A follow up on the yesterday’s article about the EU constitution. In today’s Telegraph’s opinion section, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is concerned that “while we liberate Iraq, Europe is busy planning to enslave us”:
The EU will no longer be a treaty organisation in which member states agree to lend power to Brussels for certain purposes, on the understanding that they can take it back again. The EU itself will become the fount of power, with its own legal personality, delegating functions back to Britain. Draft Article 9 puts Brussels at the top of the pyramid. “The Constitution will have primacy over the law of Member States,” it says.
The new order may also be irreversible. Article 46 stipulates that the terms of secession from the EU must be agreed by two thirds of the member states. In other words, one third can impose intolerable conditions.
We can already see the impact of the EU fiasco in handling the Iraq crisis:
The EU will have the power to “co-ordinate the economic policies of the member states” and – showing some chutzpah given what happened over Iraq – “define and implement a common foreign and security policy, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy”.
And there is a bit about, Tony Blair, our hero:
Tony Blair was slow to see the threat. Downing Street at first dismissed the convention as a talking shop, but woke up when the French, Spanish, German and Italian governments gave it irresistible authority by appointing to it their foreign or deputy prime ministers.
The Government then fell back to a second self-deception, imagining that France and Spain would join Britain in blocking any major assault on national prerogatives.
[…]
None of this has happened. France has abandoned Britain, and her own historical attachment to a Europe where national capitals always have the whip hand over Brussels. They seem to be accepting federalism as the price of relaunching the broken Franco-German axis. As for the Spanish, they are silent.
Scary stuff, please go and read the whole article.
I can just see old Adolf in the fires of hell looking up onto Britian shouting with joy how his compatriates in the Fatherland and that frog infested shit-hole nextdoor have finally got the Brits F**ked!
Quite the reverse of the US federalism, eh?!
And the best of British Luck to you all trying to escape that iron net.
Another argument for removing the Single European Act, right now, from the British statute books.
After Iraq we can liberate Europe!
If they won’t listen we can use our new found might to remind them just who is in charge of the new world order. After all, it was UK and America that liberated Europe in ’44. With our new Eastern European allies we can go teach them Froggie Commies a lesson they and their lager swilling cousins to the north will never forget!
Which is of course – if you don’t have a nuclear bomb, then you’re next matey and we know where you live.
(Maybe I got that wrong… check this – ED)
After Iraq we can liberate Europe!
If they won’t listen we can use our new found might to remind them just who is in charge of the new world order. After all, it was UK and America that liberated Europe in ’44. With our new Eastern European allies we can go teach them Froggie Commies a lesson they and their lager swilling cousins to the north will never forget!
Which is of course – if you don’t have a nuclear bomb, then you’re next matey and we know where you live.
(Maybe I got that wrong… check this – ED)
I’m sorry I’ll say that again! :0)
Here’s to the UK — may they pass an Act of Parliament unilaterally withdrawing from the EU… *and dare the EU to try and enforce their will.*
I rather think you’ll find allies. –eg–
And that bastard Vitorino is one of the main forces behind this crap…What a disgrace for Portugal.
Scary stuff indeed; and I can’t imagine why such a large fraction of British society remains prepared to give up the jewel of British sovereignty in exchange for EU membership. It’s objectively nuts.
You guys are about 140 years or so behind us over here in the states. Lincoln (a.k.a. the first American Lenin) effictively destroyed the union of states and rebuilt it as an American Empire, with each state subservient to the federal government.
My advice? Leave. Leave now while you still have the chance.
Michael
The Telegraph article was, indeed, scary stuff and I can understand the sheer puzzlement of US readers wondering how on earth we in the UK are stumbling into this.
And that is, I would suggest, the problem – the trap is closing so slowly that most people, beset by increasingly busy lives, simply lack the time and energy to notice what is happening to their country.
This, of course, is aided by the pro-EU BBC (most people’s source of news) which simply does not cover stories such as this unless under extreme pressure. Naturally, when it does, it applies as much spin as it thinks it can get away with.
We’re in this mess because we have been lied to by our politicians, broadcasters and Europhiliac chattering classes and, for the most part, are simply unaware of what is happening.
G Cooper,
While I agree with you, I do wonder at the term “chattering classes,” which I’ve heard before in Samizdata fora.
May I ask: What, exactly, do you mean by that?
Ah – two countries divided by a common language – sorry about that, Geo!
My definition of ‘the chattering classes’ implies semi-educated airheads with opinions acquired by osmosis from the liberal broadsheets and the BBC -people whose empty, shallow chatter passes fashionable bien pensant wisdom from one to another across plates of the latest cullinary fad, like a deadly communicable disease, always without with the troubling intrusion of thought.
Then again, I might be wrong…
Michael – In my year and a half of reading blogs, that is one of the dumbest things I have ever read. Lincoln = Stalin HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Lincoln = Stalin? Is that like Bush = Hitler?
