Why We Fight

EU to Seize Control of UK Passport Format

2007-09-03T16:01:00.000+01:00

The Empire continues to advance its control over our lives. Any who doubt what the ultimate purpose of the Constitutional Treaty Mark II is should read this article from one of the world’s great newspapers, The Yorkshire Post (HERE) and also EU Referendum’s entirely apposite comment thereon (HERE)

One thing which sticks out is the refusal of the Quislings in the Foreign and Commonwealth office even to obfuscate on this occasion instead of resorting to the usual whoppers. They know full well how this will play: very badly. People of a certain age still smart at the removal of their handsome Blue Passports and their replacement by the red ersatz version which tells each and everyone of us that we are now ‘EU Citizens’, a status that we have neither sought nor want and permission for which no Government has ever nor will ever have the courage to seek.

When we awake on the morning of 1^st. January 2009 to discover that the EuroNabobery has been and stolen our country from us, aided and abetted by the Brown Junta, one wonders how the formerly free people of these islands will react.

Perhaps they will need more than some mere railings outside No. 10 to resist the righteous anger of the British people whose birthright is so casually being stolen.

I now fully understand, I think, those who have fought for the liberation of their lands from the rule of outsiders, however benign the governance, and their willingness to resort, when all else has failed to the weapons of last resort, such as civil disobedience and the taking up of arms against the oppressor.

In our case it would be unlawful to take up arms against the UK Government (but not, I think, against the EU) but civil disobedience is quite another matter. When people wake up to what has happened I believe there will be very considerable anger and who knows how that anger will express itself.

Meanwhile certain defeatists are forecasting that we will fail to get the referendum. In addition some believe that, as the issue is one on which the Tories cannot lose (if there is a referendum, this would be a massive U-Turn by Brown and a victory for the Tories; if there is no referendum the opprobrium attaches entirely to this dishonourable P.M.), the Conservative leadership is not pushing as hard as it might actually to secure a vote on the Treaty.

If so, that may be the point at which 150 years of Toryism in my family comes to an end.

EuroCrat Highwaymen at Work

2007-09-03T12:39:00.001+01:00

According to the Bruges Group, the UK hands over £114,000 every minute of every hour of every day to the EU for it to spend on keeping Greek Goat farmers in business and Lady Mandelson in Fat Cat perks.

Or put another way, every 8 hours and 47 minutes every man woman and child in the UK hands over £1 to the EU for it to fritter away.

How long will it be before the Conservative party pledges itself to sign up to an annual cost/benefit analysis of the EU as has been proposed in a bill going through the Lords at present?

I am not holding my breath.

The inevitable result of such an analysis (which will show how we are being looted to pay for all manner of wasteful stuff) will undercut the Conservative party’s “in Europe but not ruled by it” stance and raise the whole issue of our membership of the EU, something which the political elite (on all sides, as if by unspoken agreement) is not even prepared to mention let alone discuss.

Might it just be that, with a resounding ‘No’ vote in a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty Mark II, the Tories may yet find themselves choking on their cornflakes?

Referendum News

2007-09-03T12:38:00.000+01:00

Why is it thought that having a fresh election on a new manifesto which does NOT promise a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty Mark II will absolve the Labour Party from having a Referendum upon it?

The facts remain the same: the Treaty is, but for some cosmetic changes, the same Constitution (indeed in some respects it strengthens the EU as against the Nation State Members) that was rejected by the French and the Dutch and would have been resoundingly rejected by the British people as well. The effects of this treaty remain, in essence, the same. It represents a huge transfer of sovereign power away from the United Kingdom to unelected EuroCrats in Brussels and to foreign politicians, not all of whom love us. If it is thought that changing the terms of the Labour manifesto changes the need for a referendum then that is simply one more example of The Town Rat Catcher (so called because that is the highest elected position to which Gordon Brown may aspire after the Treaty comes into force) being dishonourable and dishonest in his dealings with the independence of our nation. Would that a political party would come along that offered to put him and his Junta on trial for their Quisling behaviour!

So changing the terms of the manifesto will not alter the terms of the debate about a Referendum at all, simply drive the Labour party into an even more unprincipled position than it is at present. What a shabby dishonest party they are that they play party politics with the Independence of our country.

The difficulty of The Town Rat Catcher’s position is emphasized by the entry into the lists of one Keith Vaz, disgraced former Minister for Europe, who, despite a rampant case of the EuroPox (so serious that he is forever to be found in deep osculation of the EU’s nether parts) is calling not just for a referendum on the Treaty but on the wider question of our very membership of the EU. Chance would be a fine thing: he should be careful for what he wishes as I reckon that we stand a fine chance of getting the 51% we would need to be rid of the whole clapped-out enterprise.

Meanwhile the LibDems under ZimmerMan sit there squirming with embarrassment at the honing of their anti-British and anti-democratic credentials by the elderly gent they have as leader waffling on about seeing what the final text of the Treaty will be before deciding finally whether to support a referendum. Does the Old Buffer really think there is going to be so radical a change in the text that it goes from being the same as the Constitutional Treaty Mark I to a toothless little thing which does nothing? Talk about a LibDem Νεφελοκοκκυγία of eternal nut cutlets and sandals!

With a certain amount of nervousness about a snap election being called, the EU Referendum is looming large on everyone’s plates at the moment. Given the Town Rat Catcher’s little local difficulty with his own party being split from top to toe on the issue of Europe, this may yet derail his decision to cut and run before the economy goes sour on him.

Referendum News

2007-09-03T12:37:00.001+01:00

The Guardian reports that as many as 100 Labour MPs may be planning to vote in favour of a referendum. If so Brown's majority would be well down the pan and a vote on the EU would become inevitable.

One should not, I feel, put too much store by the figures for the moment. But what it does suggest is that the clear and unambiguous evidence of the opinion polls (82% in favour of a referendum at the last count) is perhaps beginning to translate into discontent on the doorsteps so to speak and Labour MPs are doing no more than reflecting what is being said to them, back in their constituencies. In addition Union-sponsored MPs may have had their ears bent in recent days by their Paymasters, the Unions.

The motives of the Socialists will probably be, in some cases at least, similar to those of the Unions, who will be calling for an opt-in to all the worker 'friendly' stuff (actually it is not worker friendly at all but mostly liable to put them out of a job in sue course, but that is by the by) that The Town Rat Catcher has tried (probably unsuccessfully) to opt out of. Others are troubled (as well they might be) by the damage that the Rat Catcher's dishonourable and deceitful position may be doing to them. They have also worked out that the Chindamo case, based as it is on a piece of EU law that Jack Straw as Home Secretary allowed on to our statute books without our say-so, is causing collateral damage to the party.

The mathmatics are of interest. The Labour party can muster on paper 353 votes and the combined opposition (in practical rather than theoretical terms) 284. It needs just 35 to vote with the opposition for that majority to disappear. Brown might just risk a vote but defeat would be more humiliating than an earlier 'managed' retreat ("we've just had some further legal advice and we have realised that....") would prove to be. Brown's position may, therefore, be on the cusp of becoming very tricky indeed.

Meanwhile Labour Whips are doubtless oiling their sjamboks and knouts as I write.

Referendum News: Daniel Hannan Has Got The Message About the EU and The Montevideo Convention

2007-09-03T12:34:00.000+01:00

I emailed Daniel Hannan on 4^th. July 2007 with my observations on the position in which the EU will find itself on 1^st. January 2009, when the Constitution of the EU comes into effect. Regulars here will know that my view (for which see HERE) is, in short, that as a matter of customary international law, the EU will at that moment have acquired all the institutions that it needs for it to declare itself to be a Sovereign Independent State and, if that be right, the status of each of the 27 members of the EU will, on that date, have changed from their being themselves Sovereign Independent States to being that of mere component parts of a Federal EU.

It is with considerable regret that I have to relate that Mr. Hannan did not have the courtesy to reply to my email. Doubtless he is a busy man, far too busy and important to write the words “Thank you. I shall read your views with interest”.

I am very old-fashioned about such things. When someone comments on my blog I will always publish it unless it contains unnecessary swear words, is evidently a ‘round robin’ piece of spam, is defamatory of someone or is otherwise just offensive. I try to make a reply to all comments, though there are some which can stand by themselves and require no further comment. Sometimes I will email the commenter direct. In time it may be that the blog acquires too many comments to pursue that policy, but for the moment the urges of upbringing are too strong.

Mr. Hannan apparently sat next to Bill Deedes at the DT for some ten years. I cannot imagine the late Bill Deedes failing to acknowledge an email of the kind I sent and one is sad that his unfailing courtesy did not apprently rub off on Mr. Hannan.

Still, he has plainly taken my arguments on board for today he writes in his column for the Daily Telegraph:

“Eurocrats are too close to their final objective to let a little thing like democracy stand in their way. The new constitution will bestow on the EU all the characteristics that international law recognises as attributes of statehood: a head of state, a foreign office, a criminal justice system and the "legal personality" needed for the EU to sign treaties and displace its member nations in international associations.”

Despite the lack of acknowledgement, I am very glad to see that the message is getting through. At the end of the day I am quite unimportant. It is the message, that we are on the cusp of losing a thousand years of independence at a stroke of Vanity Blair’s pen, that is important.

Referendum News

2007-09-03T12:33:00.000+01:00

How nice for The Town Ratcatcher and his Hun chum to idle away an evening watching soccer. One hopes they enjoyed the spectacle.

Earlier Labour continued to stonewall demands for a Referendum with the Town Rat Catcher reiterating his refusal to have one again last night, notwithstanding the presence by his side of German Chancellor Frau Angela Merkel who has already boasted of how close the Constitution Mark II Treaty is to Mark I. To dishonour, deceit, deviousness and breach of promise Gordon Brown has added shamelessness as well.

Meanwhile over on Newsnight Kirsty Wark held court with an assortment of folk for and against the referendum. Bob Crow of the RMT Union hrmphed about the militarisation of the EU, its breaking of the 'Workers' on the wheels of capitalism, the evils of privatisation and other assorted fantasies with which Old Labour lefties are clearly still absorbed. What a breath of fresh air! One had forgotten what a real dinosaur looked like and here was one live on TV, not so much Tyrannosaurus Rex as Bovine Iguanodon. They used to be so much part of our lives - indeed once they were the Government before Mrs. T came along and unmanned them - and now they are the thing of fairy tales or so we thought.

Next up was one Katynka Barysch. I assume, without more, that Mrs. Barysch holds a UK passport entitling her to vote in the UK since I detected just a teensy-weensy bit of a non-British accent there: if she is not British, then it speaks volumes if even the BBC cannot find enough Brits to speak up for this wretched treaty. She advanced the interesting canard that as we are a Parliamentary democracy, we do not need a referendum. Odd then that Ireland, a Parliamentary democracy the last time I looked, is having a referendum. The Netherlands and France had referenda on the Mark I Treaty but both are vigourous Parliamentary democracies. Of the latter two countries she was most dismissive, however, denouncing their votes as having been about immigration or dislike of the government or anything but the Treaty itself. As I recall it the arguments in both countries were surprisingly mature and to the point, with the Dutch, in particular, focusing on the loss of power to the EU involved in the Treaty.

Her second offering was risible and even more off the wall: despite Vanity Blair's promise that we could have a referendum on the Mark I Treaty, Mrs. Barysch's view is that he was quite wrong to have offered one at all and a referendum was quite out of the question on this or the earlier Treaty. It will come as no surprise to anyone that Goggling her name will reveal a plethora of pro-EU quotes that suggests she has a very advanced case of the EuroPox.

And then there was Gary Titley ("Titley by name and Titley by nature!'). MEP for the North West in the Labour interest who was once a considerable advocate of a referendum on Regional Government for the North Wast (which involves devolving more power to a regional assembly) but is now unwilling to let the UK as a whole have a Referendum on the wholesale transfer of powers involved in Constitution Mark II. His take was that all 27 members of the EU signed separate treaties and that ours is different from all the others, in that it has all these wonderful 'opt-outs' and so when Frau Merkel says that the Mark II treaty is the pretty much the same as Mark I, she is talking about the Mark II Treaty which Germany signed and not the Mark II Treaty signed by Britain.

Oh, please......

Neil O' Brien of OpenEurope stood his ground well and did not make a slip, reminding us of Titley's enthusiasm for referenda unless it involves the EU. A solid effort.

Kirsty Wark asked the 'have you stopped beating your wife question' of Titters: If there is a referendum, would you win it? Answer : 'Yes'. So, says Wark, what are you frightened of? Splutters all round.

Trouble ‘t Mill

2007-09-03T12:32:00.000+01:00

It is the desire of a vast majority - 82% - of the people of the United Kingdom to be afforded a chance to give or to withhold their whole-hearted consent to the ratifying of the Constitutional Treaty Mark II signed without a thought by Vanity Blair just before he did a runner. For the moment Gordon Brown continues to defy the wishes of the British people, dishonourably and deceitfully trying to insist that Mark II is wholly different from Mark I and that there is therefore no need for us to have such a vote. So much for Mr. Brown, whose personal honour is thus besmirched, being willing to ‘listen’ to the people. But how much longer can he continue with impunity to stick two fingers up to the British public?

