Meanwhile....

...one of the many outrageous legacies of 13 years of socialism is played out by the British legal system.

Garry Mann, arrested, tried and convicted within 48 hours of being found by Portuguese police in the vicinity of a riot by fans during the Euro 2004 football tournament, has had his extradition set.

The courts got this right the first time. Initially deported following a trial in which he was denied proper access to a lawyer and could not understand fully the proceedings, Mann won the first legal round when a British court ruled that he had been denied a fair trial.

Then in 2009 Mann was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant, alleging he was wanted in Portugal to serve a 2 year prison sentence - a sentence he'd been told five years previously by Portuguese authorities he wouldn't have to serve. Earlier this year the High Court decided it had no choice but to grant the extradition request. However, Lord Justice Moses stated in its judgment that he could not “leave this application without remarking upon the inability of this court to rectify what appears to be a serious injustice to Mr Mann”.

At the root of this is another example of legislation supposedly introduced to fight terrorism being used by draconian authorities to mop up relative small fry without the tiresome need to follow what most of us would consider due legal process. Mark my words: Garry Mann will not be the last thoroughly undeserved victim of Europe's fast- track extradition system.

Glenys Kinnock - Minister For Europe

How incredibly apt that we should have an unelected, troughing bureaucrat in a ministry whose job it is to manage our relationship with a load of, err...unelected, troughing bureaucrats.

I can't work out whom it says more about - the EU or ZaNu Labour.

Where's That Petrol Bomb ?

OK, what were you doing on the morning of 21st February 2008 ?

Well, I don't know about you but I was ranting. Ranting about the latest EU cover-up on MEPs' expenses.

Lib Dem Chris Davies had been allowed to see the report of an EU internal auditor. To see it he had to be a member of the relevant committee, subject himself to a biometrics test, be locked in a room and sign a confidentiality agreement. The EU was desperate to keep the report under wraps. And one year on, we now know why.

The Taxpayers' Alliance (TA) has obtained a leaked copy of the report. It is, as Chris Davies publicly stated at the time, dynamite. Via Devil's Kitchen, here are some extracts from the TA's press release, giving highlights of the report's findings.

• Serious and repeated anomalies in payments for office assistance and services, including money being paid to seemingly irrelevant firms (including a creche and a company engaged in "the trading of wood"), and to companies which on further investigation did not exist, were untraceable or had registered no financial activity in their accounts. Some MEPs were found to be paying out their full assistance allowances, but had no assistants accredited or registered with the Parliament.
• A culture of huge "bonuses" being paid to staff members or handling firms at the end of the financial year, ranging from 3 times to 19 and a half times the employees' monthly salaries.
• Loose rules which allow payments to be made without invoicing, and only require bills to be provided 12 months after payment. The audit found that less than 5% of audited accounts actually submitted the required documentation by that 12 month deadline.
• Widespread failure to comply with tax, company and social security laws. 79% of transactions that should have been subject to VAT displayed no evidence of either VAT payment or exemption. 83% of the companies through which MEPs paid their allowances for office services failed in their legal obligation to register with the Belgian national company database.
• Evidence of MEPs using their allowances and expenses to bankroll their political parties is also revealed.

Small wonder that at the time Chris Davies said "I think the allegations within this report from our own auditors should lead to the imprisonment of a number of MEPs”. By comparison this makes our own MP's look positively law-abiding, which many are but some are not. It betrays systemic, institutionalised corruption and total contempt for EU citizens.

Davies was right - if all this is true then people should be locked up.

What will happen instead, however, is a bit fat zero.

Who fancies taking to the streets ?

Sense Czech On Europe's Sense Of Humour

I think I'm falling in love with the Czech Republic.

Firstly, at the start of the year, we got a fabulous commentary from the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, whose country is just taking on the EU Presidency. He talked openly about the EU's “democratic deficit”, denied climate change and blamed the financial crisis on “immodest, over-confident politicians playing with the market”. That must have stung a few people.

And now we have a couple of Czech artists taking the Mickey out of every member country in a sculpture which has been built to stand inside the foyer of the EU presidency building in Brussels.

