Rescuing
Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected
Dictatorship
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Spin,
not face-to-face confrontations with the voters, is the
Government's chosen method of communication. Ordinary people
are dangerous. Ordinary people might ask a question which
throws a politician 'off message'; the Cabinet member might
reveal himself or herself to be a human being like us, and
not a programmed android. Worse still, he or she might tell
the truth.
Ann
Leslie - Daily Mail, September 16, 2004
Blair
wants to leave his mark on history - looks more like a stain
to me.
Peter
Thorndyke, Diss, Norfolk - Daily Mail, May 23, 2005
I
know I'm me - why do I need an ID card?
"Sorry,
officers, I don't have an ID card. I never applied for one.
It seemed a bit steep at 300 quid. I do have my free passport,
my driving licence and my London freedom travel pass, each
with my photograph. I have my NHS medical card, with its
lengthy number, given me at birth, my RAF service book with
my Armed Forces number, and a chit authorising me to wear
a few gongs -including a General Service Medal with Malaya
bar, for fighting communist terrorists on behalf of my country,
or so they told me.
"I've
also got various credit cards and store cards, all with
my signature on the back, generally good for buying the
everyday requrements for life as well as the odd luxury.
If you decide to arrest me, I suppose I'll have to be photographed
and given another number, besides my PINs.
"I'm
afraid I haven't got a pension book; it was taken away."
"By
thieves, sir?"
"No
... well, not exactly. By the Government. By the way, may
I see your warrant cards please, gentlemen?"
Oh
dear, they've disappeared.
E. Harry Gumer, Romford, ESSEX - Daily Mail, June 1, 2005
NO
means NO
When
does NO mean MAYBE?
When it's not the answeer the EU wants.
With
the courageous French NON resounding
in their ears, shabby, undemocratic self-interested leaders
of Europe propose ignoring the part of their precious constitution
that requires ratification by all members and continuing
without one of the biggest founder members to prevent derailing
the gravy train.
As
in Ireland, they refuse to accept any NO votes, ignoring
the will of the people, and re-stage votes until they can
engineer the 'correct' answer. Sadly, Foreign Secretary
Jack Straw dances to their tune like a puppet on a string.
With tactics such as these, how can anyone really believe
the EU has our interests at heart. Letter
from Steve Penny, Kingsnorth, Kent - Daily Mail, June1,
2005
Surely
the French result makes the £1million the EU recently
spent on a treaty signing ceremony seem a trifle premature
and extravagant. Letter
from Keith Wiseman, Bury, Lancs. - Daily Mail, June1, 2005
|
May
11, 2005 (741 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,610 US - 88 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
May
31, 2005 (761 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,657 US - 89 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
June
3 , 2005 (765 days since war ended)
Death
Toll: 1,670 US - 89 UK - >6,164? Iraqi - >17,300 civilians
- 25 media
Britain
has traditionally been one of the biggest net contributors
to the EU because we do not get as much money back from
Brussels in farm and regional subsidies as our rivals.
According
to Treasury figures, between 1995-2002, Britain's average
contribution taking the rebate into account, was £2.6billion,
or £43.55 per head of population.
The
French - the biggest recipient of farm subsidies - contributed
£1billion a year or £16.08 per head of their
population.
|
Now
for the British revolution
Anthony
Browne - Europe Correspondent for The Times - says the French
model has failed. Britain must now show the way forward and save
the EU by her example
The
Spectator - June 4, 2005
BRUSSELS
You
might feel safe reading your Spectator, confident that
you will die in bed, but I can reveal that yet another world war
is about to break out across Europe, that genocide is stalking
the land, and Islamist terrorists are about to blow up innocents
by the trainload.
I
know this is going to happen, because Dutch MEPs warned of it
in a TV commercial. Archive footage of Jews being herded on to
trains, of mass graves from the Srebrenica massacre, and bodies
lying on tracks after the 11 March train bombing in Madrid were
used to warn the Dutch what would happen again if Europe didn't
get its constitution.
Before
you head for the bomb shelter, remember that Euro-enthusiasts
are not infallible. They said countries joining the euro would
boom, but the only thing that exploded is unemployment. They warned
us that the British economy would collapse if we didn't join the
euro. We didn't, and the British economy is in the best shape
ever. So now that the constitution is being killed off, we can
probably be sure of peace in our time.