There is a sense that he is slowly but surely being pushed into a corner, step by step. Now comes the intelligence that there are signs that Brown’s escape route to the Left is about to be closed with news from the TUC and individual unions that some will seek a motion at the next Congress in favour of a referendum. For example the GMB union has already submitted a motion in favour of a referendum; The RMT has, remarkably, submitted a second motion calling for a ‘No’ vote.

The Union’s motives are rather different from those of the rest of us: the GMB is exercised that there was an opt-out to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. But the rest of us should not cavil at the motives, which in a democratic society the union is perfectly entitled to have; rather we should welcome their support for the democratic process.

If such a motion was to be passed at the TUC it would be a serious blow for Brown. With it, he would be left in a position of very considerable isolation with only himself, the Cabinet, Ministers outside the Cabinet and perhaps a minority of the rest of his party in Parliament holding out against a referendum. Surely in those circumstances he must bend or lose all credibility?

One must not forget however, that yielding on a referendum on the EU will gravely weaken him on the issue of that other referendum, that in Scotland on the issue of independence. If he now agrees to the EU vote, he may find it much more difficult to resist in Scotland. Not for the first time might the Scottish Tail wag the UK Dog.

Chindamo Case Points to Loss of Control Over Immigration to EU

2007-08-22T11:26:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-21T09:06:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-20T19:09:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-20T16:11:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-20T16:09:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-18T14:14:00.000+01:00

“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):

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

2007-08-18T14:12:00.000+01:00

“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?

2007-08-18T14:09:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-18T14:08:00.001+01:00

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

2007-08-18T14:07:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-18T14:06:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-18T14:05:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-18T14:04:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-18T14:03:00.002+01:00

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

2007-08-18T14:03:00.001+01:00

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

2007-08-18T14:02:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-18T14:01:00.000+01:00

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.

2007-08-18T14:00:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-18T13:59:00.000+01:00

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!

Referendum Comment

2007-08-18T13:56:00.000+01:00

The politics of getting Macavity to surrender on the issue of granting us the chance to give or to withhold our whole-hearted consent to the EU Constitution to which Vanity Blair so carelessly signed us up in June are so potentially damaging for Macavity that one is driven to wonder if this was not perhaps the poison pill that Blair left in Macavity's Red Box.

Whether or not Macavity will yield on the referendum is important in two ways aside from the principle of the Constitution itself, which remains enormously important in itself.

1. The related issues of trust and honesty. Trust in the sense of the breach of promise implicit in failing on a major matter to honour their manifesto commitment; honesty in the sense that GB and the Junta can easily be demonstrated to be lying when they assert that the Constitution is dead;

2. Forcing him into giving a referendum will be an enormous political defeat for him given that he and the Junta have invested so much effort into trying to stonewall demands for a referendum.

It will be a humiliating defeat on a major issue of policy, in part inflicted because he cannot carry all his Parliamentary party with him. He knows full well that a defeat of this kind will involve a loss of prestige and make him look weak and his party divided.

He knows too that there is a second whammy wrapped up in it which is that his recommendation for a 'Yes' vote (or a 'No' vote depending how weaselly the question is) will be resoundingly defeated with all the humiliation that that implies and all the explaining he will then have to do to his very very irritated EuroNabob colleagues as to why he has allowed their precious power-grab to be trashed, again.

And he also realises that the larger the majority against the Constitution the greater the question mark over whether and to what extent the UK should be engaged in Le Grand Projet.

The fallout from losing a referendum are such that his Government will be bogged down in things he desperately does not want to be bogged down in, namely the political killing fields of Europe.

Getting voters in those circumstances to focus on their agenda will be almost impossible as he shuttles off endlessly to Brussels to negotiate his way out of the mess and then has to come back and try and explain away yet another piece of devious compromise that people then pick over like Hyenas.

Just ask Major about how debilitating that is.

This scenario provides for so much opportunity to destroy the Brown Premiership that it would be one of history's biggest bungles to let him off the hook.

That is all before we consider the nature of what it is he is trying to railroad this country into and how much damage that will do to his reputation as previous hoodwinked electors realise just how and the extent to which Macavity, Milliband, Murphy and all the rest of the Brown Milice have been lying through their teeth about what this Constitutional Treaty does.

After he is rumbled he may well wish that Scotland does get independence and does not have an extradition treaty with the UK...

Referendum News

2007-08-18T13:55:00.000+01:00

Regular readers will know of my view that the matter of the Referendum on the EU Constitution (no more of the weasel words 'amending treaty') is one of pressing urgency: see HERE as to why I believe that the UK will cease to be an Independent Nation State on 1st. January 2009.

I had been on the point of posting on the need for all the disparate groups and individuals to come under one umbrella to campaign for a Referendum. As luck would have it I am headed off at the pass by Paul Sykes, Northern Businessman, Eurosceptic and philanthropist, as the Sunday Telegraph reports:

A multi-millionaire businessman has issued a rallying call for members of all parties to unite in a campaign to force Gordon Brown to hold a referendum over the new European Union treaty.

Paul Sykes said that the British people had just 12 weeks to stop Britain becoming part of "a new country called the European Union".

Mr Sykes, a self-made man, philanthropist and eurosceptic, said: "Time is not on our side. If we fail to come together, we will have failed those who look to us for a lead in restoring democracy, we will have failed our fellow countrymen and women, and we will have failed our country."

He believes that Mr Brown, like Tony Blair, has reneged on a Labour Party election pledge from 2005 to hold a referendum on the EU treaty. Mr Sykes is a founder member and substantial financial backer of Speakout, a non-party-political group which campaigns for repatriation of powers and a referendum on the EU treaty.

Sources close to Mr Sykes say he has spent more than £5 million in the past decade supporting various anti-EU causes.

Mr Sykes said: "Back in the Nineties most of the various anti-EU groups united to form a common front against a common enemy - the single currency. The campaign was deliberately non-party-political, it used some of the biggest names in showbusiness to get the message across to the public and it forced the issue to the top of the media agenda.

"It is time, once more, to form a common front for the various lobby groups, think-tanks and campaigning organisations that give diversity and strength to the eurosceptic movement to combine their energies into a single campaign."

Mr Sykes wants all eurosceptic groups, including Open Europe, an independent think tank, to join with politicians from all parties and captains of industry. "We need to put our petty divisions to one side and to put the great theological debates on hold. What unites us is much, much more than that which divides us," he said.

Gisela Stuart, the Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, issued a fierce attack last week in The Sunday Telegraph on her party's "rubbish" handling of the issue. Up to 40 Labour MPs are pushing for a referendum.

Mr Sykes, 63, criticised the new Prime Minister. "The hope had been that Gordon Brown would be a very different kind of leader to his predecessor, that he would listen to the people and honour his party's election manifesto pledge which stated quite clearly that any new 'EU constitution' would be put to the voters in the form of a referendum. But Gordon has not listened."

The Labour leadership claims that concessions in the new treaty mean that a referendum is no longer necessary.

He reminds us of one feature of this process which is the very speed with which the process of agreeing the detail of the new Constitution will be completed: 12 weeks.

Why all the haste?, I hear you ask.

Why would the EuroNabobery want to give us enough time to mount a defence against the destruction of our independence when the prize of more power than they have ever had before is within their grasp?

The whole way in which these people have gone about their business is devious, deceitful and utterly contemptuous of democracy, more redolent of stunt a Tyrant like Mugabe or Hitler might have pulled.

We must stop them. So our support must go to Mr. Sykes. SPEAKOUT is here.

United shall we stand against tyranny.

Referendum News

2007-08-18T13:54:00.000+01:00

EU Referendum continues to post excellent pieces which nail the EU Amending Treaty for what it really is: the Constitution of a fully fledged Sovereign Nation State.

Their latest is here.

As a lawyer, I have to confess great admiration for the drafting skills of those who put the various documents together. It is not merely the incomprehensible language which attracts one's attention, but the sheer skill in producing something which looks, at first blush, wholly innocuous but when you start trying to draw all the strings together, actually amounts to the wholesale take-over of your country.

Armed with such a document, which must cost all of a fiver, who needs a billion pounds worth of tanks to park on someone else's lawn, especially when you have a compliant Quisling Government to slip it past a flock of particularly ovine MPs called The Parliamentary Labour Party, aided and abetted by 63 LibDem Turkeys?

Read and Pass on to friends, as always.

Referendum News

2007-08-18T13:53:00.000+01:00

I have just had this comment:

“The EU constitution is yet another, and possibly final, nail in the coffin of what was once an independent nation.

I am a member of UKIP and firmly believe that they represent the best conservative values that Mr Cameron has abandoned in his rush to be Mr Nice Guy to all sections of the voting public.

However, pragmatism must prevail in this election as 'Dave's Conservatives' represent the only real chance to stop the constitution via a referendum and I believe having achieved that will open the door to the debate about membership of this corrupt and undemocratic political construct.

I will vote Conservative at the general and UKIP at Euro and local. The prospect of losing to Brown and the complete dissolution of this country is at stake and for me that is beyond party politics.”

Whatever we think of his/her strictures about David Cameron and the conservative party, it seems to me that it is reasonable evidence of the need to make a serious effort to fertilise this particular field: whatever UKIP care to do with their vote at the European or local elections, they must be persuaded to ‘lend’ (if that is the right word) their vote to us for this election. It is said that up to 26 seats may have been lost because of UKIP last time out. They would be a valuable start on the road to power

EU Constitution as viewed from the USA

2007-08-18T13:52:00.002+01:00

John Bolton is probably not the favourite US Diplomat in the homes of such luminaries as Mark Malloch Brown, Polly Toynbee and the Unctuous Little Squirt himself (our brand new, never-had-a-proper-job in his life, Blairophiliac Foreign Secretary), not to mention all those Guardian readers who probably froth at the mouth at the mere mention of his name, but his piece in the Financial Times yesterday (here) is important, even if only because it is an outsider's take on the present dangers to the continued existence of The UK as an Independent & Sovereign Nation State.

Bolton's views are important because it may be inferred that others who have a say in US Foreign policy will hold similar views of our impending demise.

One such aspect may well, when we are represented by an EU Foreign Minister, turn on the two permanent and other temporary seats on The UN Security Council: if we speak as one, why do we need so many seats?

For example, why does a "union" with a common foreign and security policy, and with the prospect of a real "foreign minister" have two permanent seats on the UN Security Council and often as many as three non-permanent seats out of a total of 15 council members? France and Britain may not relish the prospect of giving up their unique status, but what is it that makes them different - as members of the "Union" - from Luxembourg or Malta? One Union, one seat.

I commend this article to readers as essential reading concerning the realities of the Constitutional Treaty.

Referendum News

2007-08-18T13:52:00.001+01:00

The Treaty which will, in my opinion, (for which see here), as a matter of customary international law end the United Kingdom's status as an independent and sovereign nation state on 1st. January 2009, has finally struggled into English, conveniently after Parliament has risen (is that sinister? Of course it is. The last thing the EuroNabobs want us to do is actually read and comprehend this shameful document).

Given that the BBC is supposed to be the national public service broadcaster you might expect it to have carried this as a piece of news and to have a link on its website to a copy of the document.

Surprise, surprise, none such exists. The BBC, enemy of Britain and her people, loves the EU with a passion and is as determined as the EuroNabobs and this Quisling Government to keep the wool firmly over our eyes.

Well here is a link to where you might find the dodgy document. EU Referendum also analyses it and there is also analysis on Open Europe.

It is not easy stuff, but please look and do your best to understand the enormity of what is being done to our independence. As importantly make sure like-minded people do the same: spreading the word is very important. And make sure we get as much support and coverage as we can for time is short.

Commissioner Mandelson in Fresh Sleaze Scandal

2007-08-18T13:51:00.001+01:00

The Sunday Times reported this week (here) on disgraced ex-Labour Minister Peter Mandelson who, despite the dishonourable and discreditable circumstances of both his resignations was remarkably given a fat cat job with fat cat salary and fat cat pension arrangements as EU Trade Commissioner by Vanity Blair, has achieved the singular distinction of receiving a reprimand from the EU’s Ombudsman who last week issued a formal censure after a two-year investigation into Mandelson’s refusal to name the lobbyists he had met.

The European ombudsman ruled that Mandelson’s office had been “wrongly blanking out the names of industry lobbyists” in documents released to the public. It said that “disclosure of names of individual lobbyists is essential”. The failure to reveal this information “would constitute an instance of maladministration by the commission”.

Apparently this is standard practice in the corridors of power at EuroNabobery HQ where the all-embracing let off of “data protection” is laughably used to excuse this prevalent bit of secrecy. If there was nothing wrong in any of these relationships there would be absolutely no reason whatsoever for them to be hidden from the general public. So the fact that they go so far in trying to hide the facts of who they are meeting strongly suggests that there is some discreditable reason for their so doing.

But what is worse is that Mandelson remains in post despite being censured for what must, on any view, be seen as a gross act of maladministration.

Of course New Labour apparatchiks are not gentlemen and have no concept of personal honour. Rather they seek the substance and the trappings of high office and once they have their snouts deep in the trough they are deeply unwilling to get them out again: just ask Lord Kinnock whose pension arrangements must be the envy of the age!

Hopefully this scandal will now mature into something more significant and we may yet rejoice in the spectacle of Mandelson’s third resignation for impropriety at which point perhaps the stake will finally be driven through his heart.