Apparently there's a tradition whereby the country which holds the Presidency constructs a decoration or sculpture which is displayed in Brussels during their tenure. Obviously these will usually be meaningless pieces of abstract art created at huge cost.

The Czech government commissioned a certain David Cerny, who said he would put forward something that was going to be the joint work of artists representing each of the 27 member countries.

Instead, he just got hold of a mate of his, and together they've created an "artistic map of Europe" called "Entropa", which lampoons every member country by tapping into its national stereotype.

Thus:
.....Romania is depicted as a Dracula theme park on the back of its most famous fictional character;
.....Sweden is an IKEA-style furniture flatpack;
.....Greece is on fire, because of all the riots they've had recently;
.....Holland is flooded, and all you can see are the minarets of mosques;
.....France has a banner with the word GRÈVE (French for "Strike") on it, and, best of all...
.....Britain is omitted completely, on the back of our Euroscepticism !



What a truly wonderful creation. I want a scaled-down replica.

Needless to say loads of people are failing to see the funny side, not least of all (sadly) the Czech government, who are feeling a bit miffed that they've had the wool pulled over their eyes by a 41-year-old bloke who promised to make something through cross-border co-operation and has instead hacked something together in his shed. The Bulgarians have summoned the Czech ambassador to Sofia to explain why their country is depicted as a toilet. And one EU spokesman is quoted as saying 'This is very provocative for an official building and does not seem to have been properly discussed in the appropriate forum." My God, you can't commit a bigger sin than failing to have something discussed in the appropriate forum, can you ?

It would be nice to think that the EU has got the balls to keep this sculpture in place for six months, but somehow I doubt it has. As Mr Cerny said . "We knew the truth would come out, but before that we wanted to find out if Europe is able to laugh at itself." I think I know the answer to that. Expect to see "Entropa" on Ebay in a few weeks time.

Incidentally, it's interesting to see how different news outlets are reporting this -
.....the Daily Mail clearly thinks it's a hoot;
.....Radio Prague is pretty neutral, playing it with whatever the Czech equivalent of a straight bat is;
.........and needless to say the BBC spins the indignant moral outrage line for all it's worth.

How Is This Legal ?

Via Old Holburn and Leg Iron comes news of how the government is allowing the police to log onto people’s computers and search them.

This means that the police have licence to read YOUR emails, your instant messages, your private documents (possibly containing passwords, account details etc). Without a warrant. Alternatively, they could install a “key-logging” device, so that they know what you’re typing. At any time. What’s more, this power is not just limited to the police in this country. It also applies to the authorities in any other EU country.

The safeguards, such that they are, appear to include an assertion that these measures can only be instigated in order to detect a “serious” crime, defined as one that carries a jail sentence of three years or more. And we all know what happens to "safeguards". They get changed, ignored, or conveniently forgotten. And that's only if they're any good in the first place, which these are not.

You know what stinks most of all about this particularly smelly destruction of our liberties ? It’s not that it represents a further dismantling of our freedoms and our rights to privacy in our own affairs, important though those are. It’s the way it’s being done.

You would think, would you not, that for the police to have this sort of power, they must have had it granted after full Parliamentary scrutiny and debate. And you would think that if Parliament had not given the police such authority, then acts such as hacking into our personal computers would be illegal. But no, not a bit of it. This has come about as a result of an EU directive agreed by the council of Ministers, which is as close to unaccountable as makes no difference. Under the Parliamentary system built up in the UK over hundreds of years, if politicians passed laws the public didn’t like, the public could get rid of them. What can we do if we don’t like this.? Correct; absolutely sweet nothing.

Shock Development - A European Leader With Brains

It's not our leader, of course.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has exhibited infinitely more sense than the three prize plonkers who met in London today.

Brown, Sarkozy and Barroso got together to salivate over the utterly crazy "plan" (if that's not too grand a word for it, which it probably is) to throw €200bn into the raging inferno disaster area that is the European economy. The Germans, quite understandably, do not want to know.

