Unlike
you, Mr Blair, we CAN distinguish myth from reality. The only
delusions are yours.
by
Melanie Phillips, Daily Mail - June 21, 2004
The
debate over the new EU constitution, says Tony Blair, will be
a 'battle between reality and myth'. He never said a truer word.
The problem is that he will be denying the
reality and propounding the myth.
The
myth is that the constitution protects Britain's powers as an
independent self-governing nation. The reality is that the Prime
Minister has just signed those powers away. The myth, as enunciated
by the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw yesterday, is that the constitution
prevents a federal EU superstate. The reality is that it turns
the EU into a 'Franken-state', an artificially created monster
with no legitimacy but with powers to destroy national self-government.
The
myth is that the minds of the British people have been taken over
by aliens in the Eurosceptic Press. The reality, however, is that
this Prime Minister is able to persuade himself of a dozen impossible
things before brushing his teeth in the morning. His appearance
on yesterday's BBC TV's Breakfast with Frost was breathtaking
in both the degree of nonsense Mr Blair was spouting and the passionate
sincerity with which he spouted it. With the sanctimonious patience
of a teacher trying to explain quantum mechanics to a remedial
class of five-year-olds with attention deficit disorder, he insisted
that Britain had retained its powers in all important areas.
But
this is simply not true. The constitution will destroy the ability
of the United Kingdom to function as an independent country. So
what can explain this astonishing dislocation of reality displayed
by the Prime Minister?
One
has to realise that Europe is absolutely central to Tony Blair's
whole political being. His world view revolves around it. He believes
that Britain has no option but to be fully signed-up to the EU
because he thinks it needs to be part of the EU power block to
defend British interests in the world. To anyone who thinks, on
the contrary, that the EU is a powerful brake on those interests
and that Britain needs to be yoked to a sclerotic, corrupt bureaucracy
like it needs a hole in the head, this is a bizarre and incomprehensible
attitude. It can surely only be fully explained by Labour's volte
face over the EU in the Eighties, when the party turned from being
a visceral opponent to a slavish supporter.
This
was because the EU's political, social and economic attitudes
provided a ready-made opposition to doctrines propounded by Mrs
Thatcher's Conservative government and gave the Labour Party -
which had dramatically lost its ideological way - a distinct political
identity. For Tony Blair in particular, hostile to old Labour
but extremely anxious to define himself as not a Conservative,
Europeanism furnished an attractively idealistic, apparently unthreatening
radical philosophy.
As
for the EU's innate sclerosis and corruption, he convinced himself
that he could deal with that by reforming it from within, just
as he had done with the Labour Party. So he staked his own place
in history on becoming the Prime Minister who ended Britain's
ambiguous relationship with Europe, bound his country tightly
and irrevocably into the EU and, by taking on the old guard, miraculously
transformed it into a global beacon of modernity and dynamism
with Britain its leading light.
Without
the EU, Mr Blair's whole political project crumbles into dust.
The stakes for him personally are therefore immeasurably high.
That is why, however preposterous the EU project has become and
however hostile the British public is to that project, he cannot
bring himself to accept its true nature - because to do so would
mean the end of his European dream.
And
that is why we are now witnessing the fantastic sight of a British
Prime Minister meekly accepting, for example, that whenever the
UN discusses an issue on which the EU has a policy, his country
may actually lose its place at the top table of the world if the
EU foreign minister chooses to chuck Britain's representative
off the UN security council and sit in his place.
That
is why this Prime Minister is calmly going along with the destruction
of the basis of English law and liberty and the end of centuries
of English jurisprudence. That is why he has agreed to a constitution
that gives EU law primacy over our own, giving a green light to
the European Court of Justice - whose overt purpose is to bring
about a superstate - to use the innumerable ambiguities created
by this constitution to limit this country's powers still further.
That
is why ge did not balk at the constitution when he lost his desperate
battle to prevent the Charter of Fundamental Rights becoming legally
binding, as a result of which we will lose our own fundamental
right in more and more areas to make our own laws. That is why,
on issue after vital issue, his 'red lines' turned into transparent
fig leaves, feeble fudges or a total surrender of Britain's fundamental
interests.
Of
course, it is extraordinary that a British Prime Minister has
been so supine as to have given all these powers away. In any
rational universe, any one of these defeats should have been enough
reason to say no to this constitution. But on Europe, Tony Blair
is a blazing zealot. Nothing, simply nothing, can be allowed to
get in the way of his overarching vision of Britain at the heart
of the European project.
The
fact that this project is inherently undemocratic counts for nothing.
The fact that many already think it is against our political and
economic interests counts for nothing. Accordingly, his capacity
for self-delusion is unlimited. for to accuse him of lying to
the nation is to miss the point. He genuinely believes that what
he is saying is true; genuinely believes that he has acted in
the interests of the nation and that the constitution presents
no threat at all.
And
he genuinely believes that he has fought a mighty battle and successfully
defended his 'red lines', despite the fact that it is plain for
all to see that Britain has once again been flattened by the steamroller
of European federalism. He believes that the only reason the public
is overwhelmingly opposed to the constitution is because the public
is overwhelmingly deluded. Accordingly,, he believes that once
he explains that every supposed constitutional threat is actually
an unrivalled blessing, people will flock, weeping with gratitude,
to vote 'yes' in the referendum.
It
us very much part of Mr Blair's character to believe that there
is no problem in the world which cannot be solved by the force
of his own charisma which, once unleashed upon a dazzled audience,
will inevitably defeat the forces of unreason. But the public
is not hostile because it has got the constitution wrong, but
because it has got it right. The Euro-fanatics are losing the
argument simply because their case does not for a moment stand
up to scrutiny.
For
Mr Blair, Europe is a delusion too far. Sensible, hard-headed
people are against him. Captains of industry are speaking out
against the threat the EU poses to Britain's interests. Some 100
Labour MPs - by no means all of them from the Left - are today
forming a campaigning group. Labour Against The Superstate.
The
centre of political gravity has shifted. The Prime Minister is
going to lose the referendum argument for the simple reason that
he is deeply, dogmatically and dangerously wrong.
