The EU should stop grabbing power from democracies, stop pretending it is a bastion of liberty and modern purpose, and understand just how hated its bureacratic and self serving ways have become.
It should issue a simple statement:
“The EU is grateful to the Irish people, and to the French and Dutch people before them, for voting No to this Treaty. It understands that if the British people and others had been allowed a vote they too would have voted it down. The Constitution will be abandoned, the EU will make no further demands for the transfer of pwoers, and it wil look at ways to make itself less intrusive and less annoying to the people it wants to serve and who pay its wages”
That was a pig you saw flying past the window.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College, and has a DPhil from All Souls, Oxford. A businessman by background, he has been a director of NM Rothschild merchant bank and chairman of a quoted industrial PLC.
7 Comments
The EU will never stop the advance towards becoming a single country, that is its aim.
Edge-of-the-seat stuff though, isn’t it?
I find clicking Newsnow regularly to be most therapeutic.
I’m no fan of the EU, it strikes me as thouroughly anti-democratic, for a start.
But I thought I’d play devil’s advocate here, John, and ask you a question that I often struggle to answer.
It’s this: would the Irish Republic have been able to lower taxes, attract foreign investors etc, and enjoy a buoyant economy without all that all that lovely EU loot?
Reply: Yes
It looks like a clear ‘No’. What a fantastic week in politics.
Now that the pesky voters have had their fun, we can all watch in awe as the EU's elite display further contempt for democracy and implement the main provisions of the treaty anyway (after all, the treaty is far to important to be detained by us mere plebs). The French are already saying that the result should not prevent the others from ratifying the treaty. So much for the required unanimity!
We're already hearing about "Bridging Instruments", which will allow the treaty to come into force without Ireland as a signatory. Ireland will be brought back into the fold subsequently using a forthcoming accession treaty for further enlargement. This subsequent treaty will, of course, not require a referendum (quelle surprise).
Ainsi, nous avons maintenant le "plan B". Voila!
Bob, I work in tax, the answer to your question is definitely 'yes' (as John says), EU subsidies are largely wasted wherever they go.
The Irish Referendum will make no difference.
Already most of its ideas are being/have already been put into law.
The sheer amount of luxury and money sploshing about in Brussels blinds the EU bureaucrats/politicians to the truth: they are out of touch, corrupt and despised.
It takes a very different type of person to change their way of life as radically as you suggest.
(Repentance/Conversion/ending an addiction?)