.

Is it any wonder that we do not trust our politicians when they lie and cheat so?

Well, I for one, rereading that document, feel morally entirely released from any obligation to respect the will of the people as expressed by that Referendum. It was a consent obtained by fraud, a deliberate lie. In criminal law, consent obtained by fraud is no consent.

When we get a referendum on the latest surrender of power, as we shall, I shall work tirelessly to get the very biggest majority we can against the Treaty, so big that the Government will have no choice but to consider if we can remain a member of the EU.

Referendum News: Beware of Europeans Bearing Gifts

“Timeo Danaos et Dona Ferentes”

Open Europe (HERE) has produced a quite excellent document which carefully and authoritatively compares EU Constitution Mark II with its twice-rejected predecessor Constitution Mark I.

It makes for fascinating reading, to see just how little has in fact been changed and just how the opportunity has actually been taken to make some things even more integrationist and federalist than ever the original was.

But the really striking thing is to discover just how many Trojan Horses there are, all of which, given Gordon Brown’s dishonourable refusal to hold a referendum as his party’s manifesto in 2005 so clearly promised, a manifesto that Gordon Brown recommitted himself in July, stand close to disgorging Emperor José’s EU Shock Troops into our body politic.

Take Article 3 (4) for example:

4. The Union shall establish an economic and monetary union whose currency is the euro.

Notice here the use of the word “shall”. It is an important word for it is used over and over and over again in this Constitutional Treaty Mark II and it is vital that all who read the document comprehend just what it imports.

“Shall” means that there are no ifs and buts to be had, so that when it is used it creates an unqualified and utterly mandatory obligation upon the erstwhile Member States. So, if the UK is signed up to Article 3 (4), how can we say that we are not going to join the Euro, bearing in mind that this document supersedes everything which has gone before it?

Is this not a Trojan Horse designed legally to take away our right to maintain the Pound Sterling as the currency of our nation and our economy?

Or look at Article 9 which binds tightly together the seven key institutions of the EU - the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council, the European Commission, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the Court of Auditors- into a framework that gives all the appearance of being (as it in fact and law is) a nascent Central Government with all the indicia of a Sovereign Independent Nation State, whose principal mortar is Article 9 (1):

The Union shall have an institutional framework which shall aim to promote its values, advance its objectives, serve its interests, those of its citizens and those of the Member States, and ensure the consistency, effectiveness and continuity of its policies and actions.

Each institution, separately and acting together is under an obligation from which they may not deviate, which they must carry out, to advance the objectives and serve the interests of the Union. It may make mention here of the member States, but the Treaty so reduces their powers that the interests and objectives of the member states are entirely subordinated to the overarching objectives and interests of the Union.

One of those objectives is the establishment of the economic and monetary union whose currency is the euro. How can any Member State now stand in its way?

Another objective which all must advance and promote is this:

It shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States.

Notice that word ‘shall’ again. Note also the weasel word ‘solidarity” which one might just as well render as ‘harmonisation’ for it can be used to force us to harmonise our taxes: after all what better bit of socialist ‘solidarity’ could there be but to remove the temptation of tax competition from the Member States and thus create a level playing field? What better way to achieve ‘economic cohesion’? And all this is obligatory.

Note well too Article 9 (2):

T

he institutions shall practise mutual sincere cooperation.

If there is any doubt that the Seven Sisters must act in concert for each other’s and the Union’s benefit, this obligation, for obligation it is, removes it.

Make no mistake: the Trojan Horses are everywhere and they are inside the gates.

EU Behemoth or Open Skies

“The winds of global competition are blowing strongly on the world’s economies. We are living through a massive shift in economic power, as the Asian economies led by China and India emerge as global manufacturers, service providers and traders with attractive offerings to the customers of the world.

These winds could power us to greater success, or they could destroy business and jobs at home if our economy is not well secured and supported by a government that understands the needs of enterprise. If we respond by creating the right conditions at home and by offering the right goods and services to these emerging markets, globalisation can be an opportunity for the UK rather than a threat.”

So writes John Redwood on ConservativeHome.com today.

Although it was not in his brief to do so, surely these points above raise the whole question of how the UK is to be best placed for its economy to meet the challenges of the 21st. Century and for our trade to be best equipped to take advantage of globalization and the immense opportunities it presents?

It also raises the question of whether the behemoth that is the EU Supertanker (so large and unwieldy that it will take years and years to halt and turn it around) is the best or right medium for the UK to take on the challenges John Redwood has identified.