Fresh EuroNabob Confession to Conspiracy

2007-08-18T13:48:00.000+01:00

One of the remarkable features of the reviving of the Constitutional Treaty by the EuroNabobery is that, almost to a man. they are so smug and satisfied with the feat of obfuscation they believe they have achieved by producing an unreadable and incomprehensible ‘amending’ Treaty that they are almost bursting with pride at their activities, so much so that they cannot wait to blurt out or commit to print the extent of their smugness and the truth of what they are trying to do. I was initially puzzled by this: surely it is madness to tell everyone just how deeply you have conspired and striven to lie, cheat and deceive the European voter as to the true nature of what they are doing?

My puzzlement has gone. I am quite confident that, in their hubris, they actually believe that they have gotten away with the biggest and most wicked lie since European Jewry was methodically conned into calmly boarding so many cattle trucks on trains bound for the East on the premise that they were being ‘resettled’. Thus they feel uninhibited about boasting of their cleverness to those at hand whom they mistakenly (fortunately for us) slavishly share their cheating weasel ways. Equally fortunately some of their interlocutors are not the co-conspirators they believed them to be and these gallant cascittuni*, some of whom must be risking dismissal at least, make sure that evidence of EuroNabobery’s anti-democratic plot makes it into print or onto YouTube as soon as possible. Yet as more and more of these self-destructive statements filter out, you might have expected Emperor José Barroso the First to have issued a self-denying ordinance clamping down on these serial breaches of the code of EuroOmertà.

That His Serene Smugness has not done so must be evidenced by the fact that the latest EuroNabob to be filled with the hubris thing, the European Commissioner for Agriculture, Mariann Fischer Boel, has admitted that the old and revived texts were "as close to each other as was possible".

Meanwhile MEP Hans-Gert Poettering, President of the European Parliament, another of the serial conspirators who has already been fingered in the these columns, has written a letter to the Daily Telegraph in which he explicitly confirms that the so-called amending treaty is essentially the same as the original constitution. Indeed he expresses his satisfaction at the outcome. Yet he goes on to try and insist that Vanity Blair’s ‘Red Lines’ are worth the paper upon which they were written, something that commentators have already demonstrated to be utterly false, often by reference to utterances of some of Poettering’s fellow conspirators.

The text of the letter I reproduce here:

Sir - You report me as saying that the EU's new Reform Treaty is in essence a repackaged European constitution ("Brown's EU fraud exposed by letter", July 28). The implication of your article is that the Government in London has engaged in some kind of "fraud" against the British public.

At the June Summit in Brussels, I did indeed argue vigorously for maintaining as much of the substance of the existing constitutional text as possible - a position repeatedly asserted by the European Parliament and many governments - and I am naturally pleased with an outcome that achieves this.

Although some important changes were made to the document, a great deal of what was best in the original draft constitution has been retained However, it is important to recognise that the situation in the United Kingdom is quite different to that in the other 26 member states.

Compared to the draft constitution, the Reform Treaty involves a de facto British opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights, as well as a much wider British exemption in Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) than previously conceded.

Since making the Charter legally binding and extending Community competence to JHA were two of the most important features of the original constitution, the deal struck by Tony Blair in June means that - for better or worse - much of its substance will simply not apply in Britain.

Now the only puzzle left is why these anti-democratic Boyars still think they have hoodwinked us all.

Meanwhile The Caliph of Downing Street and his Whirling Dervishes spin around and around ever faster and faster as they endlessly chant the mantra “The constitutional concept, which consisted in repealing all existing treaties and replacing them by a single text called “Constitution”, is abandoned.”

Eventually, like a top, they will spin off the very floor to disaster and ruin.

*cascittuni is the name given by Italians to those who inform on The Mafia or the Cosa Nostra in breach of the code of Omertà.

2007-08-18T13:47:00.000+01:00

EU Referendum has an excellent post HERE which I commend to all who pass these portals on the topic of the internet and the EU referendum.

From what one reads the internet is being used in significant ways in the USA in elections from those for President of the USA down to town rat catcher, ways in which we are yet to become adept. When the time comes, it is to be hoped that the umbrella organisation which is set up to mastermind the anti-treaty campaign will set aside a sensible chunk of its budget to help us get the message out and the voters in.

I am absolutely certain that in such a campaign we must seek to dominate cyberspace with our message and that the internet will be a crucial medium in educating the public given that the Government propaganda machine and the propaganda arm of the Labour Party and the Europhile party (a.k.a. The BBC) will bring to bear its significant weight against us.

Talking of the BBC, one of the pleasures of such a campaign will be to see how such an institutionally leftist and Europhile organisation squirms as it desperately tries to pay lip service to the concept of partiality but at the same time outrageously supports the pro-treaty campaign. They will not, because of their addiction to Europe and leftism, be able to avoid breaching their duty of impartiality and we shall have to keep a daily, nay hourly check on all their output to suppress as far as possible their bias. If they overstep the mark, I believe the outrage will be such that they find it to be a defining moment in the history of the BBC, the moment when the worm turned and the sentence of death and dismantlement finally gets passed on it.

As to the Referendum itself, EU Referendum is entirely right to make an issue out of the use of the weasel words " the constitutional concept......is abandoned". The full quote is:

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

Macavity, The Squirt Milliband and other weasels are trying to make out that this means 'officially' that the constitution itself has been abandoned. Not so. All it means that the idea of spelling it out clearly in one document so that people might actually understand the enormity of what is about to be done to them and their independence is abandoned, to be replaced by an incomprehensible document that only anorak lawyers can understand which amends all the other treaties in such a way that the constitution remains de jure and de facto intact.

I beg to be forgiven for suggesting above that the original constitution was actually clear enough for ordinary mortals to understand. That was considerably to overstate the true position which is that the Constitution, several hundred pages long and couched in EuroNabobSpeak, was about as digestible as a wet carpet. But one could chew through after a few hours of concentrated thought and discern its true nature, namely that here was a Nation State in foetus.

The solution the EuroNabobs came up with, to have an obscure and totally incomprehensible document which has to be read in conjunction with a whole raft of other documents, was, let us admit, a masterstroke of sorts. Yet, in its very deviousness it has alerted those of us who suspect that the plan is one of EU Statehood all along to the true purpose of the document signed up to by Vanity Blair in the dog days of his Quisling Ministry.

This is where we on Planet Blog can help: to disseminate as much information to the inquisitive public on what the treaty really means.

And when it comes, then we must work as hard as we can for as large a majority as possible so that once and for all we can begin the process of disengaging our great nation from the tyranny that is the EU.

Labour MP in savage attack on liar Brown

2007-08-18T13:43:00.000+01:00

Although these are still early days in the struggle to secure the right to give or withhold the whole-hearted consent of the British electorate to Vanity Blair's last act of Quisling treachery, the revamped and reworded (but nothing else) Constitutional Treaty, it is possible to discern, if not light at the end of the tunnel, then at least a candle being held somewhere in the middle.

The Sunday Telegraph reports that the Labour MP Gisela Stuart has launched a strong attack on Macavity over his refusal to allow the British people to have their say on the transfer of our last meaningful powers to the unelected EuroNabobs in Brussels.

A senior Labour MP today launches a blistering attack on Gordon Brown for reneging on a pledge to hold a referendum on the new European Union treaty.

Gisela Stuart, the MP for Birmingham Edgbaston and a former junior health minister, attacks her party's "rubbish" handling of the issue in an article in The Sunday Telegraph.

"One of Tony Blair's last acts was to renege on a promise and it is almost unbelievable that one of Gordon Brown's first has been to do the same," she writes. "There is still time for Gordon Brown to put this right.

"The issue has nothing to do with the so-called 'old Tory agenda'. It has everything to do with the new Labour agenda: there was a manifesto commitment to a referendum on the EU constitution. All Labour MPs were elected in 2005 on that manifesto commitment."

Ms Stuart, who was one of Britain's representatives on the steering group that produced the draft constitution for the EU, concludes: "The Prime Minister says that he wants to listen to people and involve them in decisions. He talks about 'wanting to renew democracy' and claims that 'this task does not fall to government alone, but to all the people of these islands - and the discussion now begins'. He can prove that he means what he says by giving people the final say on the treaty by giving them a referendum."

Ms Stuart's ferocious words are delivered as Mr Brown's "honeymoon" as Prime Minister threatens to be brought to an abrupt halt by an unlikely alliance of opponents, which includes up to 40 rebel Labour MPs, Tory eurosceptics and captains of industry. The various groups insist Mr Brown must give the British people the final say on whether extra powers should be given to Brussels.

It will be recalled by many readers that Ms. Stuart, who is German-born and might therefore be thought naturally to incline towards unbridled EuroPhilia, was one of those who took part in the drafting of the EU Constitution under the aegis of former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Thus she, as well as anyone, may be taken fully to understand what is involved in the Constitutional Treaty and how the grubby document to which Vanity Blair signed his name but a few short weeks ago revives that Constitution in its entirety.

Whatever her views on whether the Constitution should be adopted or no, she has earned a place in the Pantheon of heroes for her savage and almost unprecedented attack on this weaselly Prime Minister. I salute her courage.

As important are signs that some Trades Unions are having second thoughts about the wisdom of this Treaty:

Labour backbenchers have already held secret meetings with trade union leaders to launch a September campaign demanding a referendum, it can be revealed. The campaign, funded mainly by the larger unions, would be deeply damaging to Mr Brown's call for Labour unity in the run up to the party conference.

The unions most fiercely opposed to the constitution include the GMB and Unison, which have more than 1.6 million members between them."

Slowly, slowly, Macavity's conspiracy with his fellow Cabinet members to hoodwink and lie to our people and cheat us out of that which was once a clear promise is beginning to unravel.

Aux armes Citoyens!

EuroNabob spills beans - again!

2007-08-18T13:42:00.000+01:00

News comes hot foot by means of The Huntsman’s trusty carrier pigeon Fifi that the President of the European Parliament, one Hans-Gert Poettering, has helped to trash Macavity’s referendum evasions yet further by admitting (in writing) that the revived Constitution has been designed "to allow us to keep the advances that we would not have dared present directly".

Day after day dishonest Labour Ministers step up to the plate to deliver the Mantra that the “EU Constitution is dead! Long Live The Amending Treaty Which Is So Obscure That Only A Real EuroCrat With Ten University Degrees Can Understand it And Any Way It’s In French, So We Really Pulled The Wool Over Your Eyes This Time!” that it is refreshing to find a EuroNabob who is still willing to tell the truth. Mind you, given his candour, he is probably on a train to the Salt Mines as we speak.

Still, dear old Hans-Gert’s admission is somewhat at odds with the statement in the “BRUSSELS EUROPEAN COUNCIL 21/22 JUNE 2007 PRESIDENCY CONCLUSIONS” which says, at paragraph 7:

“The European Council emphasises the crucial importance of reinforcing communication with the European citizens, providing full and comprehensive information on the European Union and involving them in a permanent dialogue. This will be particularly important during the upcoming IGC and ratification process.”

So there you have it: the Official Documents say they want to give us “full and comprehensive information” and one of its top Nabobs says the one thing they don’t want is to do anything of the sort.

Apparently Hans-Gert gave an “exposé” at the meeting: I shudder to think what that might mean.

One is singularly grateful for the stream of EuroNabobs who, day after day, come along to reveal the extent to which they have all conspired to railroad the Constitution through.

Quite how they think that we will be deceived by any of this is a bit of a puzzle.

Referendum News

2007-08-18T13:41:00.000+01:00

One of the tricks of politics, it seems to me, is that one has to be good at spotting what is and what is not a fertile field.

As a young man I used to drive about the Fens of what was then called Huntingdonshire (until a Conservative government, if you will believe it, came along one day and told us we were now living in Cambridgeshire, which we had always thought was the county next door). You had to keep an extra look out as all the farmers in their Land Rovers would also be out and about. You always knew who the farmers were: there would be a large hairy arm resting on the ledge of the open driver's window and the vehicle would be driven erratically, not because the farmer had been at the sauce since daybreak but because he was not looking at the road as he drove along. Instead he was scrutinizing the crops growing on either side of the road, judging what had been sown, how far along it was, whether his neighbour had sprayed for this or that yet and so on.

Politicians would do well to emulate the Good Old Boys of the Fen. Instead of rushing to opine on every subject under the sun, spend some time looking about you for the fertile fields and, having examined their condition, go back to your own farm and apply some of what you have seen to your own crops.

So, today we have some pretty clear evidence from polls that when it comes to Europe, the Conservative party is marching in step with the wider public. Now is an ideal moment to seize control of this particular battlefield. A referendum will be popular, not least because it will enable the British people to let off steam. Far too often the political elite is seen as detached from and not listening to the electorate. All the main parties subscribe to the view that we must be in rather than out of the EU which means that those of us who hate the EU and all its Imperial Works are deprived, disenfranchised if you will, on the European issue that is most important.

Only the Scots Junta and its English Catspaws actually say that the present Constitutional Treaty does not reintroduce the Constitution that was so resoundingly rejected by the discerning citizens of France and the Netherlands (and would have been here if Vanity Blair had not gutlessly shuffled out of his promise to us to hold a referendum). It is difficult to believe that this group of educated people actually believes that guff.

