Gale’s View – 5 March, 2008:This is the week when Gordon Brown's Government uses the power of the Whips Office and Mr. Blair's majority to force the Treaty of Lisbon Bill through the Commons against the wishes of most of the British people.
At the last General Election each major political party, Labour, Liberal and Conservative, promised a referendum on a new or revised European Constitution. That means that effectively every sitting Member of Parliament has made a pledge that the Labour and Liberal parties are now seeking to wriggle out of.
The fig-leaf with which Gordon Brown is seeking to cover the tatters of his modesty is that the Lisbon deal is not a constitution but a treaty. This is in spite of the fact that many European Heads of State, senior politicians and reputable commentators have all indicated that the Lisbon Treaty is the European Constitution in all but name with the flags and anthem removed!
The sub-plot - and I use the word "plot" advisedly - now being peddled by some of my Kent Labour colleagues is that the treaty doesn't really matter because we can opt out of anything that we don't like! Not only is that in itself patently untrue but we are heading to surrender our right to veto European lunacies across a whole range of matters that can and will affect our everyday lives.
There are those, including even some within the Conservative Party, who say that this is "yesterday's issue" and that nobody is interested in the European argument any more. I beg to differ. Last autumn I and my supporters hand-delivered an EU referendum leaflet to just about every household in North Thanet. My colleagues Laura Sandys in Thanet South and Charlie Elphicke in Dover did likewise. The response was overwhelming. Notwithstanding the fact that the response section of the card was, for reasons of cost, unstamped literally thousands of people went out and paid the postage, in many cases first class, or drove from Herne Bay and Cliftonville to my office in Birchington, to return the cards. A further three and a half thousand signed, in a couple of weeks, the petition that I then presented to parliament.
More recent polls have indicated that the overwhelming majority of voters, including those who wish to support the European Union, want a referendum on this issue.
Once again it looks as though it will be left to the House of Lords to mount a damage-limitation exercise but there is an alternative. East Kent does not have local government elections in May but very many parts of the Country do and huge numbers of people will, therefore, be heading to the polls. Gordon Brown has the opportunity to call a General Election on the same day and to prove that he is right and we are wrong and to secure his own mandate instead of riding on Mr. Blair's coat tails. I wonder if he has the courage to go for it!
5 comments:
Rather than simply give you my opinion, I thought it might be
helpful to give you two overviews of what is actually proposed, one
by supporters and one by opponents. If you're interested you can decide for yourself whether the treaty is mildly helpful or the end of national independence, and also whether it differs by a little or a lot from the previous Constitutional proposal.
First, there's an analysis and comparison of treaty and Constitution at the pro-EU site
www.federalunion.org.uk/news/2007/07062reformtreatyanalysis.shtml
Then, the same from the hostile Open Europe site
www.openeurope.org.uk/research/comparative.pdf
My opinion remains that the package itself is relatively minor and not in itself worth a referendum, but that the EU has indeed changed significantly since 1975, so I'm quite tempted by the LibDem proposal to have a referendum on the EU as a whole, including this package.
But if the subject interests you, I hope you'll have a look for
yourself at the rival views.
It seems to me, Councillor, that the country had lost its constitutional way long before postwar immigration and "Europe"
But in my opinion it is in that era, of atrophy of innate constitutional understanding, that any debate should start.
I think there was a House of Lords ruling in about 1917 which altered our system of development of natural justice.
By the time the Queen was crowned, the Coronation was more spectacle than subtance in the minds of the population.
The statement now that the Queen is Fount of All Justice in Mercy (one of our bulwarks against dictatorial government or any source of legislation other than the Realm)seems to be met with derision.
Constables, who swear in as independent ministerial officers of the Crown, tug their forelocks to the Home Secretary and seek to ease their own existences by appealing to public opinion anonymously on web "Ooooo all the paperwork our masters make us do"
yet they swore in to recognise but one master ... the Judge in Open Court.
If they don't want to do paperwork that falls outside the obligations of their oaths of duty guess what ? Don't bleat about rights to strike. Don't court public opinion like mortally inferior pus.
Honour the oath and constitution and refuse to do the paperwork at your discretion empowered by the Crown.
But as Sir Robert Mark said over thirty years ago "We no longer recruit the most able but the most malleable to be police officers"
And the erosion continued stealthily. Home Office key competencies. Civilianization of coroners officer duties. removal of Magna carta rights of trial by peers (such as in the protection from harassment act).
Gradually instead of being a subject, a componemnt of the Crown from whom govt police and judiciary hold authority ... IE they are OUR SERVANTS
Gradually we have become citizens and the police and govt our masters.
When we sing of our constitution we sing "Britons never never never will be slaves"
But we have been slowly shifted to being servants where once we were masters.
And you know the Ex Thanet Police Chief who wrote in Thanet Gazette ... People should be in no doubt we are not a service we are a force of social control ??
No he fecking wasn't.
One man stood up and said "I will never never never be your slave"
And he appears to have been transported to the colonies ?
The Queen should have done her duty and we would never enter, beyond trade agreements, into Europe.
This is the age of loss of reason. The age where people take Ms Chakrabarti, of Liberty, seriously. The age of prescription and imposition ... such as the "Multicultural experiment" or Thatcher's "Monetarist experiment"
Winston Churchill warned of Labour (although it turned out to be Thatcher first) making the police into a Gestapo to impose their policies.
Let us start the debate with the unrepealable nature of our constitutional monarchy. We are not even legally in Europe.
Thankyou Cllr Green. I would suspect that if we had a referendum on the EU as a whole, we would quickly find ourselves out of it.
David we voted for an economic community and I find myself like many of my friends from all over Europe resenting the fact that I am now paying for an extra tier of government without this being put to a vote
Well Michael, you will share my disappointment that Manifesto pledges no longer mean a thing and that the Labour Party has demonstrated that the last thing our political masters will do is actually represent the views of the people THEY represent! The age of the professional politician who knows best is with us both nationally and locally. What is democracy, a mandated dictatorship?
Post a Comment