Interesting bit of parsing around the word “constitution”. I notice that the US Const basically enumerates the specific powers available to the government, and then says that governenment may go no further. (ie “the gov may not/shall not etc”). Americans rightly view the Const as a bulwark against the intrusion of government. War, of course (and democrats) have slightly eroded those protections over time. But there is a distinctly adversarial relationship with the government, and countless legal minds spend their days determining the exact state of the relationship between the government and the governed.
When I read the draft of the EU const, it is clear that they are reserving ALL rights to the (unelected) state. ie “The EU will provide for the welfare of all” or some such lunacy. That is an open-ended ticket to amass vast, centralized powers over every facet of each citizen’s life.
The EU could simply say that for the welfare of all, we need to develop some new technology initiatves. Well, first thing the EU Parliament would do is buy shares in the favored companies, then tell their dentist to do the same, and finally, raise taxes on competing technologies to fund the new stuff and pay bribes. VERY scary, indeed.
Welcome to the EU, Josef K. I mean England.
G Cooper, I don’t usually disagree with you, but I believe the definition of the chatterati is not ill-educated people, but people who had a liberal education (they’re usually lawyers, like Tony and Cherie Blair, successful writers, broadcasters, actors etc; not too many dentists or car mechanics), who have the leisure to sit around chattering judgementally setting the world to rights and imposing solutions according to their far left socialist leanings. These people are divorced from reality, living in their own imaginations and taking their lessons from the BBC, the Guardian and the Independent. Thus, to close the circle, Robert Fisk is a fine example of the chatterati class.
G Cooper, I agreed with all the rest of your post – especially about the exchange of high-minded opinions over the latest food fad. But I don’t think they’re semi-educated; many of them have good degrees, but absorbed all the propaganda their socialist lecturers put into their empty heads.
BJW and MLD
The idea that Lincoln was a great hero who went to war to bring the liberty to the slaves is a myth. See e.g. this very moderate account by Tibor Machan. Lincon may not have been a Stalin (though Michael actually said Lenin) but the fact is that he led the U.S. into a catastrophic and unnecessary civil war that resulted into 600,000 to 700,000 deaths, appalling physical damage and the near-destruction of southern society for decades. And in the process he achieved a huge increase in central Federal power. His legacy was not a happy one.
Liberty Belle writes:
“But I don’t think they’re semi-educated; many of them have good degrees, but absorbed all the propaganda their socialist lecturers put into their empty heads.”
Oh, I really don’t think we disagree at all. I made the cardinal error of not explaining myself properly in my original post. You see, I consider those very ‘good degrees’ to be the hallmark of a poor education.
They signify that someone has been through the liberal sausage-machine, absorbed the required quantity of finely mashed socialist drivel, regurgitated it as and when required and then made their way into the world, armed with their worthless degrees, to rule the rest of us.
By my definition they are barely educated at all and I should have explained that.
This issue is being watched on the blogosphere by Iain Murray at Edge of England’s sword, David Carr here and Philip Chaston at Airstrip One.
Dave
My point was not to discuss the legacy of Lincoln, but to point out what I think is the hyperbole of the statement Lenin = Lincoln (Lenin, Stalin, details, details). Do you really think that Lincolns’ legacy is equal to that of Lenin? And if so, I am curious to know why.
Educate me. 🙂
Even if the point was not to free the slaves, wasn’t that an end result? Isn’t it pretty hard to be a libertarian without any liberty? Is the increase in federal goverment under Lincoln not balanced out a bit by the increased liberty for the slaves ( I mean, I think I would rather have the department of Homeland security than be in, actual, you know, chains.
Not that I’m at all happy about the a new goverment agency and the Patriot Act is just asinine. DNA registries? Shock, awe and horror.
OOps, I meant David, not Dave.
First the Lenin/Stalin fiasco, now this. More coffee. More work. Less posting comments.
Bye for now.
The EU draft “constitution” is only three or four pages long. Where, oh where, are our witty and merciless British fiskers?
None of you actually cared to notice, did you, the paragraph that says.
“This Constitution shall cease to apply to the State in question as from the date of entry into
force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to
in paragraph 2.”
In short, even if a withdrawal agreement *fails* to be reached, the member country that so desires it *still* leaves the European Union in just two years’ time. As clearly states in the explanatory notes accompanying in the draft:
http://european-convention.eu.int/docs/Treaty/CV00648.EN03.pdf
“while it is desirable that an agreement should be concluded between the Union and the
withdrawing State on the arrangements for withdrawal and on their future relationship, it was
felt that such an agreement should not constitute a condition for withdrawal so as not to void
the concept of voluntary withdrawal of its substance;”
As opposed to the current treaties that don’t allow such a withdrawal at all! Very amusing that.
But what is the good of facts when you propagandists only care to spew your petty phobias.
By all means stay “imprisoned” in the *current* treaties that don’t allow withdrawal, rather than sign the one which does permit you withdrawal in two years’ time. Such stupidity becomes you.
All the drafts here:
http://european-convention.eu.int/ArticlesTraites.asp?lang=EN