Merkel, it appears, wasn't invited to this madcap resurrection of discredited Keynesian lunacy, for the very good reason that the spendaholics knew she wouldn't pay the entrance fee. This is good news for the Germans, and very bad news for us.

As discussed on this blog a couple of weeks ago, Barroso's brainwave involves a few countries (mainly us) coming up with money they haven't got, to give to the European Commission, who will use it to pay for things like loft insulation in Slovakia and improved broadband access in Latvia, in the hope that this will somehow save the millions of jobs which are currently under threat in Europe in the retail, finance and manufacturing sectors.

Not surprisingly, it appears to be taking Barroso some time to organise the whip round. The Scottish Stalinist is, of course, chomping at the bit to put his hands into our pockets, but others seem a little more reluctant. The longer it goes on, of course, the more expensive it will finally be for us, owing to the fact that the pound is dropping like sales of Irish pork. The "stimulus" that was valued at £170bn two weeks ago is now costed at £174bn. And the more countries that knock it back, the more it's going to cost us.

Germany's finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, put it beautifully - "Just because all the lemmings have chosen the same path, it doesn't automatically make that path the right one." Why can't we have finance ministers like that ? Such imagery, so appropriate.

Critics of Germany claim it has far more budgetary room for manoeuvre than any other EU country. Well, of course it has; Germany hasn't landed itself up to its eyes in debt, has it ? Rocket science it ain't.

By the way, I see from Mark Mardell's blog that the Germans are allowed to drink mulled wine while they shop, free from interference from the kind of assorted fun fascists who operate in places like Norwich. That's something else they've got right over there.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, see you at the bottom of the cliff.

Swedes 2, Parsnips £1 Per Kilo

Today's Sunday Telegraph reports on the State's latest piece of mindless micro-management, this time over a few dozen parsnips.

A working landowner - Mr James Cookson - puts his leftover harvest into bags. He puts prices on the bags. He puts the bags at the end of his driveway, and next to the bags he puts an honesty box. Passers-by take what they fancy and leave their payment in the box. He makes between £5 and £10 per week, and essentially does it so that nothing goes to waste. Can anyone see the harm in this ? Can you possibly come up with any sort of objection ? No, I didn't think so. But Northumberland County Council can.

Some wretched Sate-sponsored bureaucrats who clearly have absolutely nothing to do have written to Mr Cookson, telling him that his produce has to be sold by metric weight. Under EU regulations, needless to say. And along with his warning letter, they've sent him four pages of guidance on how to conform with these piddling regulations.

Mr Cookson is quoted as saying "I have got better things to kick up a fuss about, bit it tickles my sense of humour that someone has bothered to write an official letter about something like this".

I'll tell you what - it doesn't tickle my sense of humour - not one bit. It sickens that they we're paying our taxes so that some good-for-nothing busy-body can interfere in such an utterly harmless thing. You could take the mickey out of them, but they do it themselves. They're beyond parody. Every time you think you've heard of the most ludicrous, time-wasting, intermeddling piece of twaddle, they come up with a new one which breaks all records.

Come the revolution, that's all I can say....come the revolution.

The Womble Is Confused

Being a very simple womble, I'm a little befuddled over the European Commission's "recovery plan", launched amid much trumpeting today.

The figure of 200bn Euros has been mentioned, in the context of whatever the Euro-twaddle is for "fiscal stimulation". It is hoped that it will save "millions" of European jobs. The Commission says that the money will be used to improve job training, energy efficiency, broadband access (!) and helping the car industry "go green".

Most of the money for this recovery plan - 170bn Euros - will come from the member states (some member states paying more than others, with the UK.....you know the rest). The other 30bn Euros will come from the EU, who got it from, err....the member states.

So, bear with me while I try to get my little furry head round this. The member states give 200bn Euros to the European Commission, so that the European Commission can give out 200bn Euros (doubtless minus administration costs, which will be massive) to the member states, so that the member states can use the money that was theirs in the first place to subject their own economies to "fiscal stimulation" in a way laid down by the European Commission.