Frankly this highly dirigiste, protectionist EU is so mid-20th. Century, built to answer the problems of a 1950s Europe still reeling from the effects of Hitler’s War that it is incapable of providing us with the right platform, the right business, economic and trading milieu for the fast-changing and fast-developing world that is globalisation, that we must begin to contemplate whether there are not other, better, more flexible 21st.Century solutions to the UK’s needs and ambitions.

For that purpose, I believe that the EU, in thrall as it is to narrow-minded protectionists like Sarkozy and Prodi, is about as relevant to the 21st. C. as is The Holy Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire.

As well as looking, as this report rightly does, at the foreground, should not truly Radical Conservatives also be looking at the horizon?

An "Independent" Court of Auditors?

One of the truly shocking aspects of the European Union has been that, for twelve years in a row, its auditors have felt quite unable to sign off the Union's accounts.

What do you suppose would happen to a major UK company that was unable to provide properly audited accounts, signed sealed and delivered and proclaiming the financial probity of the company, to the competent authorities of the country of its domicile for even two years in a row, let alone twelve?

Quite simply there would be as major fuss and the said company would find itself in very very serious trouble, not least on the stock exchange where it would, as like as not, be consigned to oblivion. Executives would be queuing up at The Bailey to receive their just desserts and the auditors would be out on their ear.

Not so the EU which sails on year after year, its gunwales awash with fraud and misappropriation, unable properly, or, for that matter, at all to account for the probity of as much as 66% of its 'expenditure".

"Over declarations and ineligible expenditure continue to go undetected within the majority of EU expenditure areas."

runs one headline in the EU's press release of October 2006 concerning the 2005 accounts. It goes on:

"For most of the payment budget - agriculture, structural measures, internal policies and external action - the Court is again not in the position to provide an unqualified opinion on the legality and regularity of transactions due to continuing high levels of error. The situation is caused by deficiencies in internal control, in particular in Member States for shared management expenditure, but also within expenditure directly managed by the Commission, such as internal policies. The Court found evidence of internal control checks being incompletely or inadequately carried out in many areas of the budget, both within Member States and at the Commission."

This contrasts, starkly, with the position on EU revenue, to which the Court of Auditors is able to give approval as to the accuracy.

What does this mean in blunt terms?

Quite simply that the EU is very very good at making sure it receives every last penny that it squeezes out of the Member States, especially the likes of the UK which is a net contributor to the EU.

But when it comes to most of the EU's expenditure, the reality is that they cannot say for sure who has had it and upon what it has been spent, so that the Irish road builder who has just been paid, say, €1 billion for a couple of miles of by-pass or the Greek Goat Farmer who has just claimed and received the payments for the 250,000 goats on his 5 hectare farm will both be laughing all the way to the Bank and thence to the luxury yacht on the Mediterranean.

This is, of course, you may cry, all old news: as indeed it is, October 2006's news to be precise. So why, I hear you all ask, do you bring up all this dirty linen now?

Well, that is simple: because of the position that the rehashed Constitution Mark II ascribes to the Court of Auditors as an Institution of the European Union.

The Court of Auditors is one of the less well-known bodies of the EU: after all number crunching and bean counting, a task performed in the UK by the National Audit Office, are not exactly the most sexy of activities in which to immerse oneself. Yet the Court has, in theory if not in practice, an extremely important role to play in ensuring that the money which the EU spends does not, literally end up in the offshore accounts of some shyster French farmer or whatever.

Article 9 (1) of the Constitution Mark II names the Court of Auditors as one of the seven Institutions of the EU, on a par with the Parliament, The European Council, The European Court and so on. As such it shares with them certain obligatory objectives requiring the Court of Auditors and the other Institutions to "aim to promote its values, advance its objectives, serve its interests, those of its citizens and those of the Member States, and ensure the consistency, effectiveness and continuity of its policies and actions".

Thus, whatever the Treaty may say concerning the requirement of independence in the performance of their duties, the obligatory nature of Article 9 (1) and the requirement in Article 9 (2) for the Court of Auditors (and all the other Institutions) to practise "mutual sincere cooperation" mean that that any notion of their independence is circumscribed by and subordinated to the terms of Article 9. So, as matter of law, if there were to be any perceived conflict between whistle-blowing on fraud and theft and 'advancing' EU 'objectives', it would be the latter which would prevail and the idea of the independence of the Court can go hang.

It is of note that neither the Court of Auditors nor the European Court was included in the equivalent Article 1-19 of the the Constitutional treaty Mark I: their inclusion in Article 9 now represents a further integrationist locking together of the EU's state-like Institutions.