In
a real world, the only connection between Hitler and the constitution
is the way referendums are abused to give a veneer of legitimacy
to power-grabs. Until now, there has been little pretence that
they are genuine consultations; only one supporting a policy that
has already been decided.
The
first reaction this time was straight from the old school, with
Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU's current President, insisting that
Non really meant Oui, and countries which voted wrongly would
just have to vote again to get the 'right answer'. But the shock
as the European project crashes into the will of the people is
so large this time round that few believe it can just sail on
as though nothing had happened. The EU after the French referendum
will be very different from the discredited EU before, opening
up the opportunity for Britain to save Europe from itself.
Tony
Blair laid down the challenge, saying Europe must decide on its
future direction in the quick-moving globalised world. Jacques
Chirac retorted in his television address on Tuesday that he had
not lost faith in the 'European ideal', promising more of the
French model, rejecting the 'Anglo-Saxon' view and appointing
a Napoleon-worshipping mystical French nationalist as prime minister.
The EU is dead; long live the EU.
But
it's not like that. The EU has finally foundered on its central
problem - one it has with the will of the people. Too often, European
leaders seem determined to prove Eurosceptics right in their claim
that the EU is a conspiracy of elites against their citizens.
National governments like transferring power to Brussels because
it means they can bypass their truculent national parliaments.
The German federal ministers like transferring power to Brussels
because it means they get to negotiate policies, rather than letting
the regional lander decide them.
Indeed,
Eurocrats believe it is positively good that they are not shackled
by democracy. Dalia Grybauskaite, Budget Commissioner, told me
that Brussels was better than Westminster at sending British taxpayers'
money to poor British regions like Cornwall precisely because
it isn't beholden to the vagaries of elections. Commission officials
insist that they are spreading 'best practice' around Europe in
a way that national governments would be powerless to do.
It's
long been clear that the European Union is in the middle of a
profound economic crisis. German unemployment is now at its highest
since Hitler was abusing referendums. But French and Dutch votes
have shown just how deep the EU's crisis of legitimacy is. It
is not just we Johnny-come-lately island-lubbers: even those who
founded the union are losing faith.
British
diplomats have been trying to stifle outbursts of public laughter
at the fact it is the French - the FRENCH! - who provoked the
crisis. They are laughing because it is the French more than anyone
who created the EU, and based it on their own technocratic, centralised,
elitist political model. The EU's founding fathers were Frenchmen
Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, whose aim was a United States
of Europe, and its greatest force for integration was Frenchman
Jacques Delors. The French government has a very proprietorial
interest in the Union, and has been the motor, far more than Germany,
driving forward 'ever closer union'. The Common Agricultural Policy,
the single currency and the constitution are all French creations.
For
the French the EU was a way of creating Europe in its image, a
Greater France, bankrolled by the Germans, who were still doing
penance for their grandfathers' crimes. The French federalist
model has not just meant giving the union all the trappings of
a state - a president, a parliament, a flag, a currency, a national
anthem, a motto ('united in diversity'), and a constitution which
decrees a national day - 'Europe Day shall be celebrated on 9
May throughout the Union.'
It
has also meant apeing the functions of national governments. The
EU has policies on domestic violence, accidents at home, racism,
maternity leave for adopting mothers, TV advertising, culture,
sport, consumer debt, criminal sentencing and smoking. Whether
or not these are good policies, they should be decided democratically
at the level where democracy works best. When I asked Margot Wallstrom,
the vice-president of the Commission, why the hours that doctors
work in hospitals were decided at Continental level rather than
being left to national parliaments or even hospitals, she replied:
"Are you in favour of doctors being overworked?" But
as the former Dutch Commissioner Frits Bolkestein wrote this week,
'The error that is steadfastly made is that because a cause is
worthy, it must be done by Brussels.'
The
ideological urge to make one Europe has led to a determination
to force on it one-size-fits-all policies. National parliaments
have been stripped of the right to set water quality in citizens'
taps because the French model decrees that one Europe needs one
water quality.