One of us is completely insane - it's either me or the European Commission.

And another thing: this money, which we're going to give to the European Commission; this (mmm...let's see...170bn Euros divided by 27 member states multiplied by the let's shag the British adjustment factor)...let's say 15bn Euros.

Is that new money ? Is that in addition to the colossal amount that Brown and Darling threw down the tube on Monday ? And in addition to the £55.8bn that Dick Puddlecote reports we're already giving the EU ?

I think I'll go and lie down for a while....

Praise Be !

OK, I know I'm a grumpy old sod (in fact, Mrs Womble On Tour has reminded me of that fact again only this evening) and when it comes to the EU I'm not likely to be the first in offering praise.

I have to say though that I did give a little cheer when I heard this story about the scrapping of some rules about the shape and size of fruit and vegetables. Our beloved European rulers appear to have woken up to the fact that throwing away 20 per cent of our produce just because it's the wrong shape doesn't make a shed-load of sense.

I did get a tad frustrated when I read during the summer about the hard-working grocer in Bristol who'd been forced to throw away his consignment of kiwi fruit because they failed the size test.

We needn't get too many flags out. The most popular fruits (including kiwi fruit, actually) are still subject to some rules, which means that a retailer will have to put some sort of label on items that do not reach EU "standards". But they will at least be able to sell them. Well, it's mighty small mercy, but I'm still grateful for it.

One utterly ridiculous EU regulation down, a few thousand still to go.

Note to Hazel Blears: this is my one semi-positive post of the year. From here on in I'll be back to my usual form, showing my corrosive cynicism, my contempt for political discourse, and my hatred of politicians and everything they do and stand for. OK ?

At Least They're Consistent...

Tony Sharp at The Waendal Journal has quite rightly drawn attention to the fact that the EU have failed to get their accounts signed off. Again. As they have every year since 1994.

It's difficult to know what to add about this every year. Only a State-run organisation would be allowed to carry on like this; any private company so utterly incapable of accounting for its money would have been wound up in similar circumstances, with the directors put in prison.

To put it at its most basic, this is a body that spends about £95bn per year (of which we contribute around £7 billion) and has a staff of around 170,000 people. And yet, despite having a payroll roughly equivalent to the population of Swansea, the EU cannot get its accounts to add up in 17 different areas.

The likelihood is that this catastrophic failure in basic financial management is covering fraud, corruption and deception on a gigantic scale. And is our government going to get anything done about it ? Will our esteemed representatives deal with this with anything more than a pathetic whimper ? Will anything be any different next year ?

There May Be Trouble Ahead...

There is increasing concern amongst bloggers that the European Union is out to get us. Those with their ear to the ground can hear the unmistakable sound of the EU jackboot marching towards us. People like MEP Daniel Hannan, for instance. Since he - the great freedom-loving spy in the enemy camp - wrote his article, Iain Dale, Dizzy and the truly refreshing Old Holborn (among others) have been warning us that we may be about to have a battle on our hands.

The EU sees blogs as "a new challenge" and the European Parliament's Committee on Culture and Education has adopted a report which laments that the "status" of blog authors and publishers "is neither determined nor made clear to the readers of the weblogs, causing uncertainties regarding impartiality, reliability, source protection, applicability of ethical codes and the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuits". It goes onto recommend that the "status" (that word again) of blogs should be "clarified", and blogs should "voluntarily" (yeah, right) be labelled "according to the professional and financial responsibilities and interests of their authors and publishers". The end result would be to "encourage" the disclosure of ownership of media outlets to help to understand the aims and background of the publisher.

Which seems to be saying that anyone who has a blog should be forced to say who they are and to declare any interests they have, such that the powers that be know who we are and where we come from, and can track us down should the want to.

The EU have got a cob on with the blogosphere because they think it helped to sway the vote in Ireland on the Lisburn Treaty; a separate report notes that the Internet is a magnet for "anti-establishment opinion formers", and says that material in blogs tends to be overwhelmingly negative and is difficult to rebut because of its volume and disperate nature.