Of course the newly proposed Article 246 promises that the Court "shall examine the accounts of all Union revenue and expenditure, and shall ensure good financial management": but it has failed for twelve years in a row to 'ensure good financial management', only going so far as to elucidate the gross fraud and theft of EU money that is taking place, but doing nothing actually to halt it.

Auditors are supposed to be independent. Accounts in this country will not suffice in the absence of due independence.

But here we have the Court of Auditors as an interlocking institution of the EU which shares with the rest of the institutions, new and old, certain obligations operating under a legal mandate which plainly lobotomises any sense of independence.

How may we therefore be assured that the Taxpayers of the EU are being presented with a an accurate and honest account of the acquiring and spending of their money? For how much longer will pointing out the thieving ways of the EU's recipients of largess be permitted to clash with the mandatory advancing of the EU's wider, political objectives?

Nick Herbert Replies

On ConsevativeHome.com I posed this question for Nick Herbert MP, the new Shadow Secretary of State for Justice. Perhaps not absolutely within his jurisdiction, but given the importance of this issue, I feel free to put it to all and sundry. This is his reply and this is my response to that:

3. Concerning the repatriation of powers from Brussels, can you explain what the Plan 'B' is for when, as I believe will happen inevitably, Brussels says 'no' to any such thing? Will you simply throw up your hands and say "What a shame!" or will you then take matters further down the route of disengagement? Or is there some other cunning plan?

I don't think it's sensible to begin a negotiation on the presumption that it will fail. If it's ok to quote a Frenchman who isn't a politician, I recommend Raymond Blanc's advice: 'I've never been able to contemplate failure. Success is everything.'

With great respect, I beg to differ. Whilst it is commendable to approach such negotiations in a spirit of optimism, in order to persuade the electorate that these are credible policies, they must be convinced that all contingencies have been considered and that a strategy exists for each eventuality. And in this case I submit that there must be a very considerable likelihood of complete refusal by the EU to repatriate any powers. In the absence of a plan for that eventuality, I fear that the electorate will believe that this policy has no teeth and is doomed to end in failure

Under the 'deal' (sic) that the Government negotiated in 2005 the UK is going to be paying 10.5 billion pounds a year into the EU. In fact we are the second biggest donor to the EU budget and one of only two serious military powers in Europe. If you had a government with any kind of backbone that should give us huge leverage ... but at the moment it doesn't because the Government will never say no to anything in the EU because it is worried about losing 'influence'.

I do not believe that it is credible to rely on our status as a net contributor as being a means of leverage upon the EU. The implication of using it is that if the EU does not do as we ask, then we will cease to be a net contributor, which in turn will require us to renegotiate our payments to the EU: we have seen with the partial surrender by Vanity Blair and The Town Rat Catcher of Margaret Thatcher’s hard-won rebate that the EU wants us to pay more not less. They are simply not going to play that game. The other possible implication is that we will cease to be a contributor of any kind, i.e. leave the EU. Since that it explicitly NOT Conservative policy, I discount it from consideration.

As to the second suggestion, that the fact of our being one of only two serious military powers in Europe, I am not quite sure how that might impact on the decision of the EU whether or not to repatriate powers to the UK. If we said we would occupy the Rhineland if we don’t get our way, I can see it as having an impact, though not the one intended.

In reality having influence is about arguing for what you want and having the guts to say 'no' to proposals you don't want. But at present the Government isn't even making the arguments for the kind of Europe we want. According to the Swedish trade minister, behind closed doors Britain never speaks up against the protectionists. I find that pretty contemptible.

That may well be right: but what Nick Herbert refers to are “proposals you don’t want”, surely meaning proposals as to future laws and powers. Influence may or may not deflect such proposals. In my question I am talking about powers which have already been negotiated away, by both Labour and Conservative governments, and which the EU can simply say have been the subject of previous agreement by HMG and that is an end to it. Of course it is possible that they will turn around and say: “Sure, you and you alone can have these powers back”, just as it is possible that I will find a polar bear outside in the garden tomorrow. The reality is that the EU will not, as I have said before on this blog, countenance such a thing because they know full well that the very next day there will be a queue at the door of the other 26 members asking for this or that power they want back to be repatriated. For this reason, whatever “influence” we might have, it is simply not going to happen.

I thank Nick Herbert for his courteous answers to this and my other two questions (which were much more anodyne). But on this questionI have to say that, whilst I am a supporter of the Conservative Party and want it to win the next election, (notwithstanding any requirement to hug a hoodie or love Polly Toynbee, for which they can cheerfully whistle!), on Europe, I am afraid, that this is a matter of principle upon which I am not prepared to bend or compromise.