As I noted yesterday, some Labour MPs are beginning to wake up to the fact that the Zombie-like Mantra "The Constitution is dead" is playing very badly at the theatre of public opinion. Frank Field, who, like the inestimable Kate Hoey, ought to be poached for a safe Tory seat forthwith, has written a quite excellent article in today's Daily Telegraph (here) in which he makes the case for the politics of demanding a referendum. All who care about this issue should read it.

One problem for those of us who are passionate about defeating this Treaty is that the document that they have produced is comprehensible only by the most obscurantist of unelected Eurocrats and dishonest EuroNabobs and EuroMafia. Now comes the news, and breathtakingly scandalous it is too, that an the only version available at present is in French. Mysteriously no copy in English will be available for some time yet and the EuroNabobery have deliberately dispensed with an official version in English or German. You do not need a Nobel prize in Nuclear Physics to work out why that has been done. Not only do they make the Treaty incomprehensible but they make it available only in incomprehensible French.

They doubtless laughed until they cried at that one over their Foie Gras and Sauternes in the Restaurant de L'Auge (look it up: it's worth it!) over in Brussels Place de La Porcherie (that too folks!). The problem is that we understand perfectly well what is going on here: The EuroNabobery want to give the British people as little time as possible to read and understand their Treaty so as best to forestall the assault upon it. Sadly our Quisling Government neither protests nor does terribly much about this state of affairs.

In the meantime the party should be courting UKIP voters by pointing out to them that the only way to achieve the referendum we so desperately need will be to bite their tongues and vote Conservative at the next General Election. They can do whatever they want at the next Euro Election, though one would prefer they work within the Tory Party to secure a firmly 'out of the EU' policy. But vote Tory at the General Election. If Mr. Cameron were to couple this with a promise to hold a referendum within six months of taking office, the polls would react accordingly.

Macavity will, of course, try to portray this as a return to old themes. I believe that that is a serious misjudgement on his part. The public actually wants this referendum and does not trust him on this issue and will not see it as the Tory party reopening old wounds.

I would also like to see a considered return to the phrase "whole-hearted consent of the British people" which was the mantra that underpinned the Referendum of 1975 as politicians promised not to do anything without such consent. It is, if one thinks about it, a rapier-like phrase that can be used at every turn. If every time Macavity refuses to give us a referendum his interlocutor bangs on about getting such consent, he will begin to look and sound utterly undemocratic, anti-democratic even.

Meanwhile Mr. Cameron must be seen to be in control of his party. What better way than to bring to heel the EuroMafia of Clarke, Patten, Hurd and Heseltine whose snidey anti-referendum comments are wheeled out against the Conservatives by the BBC every time any of them tries to make the case for a referendum. Perhaps we could send Lord Tebbit round to have a quiet word in their shell-like ears......

Oh to be a fly at that little rendezvous!

Theresa May's proposals on EU Scrutiny

2007-08-18T13:40:00.000+01:00

The Huntsman directs readers with approbation to EU Referendum's post on Theresa May's proposals for scrutiny of EU Legislation.

The real problem, as they observe, is the sheer scale of EU Legislation which is rammed through without the whole-hearted consent of the British people.

There is a solution to that, of course, which is to leave the EU and let us decide for ourselves what we will and will not adopt by ways of the laws to govern our people.

Two More EuroNabobs let cat out of bag

2007-08-18T13:39:00.001+01:00

Day after day another Euronabob pops up and makes the case for a Referendum to be called by Her Majesty’s Government on the Constitutional Treaty negotiated by Mr. Blair just before he did a runner in June.

Today the Daily Telegraph produces two more such, one no less than the very architect of the Constitution, former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who, in respect of his creation has tended to consistent and frank description of his handiwork as ‘constitution’.

Gordon Brown will have "problems" denying voters a referendum on the new European Union treaty, the architect of the old constitution has confessed.

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing yesterday admitted that differences between the new treaty and the constitution, which was rejected by French and Dutch voters two years ago, "are few and far between and more cosmetic than real".

Mr Giscard, the draftsman of the original constitution, acknowledges that Mr Brown will face difficulties with British citizens who were promised a vote on the first constitution, only to be denied a referendum on the new treaty.

"As the substance, in institutional terms, is similar or even the same, countries that feel this change has to be approved by a referendum have a problem that they have to settle," he said.

You could not have it clearer than that. What Blair signed was in substance, the same as that to which he agreed originally. Interestingly it seems that the former French President has advised Mr Brown against an "uncertain" referendum, predicting that British voters would do the same to the new treaty as the French and Dutch did to the old constitution. One is bound to say that it is very tiresome that these Foreign Johnnies are so insulting about the British voter’s ability to understand this Constitutional Treaty. The problem for the EuroNabobery is that, in truth, we understand it and its implications only too well which is why, if given the chance, we will vote against it with a thunderingly large majority

Euronabob No. 2 is the hapless Jean-Luc Dehaene, the former prime minister of Belgium who is now a senior MEP, an unrepentant EuroPhiliac. He noted that 95 per cent of the constitution was back. He said it was no surprise that voters were confused.

Mr Dehaene also insists the issue is not one for the voters, whether they are British, French or Dutch. "Europe will never go forward by referendum," he said. "Leading is showing the way, not following."

That really sums it up, does it not: Le Grand Projet is far too important to be left to the voters who might just, if given the democratic right to vote on the subject, throw a monkey wrench in the works.

“Europe will never go forward by referendum.” Remember that phrase: it is the voters they fear above all. Their response, "Let them Eat Cake", is one which those same voters will never forget and never forgive.

EuroNabobs exposed as Liars

2007-08-18T13:03:00.001+01:00

One of the curious features of the EuroNabobery is that they proceed in Imperial Progress as if we Little People simply did not exist and if we do exist we have all the political and intellectual savvy of a brain-dead Neanderthal. They discount entirely the possibility that there are amongst us intelligent people who understand exactly what they are trying to do and how they are trying to do it.

Readers should be aware, therefore, of this particular example from OpenEurope:

“Loathsome smugness

The pro-euro camp are all busy congratulating themselves about having fooled the public by changing the name of the constitution.

At a meeting of the Centre for European Reform yesterday EU officials discussed their strategy for adopting the EU Constitution without a referendum.

Former Italian PM Giuliano Amato said, “They decided that the document should be unreadable. If it is unreadable, it is not constitutional, that was the sort of perception. Where they got this perception from is a mystery to me. In order to make our citizens happy, to produce a document that they will never understand! But, there is some truth [in it]. Because if this is the kind of document that the IGC will produce, any Prime Minister – imagine the UK Prime Minister - can go to the Commons and say ‘look, you see, it’s absolutely unreadable, it’s the typical Brussels treaty, nothing new, no need for a referendum.’ Should you succeed in understanding it at first sight there might be some reason for a referendum, because it would mean that there is something new.”

You can listen to them all chortling about how terribly clever they are on this clip. There is a quite lot of this kind of gloating going on in the pro-euro camp at the moment. But unfortunately for them, calls for a referendum are not going to go away...”

The Daily Telegraph also has a similar report

We should all wonder why they are going to such lengths in order to ram this Constitutional treaty through.

The Huntsman believes, for reasons he has already set out, that the EU plans to declare itself a Sovereign State when the treaty comes into force. Thus it will be understood why they will tell any lie, peddle any half-truth so as to get their way.

England Awake!

EU to seize control of sport

2007-08-18T13:02:00.000+01:00

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.

Who are these EuroNabobs?

2007-08-18T13:01:00.000+01:00

These people have something in common: they are all members of an EU body and act in YOUR name. Have YOU ever been asked to elect them? No. Have you ever heard of them? Probably not.

Who and what are they? Answers by way of the comments section please.

ARNOLD AM, Jennette ,Cllr BAKER, Paula, Cllr BARKER CBE, Muriel Mary, Cllr Sir BORE, Albert, Cllr BRIGHT, Robert, Cllr BULL, Katrina, BUTLE AM, Rosemary, Cllr CLUCAS OBE, Flo, Sir DAY, Simon, Cllr GARVIE, Graham, Cllr the Lady HANHAM CBE, Joan, Cllr HEATLEY, Martin, Cllr KEYMER CBE, Gordon, Cllr KHATUN OBE, Syeda, Cllr MALCOLM, Iain, Cllr MASOOD, Mohammad, Cllr MCCABE, Jim, Cllr MCCHORD, Corrie, Cllr MOORE, Peter, Cllr MORROW, Maurice, MURPHY MP MLA, Conor, Cllr NEILL AM, Robert, Cllr PARNABY, Stephen, Cllr PARSONS, David, Cllr POOTS MLA, Edwin, Cllr QUAYLE, Dave, Cllr SHAKESPEARE OBE, David, Cllr SWIFT, Bernice, Cllr TAYLOR, Sharon,Cllr the Lord TOPE AM CBE, Graham,Cllr TWITCHEN OBE, Kay, Cllr WALTERS, Keith, Cllr Sir WATSON CBE, Ron, Cllr WHITEMAN OBE, Milner, Cllr WILLIAMS, William John

L'Empire, C'est Moi!

2007-08-18T12:59:00.000+01:00

In a moment of striking candour, something for which the EU and the EuroNabobery are not noted, José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission gave a startling but accurate description of how the EU views itself:

“We are not the United States of Europe — we are unique in the history of mankind! Sometimes I like to compare the EU as a creation to the organisation of empires. We have the dimension of empire but there is a difference. Empires were made with force with a centre imposing diktat."

“Now what we have is the first non-imperial empire. We have 27 countries that fully decided to work together and to pool their sovereignty. I believe it is a great construction and we should be proud of it.”

There has since been some backpedaling, but the central point is clear: the EU's Chief unelected bureaucrat thinks he is on the point of being declared an Emperor of all he surveys.

This is, perhaps, not a new Rome, a new Constantinople or a new Holy Roman Empire, but the new Amending Treaty is a Constitution and these remarks clearly reveal that that is how the EU views matters and that it is preparing to assume all the powers of a nation state in its own right.

What clearer, blunter evidence could we have of the need for a referendum?

And lest anyone mistake our determination never to be enslaved, if an Empire is what they think they have achieved, then, we swear, we will tear it down, brick by brick, law by law, piece by piece, until it is no more.

Sarkozy Prepares to Cheat on Finance Rules

2007-08-18T12:58:00.000+01:00

As The Scotsman reports (here), President Sarkozy is going the rounds of the Eurozone ministers in a desperate attempt to persuade them to let him off the leash as far as the rules of the EU budget rules known as the Stability and Growth Pact. France's economy having atrophied to the point of becoming scelerotic in recent years, to the extent that some talk of France as the sick man of Europe in a way that people once talked of the UK before Margaret Thatcher appeared on the scene and put us back on the road to economic good health, Sarkozy now needs to undertake some root-and-branch reforms and restructuring of the French economy.

Hence his efforts at persuading his EuroNabob chums to let him break all the rules. Such chicanery and irresponsibility reminds us of precisely why we were and remain wise to stay well clear of the ill-conceived Franco-German racket which is the Euro.

The chances are that France will get its way and be allowed until 2012 to get its deficit in order and balance the books. Sarkozy's flouting of the rules will no doubt be aided and abetted by French satrap European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet who will not want to buck the plans of his own President to break the rules.

Thus far the French tail has been furiously wagging the EU dog since Sarkozy took over in Paris. There he was at the conspiracy to stitch the EU up with a Constitution slipping anti-competitive clauses through in the hope nobody would notice, all designed to let France go its own way, as usual. and hopelessly undermine any concept of the EU being about a level playing field when it comes to the single market or indeed any other market. Why we wished to allow ourselves to be sucked any further into the shyster world of the federal EU remains a mystery to all rational people.

Meanwhile Macavity remains defiant of the wishes of a majority of the British People to have an opportunity to give or to withhold their wholehearted consent to the Constitutional Treaty which is being cobbled up by the Portuguese at the moment. But watch this space as he is currently thought to be be creating some wiggle room which will enable him to give us a referendum and at the same time claim that he is only doing so because this or that red line has now been broken and so he can claim to be 'protecting' British interests.

If this Treaty is such a good idea, then why, pray, are the British people not trusted enough to have their say upon it?

Meanwhile instability in the Polish government coalition suggests an election may have to be held there sooner rather than later which may produce some interesting anti-EU gems from incumbent PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski. This may further upset the EuroNabobery's plans to steal our country from us.

Recidivist Clarke in new Europhiliac Outrage

2007-08-18T12:56:00.000+01:00

Yesterday has-been Tory politician Mr. Kenneth Clarke revealed to GMTV’s Sunday programme just how much of a disaster he would have been had he by some miracle been elected its leader.

Notwithstanding that polls show that a significant majority of the British people earnestly desires a chance to give or to withhold its whole-hearted consent to the Constitution to which Blair gave his assent once again last month, there is the old EuroPhiliac himself peddling his usual lies about Europe:

"I find the idea of a referendum on whether the Polish voting deal was the correct one and whether you should have a rotating presidency of the European Council has an inner absurdity."

Given that almost everybody, including at least one Trades Union, believes that the ‘amending treaty’ is the same as the old Constitution and that, accordingly, there should indeed be a referendum upon it as was promised to use by Blair, Brown and the rest of his gang before and at the last election, Clarke insults the intelligence of the British people if he thinks that the amending Treaty is only about Polish Voting rights and the Rotating Presidency. Either he has not read the amending Treaty, in which case his statement was made with reckless abandon for the truth (and given his failure to read the Maastricht Treaty, this must be a possibility) or he has read it and has chosen deliberately to lie about it.