As Dan Hannan notes, it's difficult to write about this sort of thing without sounding paranoid and alarmist, but we should beware that this is how States (and let's be clear, the EU sees itself as a State) operate; one moment you get a seemingly irrelevant back-room committee using taxpayers' money to bemoan the extent of their subjects' freedom, and then before you know it people are being arrested at the Cenotaph for reading out the names of war dead, habeas corpus is being abolished and greengrocers are being forced to destroy their stocks of kiwi fruit.

So let's draw a few lines in the sand and see how long it takes for the EU to cross them: I should not have to declare who I am, what I do or what my interests are before I state my opinion on the Internet; there is already plenty of case law defining who is responsible for breach of copyright or for the publication of libellous or deflamatory material on the Web, so we don't need any more legislation; and if the Internet is providing an opportunity for previously dis-enfranchised, voiceless people to express their point of view then that's a very good thing - it's called freedom and it doesn't require State monitoring, legislation or regulation.

Man the barricades, people.

Makes Perfect Sense To Me...

At a time when there's a lot of bad news around and lots to worry about, such as the state of the economy, fuel prices, murder and mayhem in Zimbabwe etc., isn't it great to see a common-sense, consumer protection, everyone's-a-winner-except-the-capitalist-bastard news story like this one ?

Isn't a relief that there are wonderful bodies around like the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) who have the time and money available to check everyone's kiwi fuits ? Clearly Bristol is crawling with vulnerable members of society who cannot be trusted to make their own decisions about what groceries to buy, and that's why we have organisations like the RPA, backed up by the legislative might of the EU.

As I was saying to Mrs Womble On Tour only this morning, it's absolutely right and perfectly obvious that kiwi fruits have to weigh at least 62 grammes. I lie awake at night, in common I'm sure with every other do-gooder in the country, at the prospect that someone, somewhere might have been duped into buying a kiwi fruit weighing only 58 grammes. Where would we be if that ever happened ?

And where would we be without the RPA ?

Democracy, Parliament And The Lisbon Treaty

I have to admit to thinking up till now that the self-styled “referendum” on the EU Treaty was a bit of a waste of time.

For those who’ve missed it, the I Want A Referendum campaign sent a ballot paper to every registered voter in each of ten Parliamentary constituencies – that’s 415,000 people – asking them two questions:
1) Should the United Kingdom hold a national referendum on the EU’s Lisbon Treaty ?
2) Should the United Kingdom approve the EU’s Lisbon Treaty ?

I’d always thought that this amounted to little more than a stunt whose results would be as unreliable as they were predictable. It was obvious that there’d be a majority in favour of a referendum, and against approving the treaty. Why ? Because people who felt strongly that there should be a referendum were far more likely to respond than those who didn’t; you’re much more likely to go to the trouble of responding to this kind of thing if you’re driven by a belief that you’re being disenfranchised than you are if you’re content with the government’s position. And if you couldn’t give a monkey’s either way, perhaps driven by pure apathy, then you’re just going to throw the ballot paper in the bin. So to be honest I’ve been turning a blind eye to the whole thing.

That was until I saw the turnout that this little escapade generated; 36.2 per cent, which is pretty damn impressive by any measure, and more than bother in many local elections. Now, put that together with the overall finding, which is that nearly 88% said there should be a referendum, and that nearly 89% think that the UK should reject the treaty, and it strikes me that actually these results are pretty dramatic. You don’t need be a statistical expert to realise that, in all probability, these results could be extrapolated to conclude that the majority of British people believe there should be a referendum.

As I’ve said before I personally find this issue not quite as cut-and-dried as many, and although I do believe we should have a referendum because the Treaty proposes a transfer of sovereignty, I can’t get quite as passionate about it as some. Perhaps in that respect I’m fairly typical of the British electorate; I do believe we should have a say but I really can’t be bothered to take to the streets about it, and I wouldn’t, in two or three years’ time, use the issue as a basis for deciding whom to vote for in a General Election.