Our policy on our future dealings with the EU, of trying to persuade them to repatriate powers, simply lacks credibility in the absence of any plan for the eventuality of a refusal, which plan can only realistically be complete disengagement. If they will not give us our country back, we shall have to take it back. And if that means we leave, so be it.

Tories' Onanistic Fantasy over the EU

I learnt the habit of listening to the radio whilst still at school. That was long enough ago, I am afraid, for me to remember the heartless closing down of the pirate radio stations and the inception of radios 1, 2, 3 and 4.

In my last year or school I was able to stay up much later and I was wont to listen to the BBC’s “World Tonight” on R4. This was then presented by a forgotten luminary of radio, Douglas Stewart, whose mellifluous voice introduced the programme: “The World Tonight, Douglas Stewart reporting…” And by and large what one got was reporting that was, for the most part, scrupulously fair rather than lopsided analysis from a consistently Marxist viewpoint that is what passes for radio current affairs today. I grew up on Douglas Stewart and so one has a keen ear for the appalling bias that is today’s BBC.

So I still try to listen to this neglected outpost of the BBC’s radio output, now the home of Robin Lustig, who is by no means as bad as some of the other presenters earlier in the schedules. Last night he had John Redwood on, probing the issue of how we are going to secure the repeal of and control over various areas of legislation that are now within the exclusive power of the European Union.

Sadly Lustig never got round to the killer question, the one that represents the flaw, nay the torpedo below the water line of this particular policy. This is: what happens, what is Plan ‘B’ for when the EU refuses to countenance any repatriation of the powers sought, or even the change of one jot or tittle of the existing onerous burden of the contested regulations? So, we never got the answer in which all who are interested in Conservative policy and whether that policy has the least bit of credibility are very interested.

We did get promised that we would discuss these matters with our partners, would persuade them to let us have our Sovereignty over such matters back. John Redwood then made the assertion which, I am afraid, is simply so much pie in the sky, to the effect that we would want to negotiate a series of ‘opt-outs’ and that these would not be difficult to negotiate.

It is at this point that I am bound to say the Conservative party’s policy simply has no credibility whatsoever.

The EU is not about to start yielding up control over policy over which it has worked so hard to garner complete control, especially because, if it gives into one EU Region, it is going to find a huge queue outside the door of other EU Regions with a shopping list of ‘opt-outs’ that they in turn want to negotiate with their masters. This is where we enter the fantasy world of Conservative policy on the EU: this is simply not going to happen. Rather the policy will be taken out on to a future Conservative government’s own poop deck and there shot in the manner of the late Admiral Byng, pour encourager les autres.

The chances of the EU agreeing to this are the same as The Huntsman becoming the next Pontiff: zero, zilch, nada, rien….If the EU was even to contemplate this, it knows only too well that that would undermine the entire framework which they have so relentlessly and ruthlessly been constructing for fifty years and it simply is not going to happen and for the Conservatives to think it is going to happen when they snap their fingers is, I am afraid, an Onanistic Fantasy.

As I have argued here several times before, in order for such a policy to be credible and effective, there has to be a clear Plan ‘B’: what do we do when the EU says “No”?

If they refuse to contemplate an opt-out, what then? Do we try and blackmail them into agreeing by threatening to veto all future business? That did not work under Jelly Fish Major and will not work now. Do we just throw up our hands and say: What a terrible nuisance! And subside in a heap?

Neither of those is in the least bit credible and the EU knows it and will call our bluff.

The only credible policy is that we would then have to say: give us our country back or we will leave. Only then might they listen. And if they do not get the hint, then it is time to leave and close the door behind us. That is the only thing that will give us these powers back.

Poland Has Made Socialism History

The imminent collapse of the coalition government in Poland, famously governed by a couple of somewhat oddball twins, the one President and the other Prime Minister heralds early elections there.

Whatever may be the outcome of those elections, it seems likely that Poland will continue to remain somewhat Eurosceptic in outlook. This for simple reasons of national history that has made it wary of being absorbed into a larger entity in which Poland loses National Sovereignty, a state which it has experienced for more than sixty of the last one hundred years, as part of first the empires of Russia, Germany and Austro-Hungary, then divided between Germany and the USSR by Hitler and Stalin which evolved into a further forty-five years of unbridled post-war Socialism under the yoke of Soviet Imperialism.

