Remember those words, ones uttered by William Hague? Since forming the government with the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party - the party that prior to the EU elections in 2009 stated that a vote for them was a vote for 'change' - have ceded yet more powers to the EU and in the future, whether they like it or not, will be ceding even more. Some change!
Having pressed the eurozone to accept the remorseless logic of monetary union and integrate; the government’s thinking appeared to be that Britain could stand outside mainstream Europe and repatriate certain powers in peace. Like being one of ten in a group of twenty seven forms a majority? The penny belatedly now appears to have dropped whereby Cameron has realised that the UK could - and probably will be - sidelined from all decision making within the EU, so he has promptly dropped his avowed pledge to repatriate powers and is desperately trying to ensure that the UK influence over developments is heard.
Sarkozy is on record stating that European countries should surrender some of their vetoes and grant Brussels elements of control over their budgets in order that the EU's functions may be improved and thus guard against reckless spending. Cameron has made much of the fact that any treaty change would present opportunities for repatriation of powers, yet as stated above he now rescinds that promise and appears to go out of his way to have any resultant referendum by suggesting that integration and further financial measures could be made without a treaty change. It is interesting that since this story about Cameron agreeing to back-track on repatriation broke, not much has been heard from the group let by Eustice and Leadsom - which lends 'grist to the mill' that this group were no more than a Cameron sanctioned sop to his supposed eurosceptic colleagues.
To compound the mess we are in, economically, from Open Europe we learn - via Twitter - that they quote an IMF spokesman thus: "the European authorities are exploring bilateral loans to the IMF...such loans could indeed come from member country central banks." Sheesh! (I'm about to start on my second bottle!)
Ever closer union is the aim of the EU - and we are surely being guided down that path by the like of Cameron, Hague and the rest of the political elite. If ever there was a time for direct democracy in this nation, it surely is now!
4 comments:
The simple solution is to redefine the voting powers. The Eurozone gets one vote and each country outside the Eurozone get one. That way, if more countries join the Euro, Britain's influence increases instead of decreases.
It was interesting the low level liar low-life the Tories fielded on Channel 4 News this evening against Farage. (Almost as startling as that so-called news-source source actually recognising UKIP's existence).
This is crunch time for the Tories and they seem to know it.
Any senior figure appearing against Farage this evening must surely have been sunk for good, hence the sacrificial lamb (from Shropshire I believe and billed as a protegé of Osborne, who as NF pointed out was the first senior EU politician to plug EU fiscal union.
Enjoy the next bottle!
Politicians have always been fundamentally dishonest but if you listened carefully and parsed what was said, or what wasn't said, you could make a reasonable guess at what their intentions were. Sadly Blair wrecked that, as he did so much else, seguing into outright lying by having pretend policies and pretend information that could be conveniently dropped when their function was fulfilled. We should have listened and thought a bit more when Cameron proclaimed himself to be the heir to Blair, he is even more dishonest and disingenuous with an even greater propensity for pretence.
DH: The EU can use whatever voting system they like - as long as the UK is not involved!
MC: I did!
PC: Very perceptive comment re Cameron and Blair!
Post a Comment