There are two groups of people who do not want a referendum. The first is made up of careerist politicians on the left who do not wish to be the subject of a massive defeat if a referendum were to be called, given all the political complications that would cause and political implications which would flow from it. The second is a Camarilla of largely used politicians such as Clarke, Hurd, Heseltine, Patten who seem determined to end the UK’s status as a nation state and who, like Heath and his chums did in the 1970s, would tell any lie, conceal any truth in order to avoid the referendum which they believe will end for ever the EU Project as far as the UK is concerned.

Clarke is, remarkably, head of the Tory Party democracy task force. Odd that his views on Europe should be so anti-democratic and insulting to the British people and undoubtedly a reflection on Mr. David Cameron’s judgement in putting him there in the first place.

The Huntsman is also puzzled by the logic he displays in claiming that abandoning calls for a referendum will make the Tory party more electable. If (1) a significant majority of the British public wants a referendum and (2) the Tory leader is minded to promise such a referendum, and (3) Brown et al. is minded to deny us one, then (4) why is that going to LOSE votes?

One is minded to think that Mr. Clarke believes, in that arrogant, patronizing way that he has, that the British public is stupid and will swallow all this rubbish. Well, we are not.

EU Commissioner in 'Dirty Movies' Storm

2007-08-18T12:55:00.000+01:00

This is one of the recent efforts of one Margot Wallstrom the European Union communications commissioner, who is fast making a name for herself as the most hated of the EuroNabobery, as one of 44 posted on EuTube (The EU's presence on YouTube) in a campaign to make us all love (in this case literally) the EU.

Other thrilling titles include: "Electricity and gas: You choose!";"Jingle "1957-2007: Together"; "Europe by Satellite, the EU's TV Information service"; "The Reform of the Common Market Organisation for Sugar"; "Erasmus Mundus: One Year on:; "Europe wants well-informed consumers".

You really couldn't make it up, could you?

Quite how some of this will make us love something which is inherently unlovable is unclear but many British Taxpayers will be thoroughly irritated that their money is being wasted on this rubbish in the name of promoting something which the majority would like to see the back of as soon as possible. What is so sinister is the determination with which the EuroNabobery is seeking to emulate Dr. Josef Goebbels as exponents of the Great Lie in brainwashing us, in particular our young people, into accepting being in the thrall of Brussels.

More of this rubbish can be found here.

Portugal in Shock Invite to Ruthless Tyrant

2007-08-18T12:54:00.000+01:00

As soon as the Socialist Portuguese Prime Minister, José Sócrates, who took over the rotating EU council presidency from Germany yesterday, got his feet under the table, he stooped smartly into the gutter and made it clear he wants to invite no less an individual than Robert Mugabe to a Europe-Africa summit in December of this year.

Quite apart from the fact that Mugabe, Africa's nastiest megalomaniac, is, along with all his awful cronies, barred from travel within the EU, he is also the despot who has presided over the economic and social meltdown of a country that, in its former guise as Southern Rhodesia, was one of the breadbaskets of the continent. So low have his people sunk that, according to one newspaper report this weekend, schoolteachers have been reduced to turning tricks as prostitutes in bars whilst fat cat Mugabe cronies enrich themselves with unlimited wealth by virtue of their access to hard currency which they trade back and forth from the black market to the legitimate.

This is the tyrant who ought, instead of living out his days in the lap of luxury, to be facing indictment for crimes against humanity and torture, even genocide. Instead the odious Mr. Socrates will lay out the red carpet for him.

Quite why this invitation was ever issued will be beyond most decent people. Britain should veto his invitation now and if that means that other African nations do not turn up to this meeting, so be it. We. at least, will be able to occupy the moral high ground

This unpleasant story will tell you all you need to know about Le Grand Projet. We are at the moment bullied into agreeing to these pieces of unpleasantness. Soon we will legally have no choice as the EU nation state assumes control of all our policies.

Brussels Rules OK!

2007-08-18T12:53:00.000+01:00

In case you missed it, here is a list of appointments to the office of Gauleiter for all those regions which Brussels has decreed for its Westmark (lest you have forgotten, Hitler renamed Austria 'Ostmark' after the Anschluss).

"The Queen has been pleased to approve the following Ministerial appointments:

Minister for the North of England and Deputy Chief Whip (Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household)

The Rt Hon Nick Brown MP

Minister for the North West

The Rt Hon Beverly Hughes MP

Minister for Yorkshire and the Humber

Caroline Flint MP

Minister for the Olympics and for London

The Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP

Minister for the South West

Ben Bradshaw MP

Minister for the East Midlands

Gillian Merron MP

Minister for the West Midlands

Liam Byrne MP

Minister for the East of England

Barbara Follett MP”

This last came by carrier pigeon from the Fuhrer Bunker.

Now what on earth are these people going to do (apart from acquire ministerial cars and the usual snouts-in-the-trough opportunities)?

Britian does not do Gauleiters.

And what terrible sin have the decent people of East Anglia committed that they should be punished by having Barbara Follett foisted on them by Brown's Diktat?

None of this power to the people thing, then, merely the sound of jackboots crunching down our country lanes.

Resist Now!

2007-08-18T12:52:00.000+01:00

This valuable piece I reproduce from the Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday (here).

"A renewed message about passports, and time running out

I have for some weeks been urging readers to renew their passports, because you will soon not be able to do this without being fingerprinted and placed forever on the national identity register. I think fingerprinting is for burglars, and registers are for sex offenders, and I am afraid that millions of people are as yet unaware that this is going to happen. I don't want anyone to be taken by surprise when it does. If you want to be registered as if you were a cow, and fingerprinted as if you were a mugger, then fine. If not, you need to act soon. Please do spread the warning as widely as you can

The interrogation centres where the fingerprinting will be done are being built and equipped, right now. And at some point in the next 18 months, perhaps much sooner, those who seek to renew their passports will be told they cannot do so unless they attend at one of these centres, often quite distant from their homes. I suspect there will be no warning, just an announcement that this is now the rule. The law has already been passed, and merely needs to be brought into force. The price of renewal goes up in October, yet another reason to get on with it.

Here are some questions and answers which may help those who have not yet acted.

Q. My passport is valid until 2014. Why renew now?

A. Because if you wait until 2014, and probably a great deal sooner than that, you will have to be fingerprinted and registered forever on a state database, simply to get a new passport, whether or not you wish to have a supposedly 'voluntary' Identity Card.

Q. How soon will this happen?

A. I do not know. The preparations are far advanced and the law already in place. My guess is that you are safe for some months yet, but I cannot be sure. My advice is to renew as soon as your summer holiday is over.

Q. Officials say that this change only affects new applicants and I do not need to worry.

A. This is a confusion of two completely different things. Pay no attention. New applicants do already need to attend an interview. Fingerprinting and registration are a separate issue, and have not yet come in. But they will.

Q. Do I get any credit for the unexpired time on my old passport?

A. Yes, you get a maximum of nine months credit for unexpired time.

Q. Can I do this at any time?

A. Yes, you can. You're the one paying the fee.

Q. I'm told that new passports are microchipped. Surely that means this is all too late?

A. They are microchipped, but the microchip - at present - contains only the normal information written in your passport. Some people may find this objectionable, but it is nothing like as objectionable as being fingerprinted.

Q. Surely, once ten years are up, I'll have to be fingerprinted and registered anyway, and this is all futile?

A. Not necessarily. If enough people renew early, it will be a sign of major resistance to the Identity Card scheme, and political pressure will grow for its abandonment. Also, if , ten years hence, several million people - whose passports all come up for renewal in the same short period - all refuse to be fingerprinted and registered, will the government be able to refuse them all the right to go abroad? Now, and ten years hence, it faces the government with real, effective resistance. Please tell all your friends to act now."

Through Traitor's Gate

2007-08-18T12:51:00.000+01:00

The ratting of Quentin Davies (of whom more anon) has provided the Socialists with endless opportunities to meddle and make mischief. All sorts of names are being ground through the rumour mill as to who might also be about to jump ship.

One wonders if The Scots Junta might take a Job Lot while they are at it: Lord Patten, Ken Clarke, Lord Heseltine and all the other Regicides (not just the principals but the aiders and abettors and the accessories before the fact as well). Since the Labour party seems so desperately infected with the dread disease of Europhilia, these individuals will feel quite at home.

All such are furiously denying any ratting tendencies.

Referendum News

2007-08-18T12:42:00.000+01:00

Fresh Reasons for a Referendum

The BBC reports here that it has discovered a surreptitious change which has been made to the so-called "amending" treaty at the behest of the French (who else?). The Huntsman asserts that this change is one which not only goes to the heart of the original purpose of the EU but is fundamentally subversive of the whole-hearted consent given by the people of the United Kingdom at the 1975 referendum to our membership of the then Common Market.

Since the early 1970s British policy has set its face against propping up ailing industries or companies with masses of state aid, a policy which has subsisted to this day, with the dishonourable exception of the money given for squalid electoral reasons by Labour to the moribund Rover concern at the time of the 2005 election.

At the 1975 referendum, the European project was sold to us as creating a level playing field in terms of trade and competition (no mention was ever made of handing over such things as immigration, employment, justice and foreign policy to Brussels, as you might imagine) which would be in the natural national interest of the UK which espouses free trade and and end to protectionism.

Now that is to be abandoned. Protectionist states such as France and Italy will take this a a legal green light to pump its ailing industries with lots of loot to keep them afloat. It will be used to keep British and other overseas companies excluded from French markets. And the ECJ will go along with it, abandoning its former firm stance against such destruction of the level playing field.

The British people have been betrayed by this. A fundamental plank for the securing of our consent to the EU is to be destroyed. Regardless of Blair's so-called 'red lines' this change must trigger not just a referendum on further integration but on the continued membership of the United Kingdom in the EU.

Die Wacht Am Rhein

2007-08-18T12:41:00.002+01:00

Whatever the EU Nabobery may say to the contrary, this new treaty, just as much as the Constitution, is about creation of the EU Surperstate.

If we concede the legal personality issue, it’s all over chaps.

That plus all the existing institutions such as the Parliament, the Council of Ministers, The Commission, would create in the EU all the indicia of a sovereign state contemplated by The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, signed at Montevideo, Uruguay on 26th. December 1933. Although only signed by nineteen Latin-American nation states, Article 1 of the Convention sets out the four criteria for statehood that have frequently been recognized as an accurate statement of customary international law:
“The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:
(a) a permanent population;
(b) a defined territory;
(c) government; and
(d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”

Blair’s red lines matter not a fig. This is what it is all about. If you throw in primacy of EU law, the EU Defence Force, The Foreign Minister (whatever he or she gets called) and the permanent presidency, it becomes like the elephant in the front room: if it looks like a superstate, if it sounds like a superstate and if it smells like a superstate, then it is a superstate.

Hark! Is that the sound of jackboots crunching on the drive already?

Barroso meddles in British politics

2007-08-18T12:41:00.001+01:00

Britain has set out more “red-line” objections than any other country and the Poles are digging in hard for a review of voting weights because they believe that the proposed new system will give Germany too much power.

“It is not in the interest of any member state to be in a position that is seen as hard- liner,” Mr Barroso said before the summit, which starts in Brussels tomorrow. “Please avoid appearing as blocking. This is not intelligent, this is not in your interest,” he said.

“It may be useful for some national consumption for some time, but it will not be useful in the medium and the long term. Defend your positions, but don’t come with these red lines and vetoes.” Mr Barroso added: “Failure would set back our work across the board.”

Someone should tell this functionary to get his nose out of our business but quick. It is outrageous that he should seek to lecture us in this way and Blair ought to be reading him the riot act tonight for this piece of gross mischief.

He should tell Barroso that it is for the British people to decide what is and what is not in our interests. His bullying comments will only inflame the British people further against "The Project".

One thing though: if (and The Huntsman is not holding his breath, you understand) Blair vetoes this whole shoddy business, we will all be thrilled if, as predicted, it sets back their dirty work across the board.

EU Nabobs play for high stakes

2007-08-18T12:40:00.000+01:00

Blair, Brown and Beckett have been out trying to persuade us that they are going to veto any EU deal on the revival of its ill-fated constitution which fails to meet their so-called red lines. We shall watch with interest what actually happens.

The red lines are:

No Charter of Fundamental Rights

No Surrender of control over the judiciary and policing

No EU Foreign Minister

No Diminution of the British veto on anything “that can have a big say in our own tax and benefits system”

There are a number of problems here.

Firstly the EU Nabobs are threatening to introduce the Charter of Fundamental Rights by the back door by the so-called process of ‘cross-referencing’. This involves incorporation of the Charter by linking an explicit reference in the treaty itself to some other document which does so mention it. Sneaky. The ECJ will then take great delight in ruling that we did in fact sign up to it after all and even if we did not it is still EU law, so there.

The EU Foreign minister problem is a red herring. The really important thing is the issue of ‘legal personality’ for the EU. This would give the EU the right to make treaties and be members of International organizations in its own right and then to claim that it supercedes all the nation states thereby. You do not need a Foreign Minister to do that.