What the outcome may yet be remains to be seen. But one thing is clear. Unlike most of Europewhich still retains a large proportion of Socialist and Social Democrat in its body politic, less than one Polish politician in ten is of the left, Socialism being about as popular as having six angry ferrets down your trousers..

This makes Poland a most pleasing place. They after all have had a good hard look at Socialism and understand only too well that it is bad for your wealth, health and freedom. Just ask the gentleman who had a disagreement with a train c. 1988 when the Communists were still in power and the shops were quite empty. He went into a 19 year coma and awoke to find the Socialists had been given their marching orders and the shops were full to brimming with fresh food and consumer goods.

Of course some of Poland’s young folk have not been prepared to wait for the fruits of democracy and capitalism fully to ripen and have come to the UK. By and large the Poles (along with Czechs, Slovaks, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians) have merged unobtrusively into our population and are quietly getting on with the business of making a living. Unlike some on the right, I welcome these folk, who seem set to make a real contribution to our country by dint of some hard work. It would be interesting to have some statistics on the number of East Europeans who have committed crimes or are on the Social. I bet that would embarrass the Multicultural Party

You go figure it out.

Ministers Rearrange Deck-Chairs on Decks of Titanic

The Daily Telegraph reports today, that ‘ministers’ have “admitted that plans to give the European Court of Justice new powers over policing, immigration and criminal justice "raise sensitive issues relating to national sovereignty".”

This apparently is the meat of a memo written by ‘ministers’ which was sent to the House of Lords EU select committee.

Frankly the DT might just as well have had as its headline “Ministers rearrange deck-chairs on Titanic’s decks” when the real story concerning the European Court of Justice is contained in the new Article 9 of the Constitution Mark II. This Article places the Court alongside all the other major institutions of the EU as fundamental cogs in the main wheel of the Empire: the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, the Court of Auditors and the Court of Justice of the European Union.

It is, however, in the body of Article 9 (1) that we find the meat as opposed to the bone and the gristle.

The Union shall have an institutional framework which shall aim to promote its values, advance its objectives, serve its interests, those of its citizens and those of the Member States, and ensure the consistency, effectiveness and continuity of its policies and actions.

In looking at this the reader must bear in mind that this document will be the Constitution of the new Union and as such (particularly considering that the primacy of EU Law is reaffirmed in the document) its provisions will have primacy over any other subsidiary document such as the Statute of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

This article makes it clear, therefore, that the EU’s Institutions SHALL “….advance its objectives..” and SHALL “….serve its interests…” and SHALL ensure “…..the consistency, effectiveness and continuity of its policies and actions”.

I emphasise the word ‘shall’ here because it makes it clear beyond a peradventure that the ECJ, as part of the institutional framework of the EU, is obliged above all things to advance the EU’s objectives, whatever those may be from time to time. The ECJ must, above all things, serve the interests of the EU, whatever the EU from time to time determines those to be. Finally the ECJ must ensure above all things that the EU’s policies and actions are effective and are not derailed.

Why is this important?

That I am afraid is horribly simple. And it is the implications of all this that should send a shudder through the souls of all of our citizens who value the continuing independence of the United Kingdom.

The clear implication of this is that, in any legal action before the ECJ, no judgement can be given which does not advance the EU’s objectives, serve the interests of the EU or ensure the effectiveness of the actions and policies of the EU. Thus, if the United Kingdom takes some action against the EU before the ECJ which has right on its side but which runs counter to the objectives of the EU or does not serve the EU’s interests, then, notwithstanding that the UK is in the right, the ECJ is bound by law to find against it and in favour of the EU.

As I say, ministers who are worried about “new powers over policing, immigration and criminal justice "raise sensitive issues relating to national sovereignty” are simply wandering about of the forest missing the wood for the trees.

If there be any doubt that this is the effect of Article 9 (1) the Constitution Mark II Treaty has a second whammy up its sleeve in Article 9 (2):

Each institution shall act within the limits of the powers conferred on it in the Treaties, and in conformity with the procedures and conditions set out in them. The institutions shall practise mutual sincere cooperation.

Thus the ECJ may do no more and no less than the Treaty and its Statute permits it to do, which as we have seen from Article 9 (1) is strictly circumscribed. In addition the ECJ must “practice mutual cooperation”: thus it is mandatorily obliged to go along with whatever the EU wants, come what may.