One
of the contentious issues in the Dutch referendum was that the
Commission has been pursuing Amsterdam Zoo for receiving public
funds, on the grounds that other zoos, such as London's, don't
get public money. Whether or not bears deserve subsidies, there
is no reason for Brussels to get involved; there is no internal
market in zoos. Last month the British government begged Brussels
to be allowed to cut VAT on the restoration of listed churches.
There is simply no European market in church restoration; the
French can't cart their churches off to Blighty for a quick low-VAT
fix. The quest for harmonisation for harmonisation's sake and
the democratic deficit produced the monstrosity of grocers being
jailed for selling loose apples in pounds rather than kilos.
The
French model means that countries have to plead for opt-outs from
policies they don't want. It is the French model that has required
all the ten countries which joined in 2004 to adopt the euro as
soon as they can. But they shouldn't be compelled: giving up their
currency should be a free decision, taken with the support of
their people.
The
crisis in Europe has shown just how badly the French model is
broken. The single currency is stuttering, its stability pact
broken, its members busting their budgets in competitive borrowing.
The economy is not up to the challenges it faces from the US,
China and India. The ludicrous CAP - which gets German taxpayers
to fund French landscape management -- is held together by the
French veto. The Common Fisheries Policy has succeeded in simultaneously
destroying both Europe's fish stocks and its fishing communities.
The EU loses credibility because its parliament must pay tribute
to French pride by decamping to Strasbourg every month. The EU
has not just lost the support of its citizens but is destroying
support for European cooperation.
The
'old Europe' model worked wonders in the fractured post-war world,
but it is still fighting the last battle, unfit for the challenges
of the 21st century. There is clearly a need for an EU - just
not this EU. In a dense patchwork of countries, so close that
if one sneezes another get sneezed on, there is a need for rules
to ensure good neighbourliness. With such intertwined economies,
ensuring open borders and common standards makes us all better
off. Working together, we can often achieve far greater things,
such as compelling Microsoft to stop abusing its near monopoly
or enticing Ukraine out of the grip of Russia, than any country
could do by itself.
As
Bolkestein wrote, the EU should 'restrict itself to core activities
: smooth the path for economic exchange between member states,
solve common problems and create advantages of scale'.
The
French were the founders of the family firm but, as with the Barclay
family at Barclays, there comes a time to relinquish control.
France created the EU, but has now become its nemesis, dragging
Europe down with it. It lost its moral authority because of its
sick economy, and lost its political authority because of the
constitutional crisis.
The
EU needs an alternative model, and there is only one country in
a position to offer it. Not Germany, not Italy, but Britain. Its
economy is thriving and its political status is high. Tony Blair
may face some difficulties, but he is newly re-elected. By contrast,
Gerhard Schroder in Germany, Jacques Chirac in France, and Silvio
Berlusconi in Italy are all mortally wounded.
Always
defensive in Europe, pleading for opt-outs, reluctantly dragging
its heels, the UK now has the possibility of taking over as the
EU's driving force. Rather than just striving to limit damage
from EU policies, it can set the EU's direction.
The
UK has recently been winning some arguments in Brussels but it
can now go much further. There is a huge appetite among Europeans
to ditch the one-size-fits-all philosophy, to swap the pretensions
of a United States of Europe for more national democracy, to decentralise
rather than harmonise, to enjoy a flexible diversity of countries
experimenting with policies to find what works rather than entrenching
worst practice.
Polls
have shown the size of the gulf that exists between the societies
that France, which almost uniquely failed to learn anything from
the collapse of communism, and many other European countries want.
The only way to accommodate such different views is heavy decentralisation.
If
the French want to have high social protection, high taxes and
fines for people working too hard, let them - but let the British
work as long as they want. Let France set up a low growth and
high unemployment 'inner core', although I expect they will be
lonely. Let them learn from their mistakes, rather than impose
them on others. In contrast, the more decentralising, more democratic,
liberal, outward-looking British vision would be far more attractive,
with support not just from across 'new Europe', but from Denmark,
Sweden, Finland, Ireland, many of the Dutch and others.
A
British takeover of the French family firm would mean a revolution
in Brussels, and would meet heavy resistance. But necessity is
the mother of invention, and the need is clearly there. As William
Pitt the Younger said in 1805, on being lauded for saving Europe
from France's previous attempt to unite it under French control:
'England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust,
save Europe by her example'.
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