In addition it may be useful to recall that the Constitution also sought to make us subject to a common foreign policy. If that stays in,, who needs a Foreign Minister?

The Legal Personality issue, plus all the existing institutions such as the Parliament, the Council of Ministers, The Commission, would create in the EU all the indicia of a sovereign state contemplated by The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, signed at Montevideo, Uruguay on 26^th. December 1933. Although only signed by nineteen Latin-American nation states, Article 1 of the Convention sets out the four criteria for statehood that have frequently been recognized as an accurate statement of customary international law:

“The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:

(a) a permanent population;

(b) a defined territory;

(c) government; and

(d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”

We stand on the edge of losing our status as a sovereign nation state. Let us beware the weasel words of the Quislings who are planning to betray us. Demand a referendum now!

Cameron promises referendum on EU

2007-08-18T12:39:00.000+01:00

Iain Dale has reported this morning that Mr. David Cameron in his Tooting speech added some unscripted lines at the end to the effect that he was giving a commitment to a referendum on any new EU treaty which gives Brussels further powers.

It is as yet not clear precisely what he is saying but if, as seems to be the case, this means that any sort of cession of power will trigger a future referendum, then this is greatly to be welcomed.

In addition it will do something to assuage the rumblings of dissent that have been rising since the desperately poorly handled Grammar Schools issue temporarily prostrated the party, though Mr. Cameron would do well to remember that policy on Europe does not stop here.

Meanwhile the Quislings continue to plot the demise of the United Kingdom. We have heard all this talk of 'red lines' and 'opt-outs' before. Red lines end up being fudged or abandoned; 'opt outs' end up being over-ruled or outflanked by the ECJ.

Why not just say to the EuroNabobery, for a change, "No." or "Thus far and no further, so don't even mention these things again and waste our time"?

The trouble with these Euro huddles is that when the EuroFederalists eventually isolate the UK from the rest, like a pack of hyenas, they end up forlornly trying to defend their position like a lion tries to defend its kill. So the hyenas circle and circle about nipping in every now and then to seize some tasty chunk until the poor lion has nothing left. Saying "No" at the outset would avoid this sort of humiliation.

Keith Vaz, on the Daily Politics, opines that you should only have referendums when you "really" need them: i.e. when you think you will win them. Quite.

UK Net Contributions to EU "set to double"

2007-08-18T12:38:00.000+01:00

Ruth Lea, currently Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, has written a short paper on the likely increase in the net contributions of the UK to the EU over the next seven years.

The conclusion to which she comes is an alarming one: that over the next seven years the amount of our net contribution is set to double. This has been brought about, in part, by Blair' shameful surrender of part of our rebate, which was so hard won by Margaret Thatcher and ceded so readily by this Government which is so weak when it comes to the EU.

Just think of the benefits to all of the people of the United Kingdom that an extra £6.4 billion pounds could make in terms of our health and education provision, not to mention (dare one say it?) tax cuts.

The full report may be found HERE.

Meanwhile Labour plots to hand yet more power over to unelected Bureaucrats in Brussels who remain beyong the reach of accountability to anyone in the EU.

The Quislings Amongst Us

2007-08-18T12:37:00.002+01:00

The Sunday Telegraph also has a Leader on Europe.

It is quite extraordinary that Blair is apparently trying to sign us up inextricably to a 'Treaty', thinking that he can dupe the British public once more, when the cat has already long been let out of the bag by Mrs. Merkel: that this 'Treaty' is no more and no less than the old. discredited and rejected constitution that has been through the rehashing machine with its phraseology changed here and there and is to be presented in a different way so that the people can be deceived into thinking it is just a bit of tidying up.

What is Blair up to? Why does he think we are going to be hoodwinked by all this?

Perhaps the intention is to land Brown with one last timebomb that will duly explode in his lap and mire his administration with interminable guerilla warfare on Europe. If so it is a disgraceful act of Quisling proportions.

Britain Must Vote On This Treaty

For the past two elections, Labour's manifesto has been admirably clear on the issue of a constitution for the European Union: "We will put it to the British people in a referendum and campaign whole-heartedly for a Yes vote."

Tony Blair's final act as Prime Minister is likely to be to break that commitment. As we report today, he will sign the new European constitution just before he leaves 10 Downing Street. There will be no referendum. His signature alone will be enough to bind the United Kingdom in perpetuity to the constitution's strictures.

Mr Blair will justify this blatant perfidy by claiming that the document is not a constitution: it is just a "treaty". This is utterly false, as he and his Cabinet know very well.

Ever since the EU constitution was decisively rejected by the voters of France and Holland two years ago, Europe's bureaucrats and politicians have been desperately searching for an alternative way to get it adopted.

They have finally come up with a strategy for doing so: by not calling the document a "constitution", but referring to it as a mere "treaty". The subterfuge is not sophisticated. The text is unchanged, except that various paragraphs relating to issues which "have already been agreed" have been deleted.

Those paragraphs have not, of course, been agreed to by Europe's voters, only by the politicians allegedly representing them. But that is the whole point. The European project has systematically denied voters any opportunity to voice their opposition to, or endorsement of, the basic principles of the European Union.

The danger is that, given the chance, they might come up with the "wrong" answer, as they did in France and Holland. Europe's leaders are not going to repeat that mistake. Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor, has admitted that the new document is the same as the old one: the only difference is that the new constitution uses different terminology without changing the legal substance of the original.

Earlier this year, Geoff Hoon, the Europe Minister, tried to justify breaking the promise to give the British people the chance to vote on the constitution by saying that the new "treaty" would not "alter the basic relationship between the EU and member states".

Even Mr Hoon sounded unconvinced by that argument. Altering the basic relationship between the EU and member states is precisely what the new "treaty" does. By altering the voting rules, it will make it harder for Britain to block laws it does not like.

It will give new powers to the EU president, and create a new post of EU foreign minister. And it will codify doctrines to which many of Europe's voters object: for instance, the principle that "the constitution shall have primacy over the laws of member states".

The deception over the constitution demonstrates that the European project, in its present form, is not just undemocratic but anti-democratic: it depends on ensuring that the electorate cannot express its will.

For once, David Cameron and the Conservatives have an easy target: they must harry Gordon Brown relentlessly until he promises a referendum on the new treaty. Nothing less will do. And unless he undoes Mr Blair's last act of dictatorial hubris, Mr Brown will merely be following his predecessor's trail of deceit and dishonesty."

Why We Fight

2007-08-18T12:37:00.001+01:00

The sad story (HERE) which presages the demise of the entire industry of making, repairing and restoring mercury barometers is a tragedy for all those who work in that industry as well as those who collect and cherish such fine instruments. But it also has within it a serious lesson for all who are interested in the EU and how it works and whether the UK can ever hope to have real influence in its Councils.

The constant mantra of EuroLovers is that only by being at the very heart of the EU as a fully committed and enthusiastic member will we be able as a nation to have real influence over the deliberations and decisions that affect us all so profoundly. This story starkly gives the lie to that assertion.

Whilst the deliberate destruction of this small and wholly inoffensive industry is deeply distressing to those whose livelihoods and thus lives will be ground into the dust by the diktat of our political elite, on the scale of things it is pretty small beer. Therein lies the point. If as a nation we are unable to influence our partners on a matter which does not ultimately touch upon anyone’s vital national interests, what possible chance do we have of influencing the major decisions that affect vital British National interests and the vested interests of other EU nations? None.

Read this story and learn the lesson. Apart from all that it is a shabby little story, notable for the failure of our political masters properly to defend our fellow citizens, their livelihoods and lives.

Resist Now!

Euro Bully Boys At Work

2007-08-18T12:36:00.001+01:00

Chief Euro Nabob, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso is clearly relying on Blair to sidestep any question of getting the wholehearted consent of the British people to whatever rehash of the moribund Euro Constitution which has twice been rejected (by the people of France and of The Netherlands) at the EU summit in Brussels on June 21-22 2007.

Bully Boy Barroso “warned” Britain “that it risks damaging its own interests if it blocks a deal on a revamped EU constitution”. Who is he to determine what are and what are not the interests of the people of the United Kingdom? What he really means is that there is a risk that the interests of the Brussels political elite and the Great Project will be damaged if Blair does not sign up.

"I have no doubt that this issue will not disappear unless it is solved." Barroso said. It is clear from that that the EU will get on our case and we and other refuseniks will be bullied until we say “yes” to whatever they demand. Blair is planning to sell us out at the end of this month in such a way that he binds incoming PM Gordon Brown’s hands and avoids, in his eyes, any need to seek the wholehearted consent of the British People to yet further surrender of vital areas of sovereignty.

Barroso and his Euro Bully chums Merkel et al. just don’t get it, do they? The British people want no more of their schemes to turn their fiefdom into a new Empire of European States and yet they keep on coming at us with a view to a quick mugging designed to relieve of what little national power we still possess, aided and abetted by closet Europhile Blair. Well, they may find that we will not play ball any more.

See the whole story here

Why We Fight

2007-08-18T12:34:00.000+01:00

This from the Sunday Telegraph's Christopher Booker I reproduce wholly without comment, since none is needed: res ipsa loquitur.

The fastest voters in the West

One of the wonders of modern democracy is the voting system in the EU Parliament. Most of the time, voting by the 785 MEPs in their vast glass and concrete chamber in Strasbourg is by show of hands. But on contentious issues they vote electronically. Visitors gaze in awe as MEPs punch away frenziedly at buttons, deciding issues they know nothing about, according to detailed lists supplied by their whips. In this way, as many as 1,500 amendments have been dealt with in 90 minutes. Thus are the laws that govern us made.

A keen student of this system is Graham Booth, a UKIP MEP, who describes a typical occasion this month when an amendment on a report on "EU Partnership in the Horn of Africa" was said to have been "rejected" on a show of hands. A call for an electronic vote proved that, on the contrary, the motion had been accepted - by 567 votes to 17. The chairman blamed this discrepancy on MEPs not "holding their hands high enough".

When Mr Booth and a Czech colleague last year presented the president of the parliament with a list of similar blunders, calling for electronic voting to be mandatory, it was pointed out that the average two seconds longer needed to record each vote electronically might cause MEPs to miss their lunch or even their flights home. Naturally, lunch won over democracy.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Why We Fight

2007-08-18T12:33:00.001+01:00

We get almost daily reminders that we are not Masters in our own house. Here is yet another profoundly depressing example from the Daily Mail.

Give us our country back, Mr. Blair!

Why We Fight

2007-08-18T12:26:00.000+01:00

Just so that we may focus on one of the great issues of our day, here is a little quote from Has-been Tory Kenneth Clarke, for which I am grateful to SpeakOut :

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

You may remember Kenneth Clarke: he was the one who did not bother to read the Maastricht Treaty before he and his Eurochums surrendered yet more of our Freedom to unelected Eurocrats.

Resist Now!

Update

2007-08-18T12:15:00.001+01:00

Having been away from this blog for a few weeks, whilst I have been about the business of concentrating on getting my main blog, The Huntsman at http://thehuntsman2007.blogspot.com, off to as flying a start as I can manage, I am now trying to commit myself to the process of publishing all European Union material from there on “Why We Fight”, this being a strictly Eurocentric Blog.

So, if you have read something before, I apologise.

Fresh Reasons for a Referendum

2007-06-22T14:31:00.000+01:00

Die Wacht am Rhein

2007-06-22T08:50:00.000+01:00

Whatever the EU Nabobery may say to the contrary, this new treaty, just as much as the Constitution, is about creation of the EU Surperstate.

If we concede the legal personality issue, it’s all over chaps.

That plus all the existing institutions such as the Parliament, the Council of Ministers, The Commission, would create in the EU all the indicia of a sovereign state contemplated by The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, signed at Montevideo, Uruguay on 26th. December 1933. Although only signed by nineteen Latin-American nation states, Article 1 of the Convention sets out the four criteria for statehood that have frequently been recognized as an accurate statement of customary international law:
“The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:
(a) a permanent population;
(b) a defined territory;
(c) government; and
(d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”

Blair’s red lines matter not a fig. This is what it is all about. If you throw in primacy of EU law, the EU Defence Force, The Foreign Minister (whatever he or she gets called) and the permanent presidency, it becomes like the elephant in the front room: if it looks like a superstate, if it sounds like a superstate and if it smells like a superstate, then it is a superstate.

Hark! Is that the sound of jackboots crunching on the drive already?

Plucky Little Poland

2007-06-22T08:48:00.000+01:00

It is difficult not to have sympathy for Poland in her resistance to the idea that she should give up a large chunk of her voting power in the EU. Today her PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski raised the stakes by invoking the spectre of German guilt for its heinous crimes against Poland and her people in The Second World War.

“We are only demanding one thing - that we get back what was taken from us,” he said at the opening of the EU summit in Brussels, chaired by German chancellor Angela Merkel.

“If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland would be today looking at the demographics of a country of 66 million.”
Poland's current population is 38 million.

The German delegation will doubtless be irritated by this but frankly they should squirm and look at their feet instead.

Britain, on the other hand, should tacitly support this line: after all we were allies in that conflict and many Poles fought and died alongside British and Empire troops or flew Hawker Hurricanes and Supermarine Spitfires with great courage and élan in the Battle of Britain. Thereafter we rather abandoned them to their fate. We owe them a debt of Honour and supporting them now would be a small repayment of that debt. Any Nation whose Army has the guts to charge advancing tanks with horsed Lancers is worthy of our admiration, after all.