This is not all the Constitution Mark II Treaty has to say on the topic of the ECJ. Article 9 (d) of the new document:

"Article 9d The European Commission and its President

1. The Commission shall promote the general interest of the Union and take appropriate initiatives to that end. It shall ensure the application of the Treaties, and measures adopted by the institutions pursuant to them. It shall oversee the application of Union law under the control of the Court of Justice of the European Union………”

Again the treaty contains that mandatory phrase SHALL, a potent weapon in the hands of those who would brook no opposition to their plans.

Here we have the Commission given and obliged to exercise oversight of the application of the law under the control of the ECJ. And in exercising its oversight, it will be only too happy to ensure the “application of the Treaties” which will, you need not doubt, be whatever it says today the Treaty, as elastic a document ever devised for a nation State or an International organisation, is and means. We all know how it will exercise that oversight and it will not be in favour of those who would challenge the objectives and interests of the EU.

So, instead of the robust independence of Government that has characterized the courts of England and Wales since the time of Charles I, we are now faced with a ‘court’ of law which is subservient entirely to the wider interests of the EU and which must, by virtue of the EU Constitution, slavishly and without question advance the EU’s objectives and serve its interests.

Court of law? No, this constitution ensures that anything we would recognize as a court of law, fearlessly and fiercely independent of the Executive, will not exist in the New Empire. Instead all we shall have is a gimcrack Star Chamber in which right, justice and law are but secondary considerations to the objectives and interests of the Union.

Paper Tigers On The Loose

The various trailings of John Redwood’s proposals over the weekend (together with a reaction from Labour that came with a script carefully written by the BBC) raised the prospect, not for the first time, that a Conservative Government would seek to restore the opt-out to the European Social Chapter abandoned by Vanity Blair as soon as he came to power in 1997, but also would seek to ‘disapply’ such parts of the EU Diktat that it considered not to be in the national interest. A particular target that has been mentioned is the “working time directive”, a particularly dotty piece of legislation that, if strictly applied, severely curtails the freedom of choice of those individuals who want or need to work long hours in order to make ends meet. As usual the EU Nanny thinks she knows best.

We must await the detail, perhaps, to see what the word ‘disapply’ actually means (it not being a word my Concise Oxford English Dictionary recognizes: but then it predates the era of spin by some thirty-five years). But in order for such policies to be in the least bit credible, the Conservative party, indeed any party which espouses the repatriation of powers from Europe, must spell out what is to happen if either (a) a proposal to Brussels for the repatriation of powers is emphatically rebuffed or (b) the UK unilaterally ceases to apply some legislation and is taken to the European Court of Justice by the EuroNabobs who will be full of fire and brimstone to get us to knuckle under like good little Europeans.

So, I ask: what is the plan for when either or both of these two come to pass, as they surely will as night follows day? The EU, having carefully, by deceit or not, accreted to it huge swathes of power formerly exercised by individual member Nation States is not going promptly to give those powers back just at the moment when it has finally assembled all the Institutions and Powers that go to make up an Independent Sovereign State. Faced with a country like Britain that is showing itself unwilling to obey any more, they are going to be very keen to wield as big a stick as possible as soon as possible to bring us into line. If it was France, of course, they would let her get away with murder before doing anything, but that is another story.

Is the plan to shrug our shoulders and say “We tried but we lost…” Or will we continue to defy the EU? Will we try and derail the work of the EU so that its work comes to a standstill? That will become almost impossible after 1^st. January 2009 at which time the UK will be stripped of any worthwhile remaining power of veto anyway. If we continue to defy the EU, what will be the UK’s legal basis for so doing, given the primacy of EU law over our own law? Is there a ‘nuclear option’, so to speak, and if so what is it?

How are we going to get our way if the EU will not budge? These threats are not credible without a clear declaration of what we will do in the event of the EU refusing to agree. The voters in this country may well want a Referendum on the Mark II EU Constitution. They do so because they are far more intelligent than the EuroNabobery gives them credit for but they are also intelligent enough to know that these proposals are just so much hot air if not backed by a clear and unambiguous plan of what will happen in the event of EU intransigence.

What is more, Labour knows this and the LibDems know it and will pull such proposals to pieces when the time comes.

Surely the only possible answers are that either we negotiate a totally different relationship of a much more disengaged membership of the EU Club or we say that the final alternative is to leave after saying a very polite ‘goodbye, au revoir, totsiens, auf wiedersehn, hasta la vista, TTFN’?

We all recall one promise which Mr. Cameron has made, to the effect that he would pull the Conservative party out of the EPP. To date the party remains a part of the EPP, an avowedly Federalist entity. Why has this promise not been honoured? How can we believe in promises to defy the EU when a simple thing like this remains unimplemented nearly two years after it was first promised?

EU Future

The more discerning amongst you will have seen this amusing spoof of the future of the EU and the UK by Andrew Roberts in The Daily Mail.

I have a rather less amusing one here, which I post with due apologies and acknowledgements to Mr. Roberts and the Mail.

Referendum News

When the first Head of the European Central Bank (ECB), Dr. Wim Duisenberg, was unceremoniously elbowed aside by the French who coveted the post for one of their own and duly replaced him with Jean-Claude Trichet, many worried that he would prove to be no more than the catspaw of France, doing their bidding in the French, but not European, interest. The French certainly thought that having one of theirs running the money would prove a bonus as they strove to bend the rules of European Monetary Union when and as it suited them.

It must, therefore, have come as a galling surprise when M.Trichet denounced the Mark II Constitutional Treaty’s provisions concerning the ECB, claiming that they will erode ECB Independence, sparking fears that France is trying to control the bloc's economy for its own benefit. What a surprise that would be.

M. Trichet’s concerns stem from changes to the text agreed in the treaty earlier this year. In particular concerns that that definitions of the bank's status were radically and controversially rewritten without consultation. He has astounded many by demanding that the text is returned to the original during negotiations on the Treaty which are due to reopen next month. His particular concern is that, far from ensuring its independence, the Mark II Constitutional Treaty places the ECB alongside all the other EU bodies such as The European Council as one of the Institutions of the EU, that is as a core part of what amounts de facto and de jure to an EU Government of the kind that, as I have argued (HERE), will allow the EU to claim on 1^st. January 2009 that it has achieved the status of an Independent Sovereign State. The text of the new Treaty seriously circumscribes the independence of the ECB.

Let us ponder this a moment: here is a man who might normally be thought to be anxious and willing to sing from the Élysée Palace songsheet sounding the alarm at the curbing of his Bank’s independence. Things must be serious indeed if he is prepared to go into bat against the Mark II Constitutional Treaty.

Strong suspicion is that this change is being done at the behest of France which also slipped under the radar the Brussels summit in June the removal of a commitment to "free and undistorted" competition in a list of the EU's defining objectives, replacing it instead with a weaselly pro-protectionist script instead.

What is going on here? That is quite simple. France is doing its utmost to bring the ECB to heel, as it has repeatedly tried to do in the past, and thereby to bring the EU’s economy within its control too, all for the benefit of M. Sarkozy who has significant economic problems of his own to struggle with.

But in the wider context, something greater is afoot, which is the assembling of all the institutions of State by which one may say "we have become an Independent Sovereign State". What better way than to add the European Central Bank to Emperor José Barroso's Monopoly Game so that he has the full set of Institutions that go to make up a State?

M. Trichet has put all his anxieties into a letter to the Portuguese EU Presidency. So now Macavity has no excuse: he knows what the plan is and yet he does nothing and says nothing.

His supine surrender to the complete power-grab which is the Mark II Constitutional Treaty is something which, if it goes uncorrected, will truly be his shameful legacy to the history of the former United Kingdom.

Referendum News

Open Europe has pounced on two classic howlers by the Portuguese Censors of the Constitutional treaty, or rather that which they would have us believe is an amending Treaty. Their current version of Articles 4 and 188c(6) of the gobbledygook Treaty that has been cobbled together to pull the wool over our eyes explicitly refers to articles of the original "Constitutional" Treaty. Clearly the cutters and pasters did not cut and paste enough. Well done OpenEurope for catching the Nation Robbers on the job, red-handed, in flagrante delicto, with their pants down etc.

Now we need to watch the future progress of these two articles. The chances of the word "constitution" appearing anywhere in the final text is now.....Zero as The Watchers will have noted this carefully.

Meanwhile two young Portuguese interns are presently sampling the joys of goat-herding in Greece, mumbling the mantra "I must cut, not paste, I must cut not paste" over and over again.

In many ways this little gem is even more revealing of the cynical dishonesty of the EuroNabobery than almost all of the smug comments about how they hoodwinked us all, given that they cannot even be bothered to make a determined effort to remove the evidence of their felony and really do not care whether we see the forensic evidence of their EuroRobbery or not.

Imperial Tales of The Brussels Raj

I see from my own "This Day In History" today that in 1806 the last Holy Roman Emperor was shunted off his throne by the little French Dictator.

So who is this Emperor José Barroso of whom we hear so much?

When the Emperor's Guard comes a-goose stepping up the Mall, remember that you should have paid attention to what was being done in your name by the Chief Quisling and his Junta.