Po-faced Politically Correct Europhiles will surely be outraged at this breach of their “For God’s Sake Don’t Mention The War” rule and will have that look about them that The Huntsman calls "The Lemon Squeezer Look" (Ingest juice of two lemons at once and then look in mirror: that's what it looks like!). That will equally surely warm the cockles of every Eurosceptic’s heart.

Barroso meddles in British politics

2007-06-22T08:45:00.000+01:00

Unelected Chief EuroNabob José Manuel Barroso, the Commission President, a former Portuguese Prime Minister backed by Britain to run the European Commission, has spectacularly and disgracefully sought to interfere in British politics by launching an extraordinary attack on those who oppose the plot to impose a Federal Superstate upon us.

Barroso showed his frustration at continued objections to the new EU treaty from Britain and Poland by giving warning that it would not be in their long-term interests to rock the boat, and he told them to stop talking of “red lines and vetoes”. He launched an ill-tempered attack on countries that he thought were hampering this week’s talks on a treaty to replace the failed constitution.

Britain has set out more “red-line” objections than any other country and the Poles are digging in hard for a review of voting weights because they believe that the proposed new system will give Germany too much power.

“It is not in the interest of any member state to be in a position that is seen as hard- liner,” Mr Barroso said before the summit, which starts in Brussels tomorrow. “Please avoid appearing as blocking. This is not intelligent, this is not in your interest,” he said.

“It may be useful for some national consumption for some time, but it will not be useful in the medium and the long term. Defend your positions, but don’t come with these red lines and vetoes.” Mr Barroso added: “Failure would set back our work across the board.”
Someone should tell this functionary to get his nose out of our business but quick. It is outrageous that he should seek to lecture us in this way and Blair ought to be reading him the riot act tonight for this piece of gross mischief.

He should tell Barroso that it is for the British people to decide what is and what is not in our interests. His bullying comments will only inflame the British people further against "The Project".

One thing though: if (and The Huntsman is not holding his breath, you understand) Blair vetoes this whole shoddy business, we will all be thrilled if, as predicted, it sets back their dirty work across the board.

1984 is coming to your home soon

2007-06-21T21:25:00.000+01:00

Liam Byrne seems to be in everyone's list of probable newcomers in The Clunking Fist's new Camarilla.

Before we all run off at the mouth about what a nice guy he is, everyone should be FORCED to read this cheery little piece (here).

If that does not tell you just how scary Blair's proto-Fascist scheme to inflict ID cards upon Free Englishmen for the first time in peace-time, then you are brain-dead.

EU Nabobs playing for high stakes

2007-06-21T18:53:00.000+01:00

The red lines are:

No Charter of Fundamental Rights

No Surrender of control over the judiciary and policing

No EU Foreign Minister

No Diminution of the British veto on anything “that can have a big say in our own tax and benefits system”

There are a number of problems here.

In addition it may be useful to recall that the Constitution also sought to make us subject to a common foreign policy. If that stays in,, who needs a Foreign Minister?

“The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:

(a) a permanent population;

(b) a defined territory;

(c) government; and

(d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”

We stand on the edge of losing our status as a sovereign nation state. Let us beware the weasel words of the Quislings who are planning to betray us. Demand a referendum now!

Referendum Progress

2007-06-19T12:05:00.000+01:00

L'Empire, c'est moi!

2007-06-18T12:13:00.000+01:00

The weekend has seen a series of very mixed messages concerning the forthcoming negotiations over the further progress of the EU Constitution.

Firstly there is the suggestion that Blair might be after or be offered the new 2½ year (renewable once) post of Full Time President of the European Union. This positively ghastly idea is apparently being touted by new French President Nicolas Sarkozy who will today appear in public with a hankie pressed to his nose after having a serious and somewhat unexpected nosebleed administered to him by the ever-fickle and feckless French electorate which appears to have actually reduced the number of seats for the right rather than deliver a Sarkozy landslide.

Sarkozy has obviously well-judged his man. Blair’s Peacock Prince Grand Tour of recent weeks has revealed a man of unmitigated hubris whose smug self-belief knows no bounds. What better trick to pull to get your own way than to play to Blair’s deep-seated vanity, engaging in unahamed sycophancy in suggesting that no better candidate exists for this post.

Although the usual sources have tried to pour water on the story, there are some intriguing ideas as to why he might go for it.

Firstly, Blair could claim to be a universally admired statesman, so popular with his fellow Euro Nabobs that he was their first choice for the post.

Secondly, if he can slip this one past the British Public, Europe will have all the hallmarks of an independent state that International Law recognizes. He will be Emperor Tony to Gordon’s Town Clerk. They say that revenge is a dish best eaten cold: here is Blair’s chance to have a five-year cold buffet at the expense of both Gordon and the UK (which he so obviously hates and which in turn has taken to hating him). He who laughs last laughs longest. And Empress Cherie could indulge her taste for low-cost shopping in a never-ending tour of Brussels’ handbag shops.

Thirdly he can do a Kinnock by setting himself up for an eye-wateringly large pension at the end of it all: that will help pay the mortgage. The Empress could be co-opted as an MEP, so that, like Tescos, it will be a case of ‘every little helps’.

Meanwhile the ‘Amending Mini-Treaty’, which is not a constitution, can be signed off without a UK referendum and the EU Superstate can safely be allowed to come into being.

Fourthly, Blair can make a little show of being the reluctant bride in all this, only to be coaxed along by his EuroNabob chums into finally accepting the post: “Oh, if you really insist…duty calls”, he will say.

This may well be why Brown has sent BuffHoon out over the weekend to suggest that a referendum is still on the cards. He has NOT promised to hold one as some papers have suggested, merely not ruled it out. That is classic spin, of course, trying to suggest one thing when another is true. But it might make sense if Brown really fears Emperor Tony is going to sell us all into EuroSerfdom and grab the loot for himself: what better way to greet him the day after the 80% ‘No’ referendum result than to say “Sorry, Tony, I did try, honestly, but the people have spoken!”.

We will all have to wait and see.

Lessons of the Mountain Republic

2007-06-13T16:15:00.000+01:00

This article by Daniel Hannan apparently first appeared in The First Post
I have been unable to source it more particularly than that, however, so apologies all round to the appropriate copyright holders for my inability properly to give proper attribution.

Lesson of the Mountain Republic

"Switzerland is a near-perfect democracy - so it won’t join the EU, says Daniel Hannan MEP

If the EU is as bad as I think it is, why do countries keep queueing up to join it? I have been wrestling with this question for years. Now, I think I have the answer.

Membership of the EU can be good or bad for a country overall; but it is invariably good for some people within each country, namely its politicians, diplomats, civil servants and lobbyists. Brussels offers them hugely lucrative career opportunities. Most MEPs take home more than their prime ministers.

During the 2004 accession referendum, an Estonian newspaper calculated that a civil servant who transferred from Tallinn to Brussels, doing the same job at the same rank, would increase his salary 27 times. It was precisely these people, of course, who were negotiating Estonia's entry.

The Norwegian and Swiss governments keep applying to join, for similar reasons - although, so far, each attempt has been rejected in a referendum.

I spent Easter in Switzerland, the best and purest democracy on Earth. But its politicians see EU membership as a way of sidestepping the tradition of referendums.

"The Swiss are very conservative," a charming liberal-leaning MP told me. "They vote 'no' to almost anything." And your problem with that is? "No, really, you must understand. They vote against all taxation, they vote against immigration, they vote against sharing sovereignty with other states, they vote against minority rights..."

No wonder the level-headed Switzers are against the EU. Where their system is predicated on the maximum devolution of power, the EU's is founded on precisely the opposite principle: 'ever-closer union'.

Where Switzerland is a near-perfect democracy, Brussels is designed to allow interest groups to advance agendas that wouldn't pass the ballot box. Which system delivers the more prosperous and contented polity? As the Americans say, go figure."

EU "Bad for Business"

2007-06-13T13:27:00.000+01:00

Hugo Robinson, a researcher for Open Europe, writes of the dangers for business presented by the current proposals to which Blair proposes to sign up to on behalf of the UK without a referendum.

"Business people in the UK have fallen out of love with the EU in recent years. It isn’t hard to see why.

Brussels has produced a torrent of costly regulation. Of the 22,000 pieces of legislation on the EU statute book, more than 12,000 have been introduced in the ten years since 1997, compared to 10,000 during the forty years from 1957 to 1997. The EU law book now runs to a staggering 170,000 pages.

Such huge number make the eyes glaze over. But its worth remembering that even a single regulation can shut down an industry. For example, last week the commission casually banned the manufacture of traditional barometers, and closed down a whole industry with the stroke of a pen.

A study by the British Chambers of Commerce, using the government’s own impact assessments, found that EU regulation has cost the UK economy £40 billion since 1998 alone. According to a recent ICM poll of 1,000 UK chief executives, 54% of businesses think that the cost of EU regulation now outweighs the benefits of the single market.

So far a lot of media attention has been focused on the issue of giving up the veto in new areas, and moving to qualified majority voting (QMV). But even more importantly, the constitutional treaty proposes to change the way that votes are taken in the areas where majority voting does apply. That’s very significant because majority voting already applies to about half of EU legislation.

Under the proposed new system the number of member states votes needed to block a new law would be substantially increased. Meaning that in areas where the UK is currently blocking legislation with the help of a couple of other countries, we would need to find even more allies if we wanted to carry on blocking the proposal.

Overall, academic work shows that the new voting system would reduce the UK’s power to block legislation by almost 30 percent. This means that the EU would inevitably be producing even more regulation, with even higher costs for business.

Despite this, a recent joint paper from two pro-euro groups, “Business for New Europe” and the Centre for European Reform, attempts to make a “business case” for adopting the new version of the constitutional treaty. It makes for pretty extraordinary reading.

The paper argues that: “Under the new system, those opposing a law would find it slightly harder to block it. But that should not concern the UK or businesses, since most of the draft laws coming out of the Commission are liberalising measures.”

Ah, so no need to worry then. Business can trust the lovely European Commission to always uphold its interests - even if the UK Government is opposed to a given measure.

This is clearly a mad argument. However, the report will be formally launched at an event next monday, entitled 'Why treaty change matters for business and for Britain'. Intriguingly, CBI Director General Richard Lambert is among those taking to the podium. Europhile hacks have been briefed that he will support the line taken in the paper and swing the CBI behind a campaign for the constitutional treaty (as it once campaigned for the euro). But if he does so, he risks splitting his membership.

Former CBI Director-General Digby Jones said back in 2004 that his organisation’s key concerns on the original EU Constitution were clear: “We don’t want anything that weakens UK control of decisions on employment law, financial regulation or energy policy.' But the new voting system would weaken the UK’s control of all of these issues and more besides.

Even just looking at the proposals that are currently in the pipeline, we can see that less power would mean trouble for UK business - never mind anything nasty that might be further down the line.

The UK and a few other liberal states are currently blocking the Temporary Agency Workers Directive, which would give the temporary workers the same rights as permanent workers. The UK has more temporary workers than any other EU country (700,000), and lots of businesses, particularly the smaller ones, rely on them. If the measure came through it would be more expensive to hire temp workers, reducing competitiveness and increasing unemployment. The BCC has warned strongly against this coming into force, saying that it will lead to reduced employment opportunities for those who need it the most.

France, Spain and others, backed by the EU Commission want to get rid of the derogation that allows the UK to opt-out of the EU’s 48 hour working week. The UK is able to block it through alliance with a few other member states. But under the revised Constitutional Treaty, the UK might need to either extend its list of allies or accept giving up its opt-out. The DTI estimates that losing this opt-out on the working time directive would cost the UK economy £9 billion a year.

The idea that Britain should hand over its powers, safe in the belief that the Commisison has changed its spots is ludicrous. Yes, Portuguese Commission President Jose Barroso has talked a good game, and promised a more business-friendly approach. He has even promised to roll back EU regulation. But what has actually happened?

The Commission promised a ‘bonfire of the diktats’, and talked about axing over 200 regulations. But how many have gone? Just two. The Commission last month finally managed to get rid of the “knots in wood” directive from the 1960’s and the 1968 food packaging sizes regulation. It would be fair to say that this will not transform the European economy – particularly given that the EU adopts about 1,200 pieces of new regulation a year.

There are several well intentioned free marketers in the Commission. But they seem unable to make a difference. Industry Commissioner Gunter Verheugen has taken the extraordinary step of going on the record to complain that powerful civil servants have tried to obstruct his deregulatory moves. He says that EU mandarins often take the view that “more regulation equals more Europe.”

Let’s look at the big picture. Given Europe’s chronic decline in international competitiveness relative to China and the US, the EU needs to be regulating less, not more. Is it really in the interest of British business to reduce the UK’s power to stem the flow of EU regulation? For the sake of UK business we need a referendum to call a halt to this, and force a fundamental shift towards a real reform agenda in Europe."

If we cannot achieve deregulation from the EU then, in the national interest of the United Kingdom and its people, we call on the government to allow a referendum on our continuing membership of the EU.

Creation of the EU State

2007-06-13T13:09:00.000+01:00

Paul Stepehenson is a researcher for OpenEurope and his is the second of three articles on how the EU, aided and abetted by Blair, is trying to revive, albeit under quite another name, the EU Constitution.