If one needed any further proof of this Government's enthusiasm for EU Integration, it can be found in the person of Lord Malloch Brown, lately deputy to the much unlamented former UN Chief, Kofi Annan, and therefore an unashamed and completely uncritical supporter of the United Nations, an organisation that many on the right view with considerable distaste.

The Times reports thus today:

I'm a huge fan of giving power to Brussels, says Brown policy adviser

Britain’s seat at the UN Security Council will eventually be handed to the European Union, Lord Malloch Brown, the Foreign Office Minister, has suggested.

The former diplomat was brought in by Gordon Brown to help to overhaul foreign policy was already under fire for suggesting that Britain and America would no longer be “joined at the hip”.

He faces fresh controversy after it emerged that last October, when he was Deputy General Secretary of the UN, he spoke approvingly of growing EU representation on a visit to Brussels last October.

According to a report by the EU Observer, he told Brussels diplomats that the EU was heading toward one single seat within the UN institutions. He said: “I think it will go in stages. We are going to see a growing spread of it institution by institution. It is not going to happen with a flash and a bang.” He added that he hoped that it would happen “as quickly as possible. I’m a huge fan of it.”

The remarks were unearthed by the Conservatives, who are stepping up pressure on Mr Brown over how far he was prepared to hand control of foreign policy to Brussels.

William Hague, Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: “It is alarming that Gordon Brown has chosen to put in charge of UN reform the man who thinks we should give up our UN Security Council seat to the EU.”

Mr Hague said that the question of Brussels representation at the UN had become a “live” issue in negotiations over the new EU treaty. The Government had tried but failed to delete a clause that allowed the EU to speak at the Security Council on some matters. This failure, he said, helped to show that the new treaty agreed by EU leaders in June was the previous EU constitution in all but name.

The Tories will this week step up the pressure on Mr Brown on his refusal to allow voters a referendum on the proposed treaty. “The new Treaty, like the old, could automatically let the EU foreign minister speak for Britain at the UN Security Council in certain situations,” Mr Hague said.

“This is clearly the thin end of the wedge for an EU takeover of our UN seat. Given that our independent voice at the EU is now coming under threat, the case for letting people have the final say in the referendum they were promised is now unanswerable.”

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that Lord Malloch Brown had not been speaking as a minister, adding: “The Government has made it clear that there is nothing in the EU treaty which requires Britain to give up its seat at the UN Security Council.”

Citizens of this country should understand quite clearly where Gordon Brown and his Government want to take us (or, more alarmingly perhaps, do not give a monkeys as to where we are taken) which is into a situation where, as a matter of customary international law, our ability to operate as an Independent Sovereign State is about to be stripped from us.

That this is so is brutally evident from the provisions of the Constitutional Treaty which Gordon Brown wishes to slither past Parliament as a mere 'amending' Treaty. The reality is that the creation of an EU Foreign Minister and the ambit of the Treaty make it all but inevitable that our seat at the UN will be seized by a Foreign Power as soon as the ink is dry on the signatures.

Meanwhile, Macavity evades that which honesty and duty demand: a referendum clearly promised at the last election. Well, when it comes to evaluating this Government and its honesty, the British public will be sure to have noted all this.

And when we awake on 2nd. January 2009 to discover our country has been stolen from under our noses, aided and abetted by this Quisling Government, what then?

Referendum News

The ever persistent Christopher Booker, who has done so much to keep the candle of resistance to the EU alive in the print media, returns to the fray today in The Sunday Telegraph (HERE).

He highlights the role which will be played by the much upgraded European Council within the institutions of the EU.

This beefed up group is one of the features of this constitution that do so much to give the EU all the formal apparatus of government which, if I am right in the contention I have made about the status of the EU in customary international law (HERE), will fulfill the requirement for a recognisable government that the EU needs in order to declare itself, perhaps on 1st. January 2009, to be itself acknowledged as a Sovereign Independent Nation State armed with plenipotentiary powers by the Treaty.

He also highlights the very wide ambit of areas of competence that the EU might arrogate to itself under Article 3.

A weaselly phrase gets used which is "social policy": if the EU decides to seize control of 'social policy', what does it mean? If one stops for a moment almost anything comes under the heading of 'social policy': education, health, employment, families, child protection law, you name it, it has something to do with social policy. Westminster will merely be the postman for whatever the unelected EuroNabobs want to do with us.

Finally he raises the spectre that this Treaty at last gives the EU the final power it needs to call itself a State: the chance to raise taxes propriu motu.

L'Empire arrive et c'est nous, les collègues!