When France and The Netherlands voted to kill the EU Constitution, it was then said that the EU Constitution was totally dead. Many did not believe this and were sure that in due course the mummy would be removed from its sarcophagus, its bandaging unwound, the stake removed from its heart and the silver bullet excavated from its brain. Thus revived it would, by the use of smoke and mirrors, obfuscation and lies, be represented to the people of the EU as an amending treaty, unworthy of a referendum.

"Yesterday's Times ran quite a good cartoon featuring Brown and Blair as magicians struggling to pull a rabbit out of the EU hat.

The analogy is bang on. The key to a good magic trick is to distract the attention of the audience. And that is exactly what the government is up to in Brussels.

Government spinners keep briefing hacks that it is fighting with its back to the wall to see off all kinds of plots to give the EU more power. The story for domestic consumption is that although the talks are awfully tough, the Government is successfully handbagging its EU partners into submission in the negotiations.

This is mostly baloney. By focusing the attention on a few of the more contentious issues, voters and the media lose sight of everything that the Government is giving up without a fight. Most notably: the creation of a powerful new EU President; a new EU Foreign Minister who would "automatically" speak for us at the UN; and a new voting system which would reduce the UK’s voting strength by about 30%.

While Tony Blair will sign up to the broad outline of a deal in June, Gordon Brown will be in charge of the nitty-gritty of negotiations in the run up to December when the revised Constitutional Treaty is expected to be finalised. In order to avoid holding a referendum, he is desperate for headlines along the lines of "Brown bashes Brussels". He will proclaim "victory" and then sign up to the new treaty.

The Government is already starting to talk about what its immutable 'red lines' are. In reality, most of them are already agreed.

Brown will demand that the symbols of the EU like the flag are dropped. But then hey, they already exist. The reference to the primacy of EU law over national law will be 'axed'. But then most of Brussels thinks that this legal principle is already in force.

Ditto the charter of fundamental rights.

Although most other countries would like it in the new text - it is not a prerequisite. (It is after all, already coming into force by the back door - see for example the creation of the Fundamental Rights Agency in Vienna.)

As The Sun reported yesterday the Germans have already agreed with Blair to ditch the Charter from the revised Constitutional Treaty in order to bag a far greater prize - the abolition of national vetoes over justice and home affairs.

Vetoes are a tricky subject for the Government - they represent a clear transfer of power to the EU level - and clearly cross what is becoming known as the "referendum threshold". In all likelihood the Government will give up the veto in some of the less high profile areas but it will want to be seen to make a stand in areas such as Home Affairs.

The deal is already pretty clear:

The Government will give up the veto on home affairs, but in order to hide this they will be allowed to resort to that old mainstay of EU politics - impenetrable jargon. They will probably secure some sort of fudge: for instance, giving up the veto and replacing it with an "emergency brake", a "joker card" or an "opt-in". Despite what they claim, this will not be as effective a safeguard as a good, old fashioned "no". Just ask yourselves, if it was, why would pro-integration EU leaders be so happy to accept it? If it was really as good as a veto, why bother?

What this argument over vetoes and opt-outs will do however, is act as a smokescreen to distract us from the real meat of the issue. Quite simply, if provisions on justice and home affairs are included in the new treaty as a community competence, it will hugely increase the control of unelected EU judges and bureaucrats over crime, policing and immigration policies.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) would become the highest criminal court in the land - something which has been resisted by successive UK governments over the years. The Commission would be able to take the UK to the ECJ if it disagreed with its criminal law and procedures - giving EU judges an unprecedented license to change the UK's substantive criminal law. EU bureaucrats have already signalled that they would use this to force us to change our laws on detaining terror suspects.

EU member states would no longer be in charge of proposing which areas of criminal law they want to cooperate on - this would be left to the Commission to decide and drive forward.

Perhaps even more significantly, the UK would also lose its ability to agree extradition treaties with other countries such as the USA or Australia. Our lopsided treaty with the US is a disgrace - but at least we can vote to change it. Once Brussels runs things you can forget it. And don't think for a second that Brussels is better at standing up to the US - have a look at the even more lopsided 'deal' the EU has just done on air travel.

Similarly, we could see the loss of our ability to agree deportation agreements with countries such as Libya. Any ruling on their legitimacy would also be overseen by judges in Luxembourg rather than the House of Lords.

One argument about vetoes which the Government has skilfully managed to avoid to date is the question of the veto over aspects of foreign policy.

Agreeing to set up an EU Foreign Minister would probably also entail agreement to introduce several new areas of majority voting in foreign policy. For example, the original version of the Constitution proposed that votes on policies or actions proposed by the EU Foreign Minister would not be subject to national vetoes. Funny how the government are not saying whether they will reverse that...

In fact this is an old wound. The UK Government strenuously opposed the inclusion of majority voting on foreign policy in the old EU Constitution. Jack Straw said that this clause was "simply unacceptable", but ended up rolling over and accepting it. Unsurprisingly, we haven't heard anything from the Government on this issue in the current negotiations.

The effort to play down the importance of the text leads Europhiles to make some curious arguments. On the World at One yesterday a spokesman for the Centre for European Reform argued that a referendum was no longer necessary because the new version only contains about 20% of the old text.

Leaving aside the percentage figure, (actually it contains all the important things, just none of the original bumf), this is a pretty extraordinary argument - especially when you remember that voters in France and Holland overwhelmingly voted against these ideas. Would it be OK if Gordon Brown lost the next election in a record landslide defeat, but then demanded to stay in office, promising to carry out only 20 percent of the Labour manifesto? It won't wash.

Over the next six months we can expect plenty of spin, lies and tactics of distraction form the Government over the revised Constitutional Treaty. That the talks are being conducted behind closed doors and away from public scrutiny will give them a big advantage. That's why we need to step up the pressure now, so we can force them to keep their promises by holding an open and democratic debate backed up by the promised referendum."

Anyone who doubts that the EU is, by the present revival of its Constitution by another name, striving for de facto and de jure statehood should contemplate the The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, signed at Montevideo, Uruguay on 26^th. December 1933.

Although only signed by nineteen Latin-American nation states, Article 1 of the Convention sets out the four criteria for statehood that have frequently been recognized as an accurate statement of customary international law:

“The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:

(a) a permanent population;

(b) a defined territory;

(c) government; and

(d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”

The EU already has the first two. The institutions, with the powers and competences conferred upon them by the EU Constitution, of the EU are all those that any State requires to exercise the untrammeled political authority of a government. And the creation of an EU Foreign Minister, backed by an obligation on members to support common EU Foreign policy, fulfills the last requirement.

It is vital that we have a referendum on what Blair is plotting to foist upon us.

Stop! Traitors at Work

2007-06-13T12:33:00.000+01:00

Conservative Home has an excellent series of articles on how the EU Constitution is to be unwrapped from its mummy's shroud, the stake removed from its heart and the silver bullet excavated from its brain.

We reproduce here the first of these articles by Nick O'Brien, Director of OpenEurope.

"Here we go again. EU leaders are meeting in two weeks time to re-launch the constitutional treaty which was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

In fact, delegates appointed by the 27 leaders have been meeting behind closed doors since the start of the year, trying to thrash out a deal, and the outline of the new version is already starting to become apparent from leaks.

Their collective strategy for pushing through the revised text is even clearer. For once, the EU has learned from its mistakes. There will be no more referendums, and no more negotiating in public. There will be no fireworks. Unlike last time, EU leaders won’t go around boasting about how it is “the capstone of a federal state” or “the birth certificate of a United States of Europe”.

But the contents will be largely the same. As Angela Merkel explained in a leaked letter to other heads of Government, the plan is “To use different terminology without changing the legal substance” while making a number of “presentational changes.”

Such cynicism isn’t confined to Angela Merkel. A group of EU “wise men” including Chris Patten have already published a draft of an “amending treaty” in which they propose to “take over almost all the innovations contained in the constitutional treaty” and “only leave aside the symbolic changes that were introduced by the constitutional treaty – such as the title of the treaty and the symbols of the Union.”

The Government seems to think this will be enough to fool the public. Tony Blair now argues that “If it is not a constitutional treaty so that it alters the basic relationship between Europe and the member states, then there isn’t the same case for a referendum.”

But hang on a minute. The PM never did accept that the original constitution changed our relationship with the EU. When he originally announced the promise of a referendum in April 2004 he insisted that “The treaty does not and will not alter the fundamental nature of the relationship between member states and the European Union… Parliament should debate it in detail and decide upon it. Then, let the people have the final say.”

Brown is striking a eurosceptic pose. For example, the Sunday Times yesterday reported that Brown will fight off the attempt to bring back the full constitutional treaty by, er… signing up to a new “treaty” which, although it has most of the same proposals, will no longer have the word “constitution” in the title. Pretty tough negotiator, eh?

It won’t wash for a single second. So much of what is going to be in the revised constitutional treaty is exactly the same as in the first one.

Institutional changes which are almost certain to reappear include an EU President; an EU Foreign Minister and Diplomatic Service; and a new voting system which would cut the UK’s power to block legislation by 30%.

The Government argues that the new version will no longer have the “characteristics of a constitution”. But what sort of document is it that sets up a President and Foreign Minister and determines how decisions are made, if not a “constitution”?

In reply to a question from Kate Hoey just after the French and Dutch “no” votes Jack Straw made it clear that you could only see an EU president and EU Foreign Minister set up in “constitutional” treaty:

KH: I am sure the Foreign Secretary would agree that among the things that are synonymous with the European Union are back-door and back-room deals. Will he assure me that one matter that he would certainly submit to a referendum is the creation of a Foreign Minister and a European President?

JS: Those points are central to the European constitutional treaty, and of course I see no prospect of their being brought into force, save through the vehicle of a constitutional treaty.

It’s blindingly obvious that these proposals are constitutionally significant. Setting up an EU President would mean setting up another powerful, independent Brussels institution. Control of the 3,500 civil servants in the Council Secretariat would give the President a substantial power base – and the president would have an incentive to expand its own powers. Indeed, the new President would fundamentally change the nature of the legislative process in Brussels. Instead of negotiations between the supranational Commission and a national head of Government (with a vested interest in protecting the rights of member states), negotiations would in future take place between one unelected, independent Brussels institution and another.

Many also see the President as a stepping stone to a US-style President of Europe. The author of the constitutional treaty, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, has already suggested that the new President of the Council will later be merged with the President of the Commission, and be directly elected. Nicolas Sarkozy has also recently backed making the President directly elected. During the negotiations on the constitution Jack Straw said the UK “would have preferred to have explicit separation of those two posts”. The UK Government tried to block an amendment which allows the two posts to be merged, but it later gave way.

The new treaty is likely to include the “EU Foreign Minister” proposed in the original constitution. In itself this would create a powerful supranational official, and give the Commission a role in foreign policy which the UK has long opposed. Former Europe Minister Denis MacShane has predicted that “The voice of the future Union Minister for Foreign Affairs will be louder than that of the ministers of each nation.” It’s not clear what would happen if member states took a different line to the Foreign Minister, which creates the dangerous possibility of sending mixed messages to the rest of the world.

However, on top of this, the constitutional treaty also proposed that the EU Foreign Minister should have various new powers – for example: to “automatically” speak on behalf of member states in key international meetings like the UN security council; to make proposals which would then be decided on by majority vote; and to run a powerful independent EU Diplomatic Service. During the negotiations on the constitution the UK opposed all three of these ideas, but later gave way.

The UK will insist on changing the name of the “Foreign Minister” (and possibly the ‘President’) to something less emotive in the new treaty, but it is not clear whether the UK will also insist on taking away the substantive powers which would come with the roles. As Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has pointed out: “as long as we have more or less a European Prime Minister and a European Foreign Minister then we can give them any title.”

The problem with the EU is that there is never a plan B. They just try to stuff plan A down voters throats again and again until they swallow it. And because the EU is so complicated, and so un-transparent, they often get away with it.

As Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker famously explained:

“we decide on something, we leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don’t know what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.”

That’s why we need to start kicking up a fuss now. The debate about the new constitutional treaty is a significant fork in the road. If the leaders of the EU get away with pushing it through without referendums then they will press on with further steps to deeper integration.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has already said that while the new text will cover “the most urgent priorities… in the longer term, root-and-branch reforms remain essential.” European Commission President Jose Barroso has hinted that once the revised constitutional treaty is in place, “nothing rules out the possibility of certain more ambitious aspects later on.”

So what sort of Europe do we want? Is it a Europe where failing policies like the CAP are allowed continue for decades? A Europe which maintains unfair trade barriers against developing countries? A Europe which is long on rhetoric about the environment, but allows emissions to rise in practice? A Europe where decisions go on being made in secret, by people who are not elected - and seemingly cannot be punished even if they are corrupt?

EU leaders should have changed course after the French and Dutch referendums, but they didn’t listen. We need an opportunity to finally end “integration by stealth” once and for all - and make a fresh start. "

This reminds us of the shameless and brazen nature of the EU diktat. The EU Nabobery is utterly undemocratic, with an attitude of 'if the people disgree, change the people'.

All remotely interested in maintaining the United Kingdom as a free and independent nation should pay attention to what is about to be done in our name and then resist it.