I guess that illustrates the challenge that has been set to I Want A Referendum, and which, despite their commendable efforts, they have not met; to turn that groundswell of public opinion into something that our politicians would be really scared of.

The vote in the Commons on whether there should be a referendum is on Wednesday, but let’s be clear; there is no way on God’s earth that the government will give us a say in this, for the simple reason that they know they would lose. Both Labour and Lib Dem MPs are likely to rebel from their parties’ position in some numbers but never enough to send Gordon Brown to defeat. It illustrates that our Parliamentary democracy is far from perfect, and often fails to deliver what the people want.

Open And Honest ? EU Must Be Joking

The anti-EU blogosphere is starting to buzz with this story about abuse of expenses by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). And so it should.

Allegedly MEPs are not accounting properly for the £100m a year allocated to staff costs, and the European Parliament is trying to keep a highly damning report secret. (Or rather, in Euro-twaddle, it’s “taking measures to ensure that there is no collateral damage from the report”). One source is quoted as saying "We want reform but we cannot make this report available to the public if we want people to vote in the European elections next year". Blood pressure rising yet ?
Only MEPs on the parliament's budget control committee are allowed to see this report, and even then only once they’ve applied to enter a secret room which is protected by biometric locks and security guards. They must sign a confidentiality agreement and they may not take notes.

Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies is on the committee and has seen the report. To his credit, he appears to be refusing to tow the line. He was on the Today Programme this morning, telling us that there is massive fraud and embezzlement; in one case an unnamed MEP reportedly took money but employed no-one, and another had just one member of staff. Davies is quoted as saying "This report is dynamite - and makes the Derek Conway affair at Westminster look like small change….I think the allegations within this report from our own auditors should lead to the imprisonment of a number of MEPs”. Blimey.

Whilst trying to keep the lid on all this, the EU has issued a fascinating clarification as to the report’s status. A spokesman is quoted as saying "The document is not secret. It is confidential. It can be read by Euro-MPs on the budget control committee, in the secret room but not generally. That is not the same as a secret document nobody can read". And the point of a secret document which absolutely no one could read would be…what, exactly ?

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at the notion of corrupt behaviour within the EU. This is, after all, the organisation whose auditors have refused to sign off the accounts for 13 consecutive years. This manipulation of expenses at the European Parliament is probably the tip of a very, very large iceberg and doubtless is indicative of the kind of behaviour which leaves the auditors feeling cold.

And the EU are trying to suppress news that might be unpalatable to the people they’re supposed to serve. Well, they’ve never done that before, have they ?

No Messing From the Referendum Lobby

As I said some time ago I don't find the debate about whether there should be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty entirely straightforward so I've found some of the pro-referendum rhetoric a little shrill for my liking.

In some senses this video falls into the same category but I'm posting it because a) it puts the case so powerfully and b) it sums up so accurately this government's attitude not just on the Treaty, but on a whole range of other issues too. The "we know best, you have no choice" mantra runs right through much of what Brown and his Cabinet team do - and I'm still furious about the "body ownership" claim they've staked (see post beneath this one).

Whatever your view on Lisbon, you've got to say that this puts its point across and no mistake !

Hat-tip: Mrs Smallprint

What A Load Of Cod

I've been blogging for over three months, and I haven't had a rant about the true madness of the EU yet. I've been worried that if I started I wouldn't be able to stop, and I wouldn't want to come across as a xenophobic, Brussels-obsessed madman. So in over 80 articles I've hardly mentioned our masters from abroad.

Which for me, constitutes a very measured response to what is an utterly lamentable organisation, which runs huge areas of government without proper democratic accountability, wants to control our currency, spends vast sums of our money and still comes back for more, is responsible for adding god knows how much to our weekly supermarket bill, is crippling our hard-working companies which idiotic edicts, has failed to get its accounts signed off for each of the last 12 years, which...OK...hang on...deep breath Womble...calm down again...

And I was doing fine in my policy of ignoring them, until I heard the story today about how thousands of tons of dead fish are thrown back into the sea every year in an absurd consequence of EU fishing quotas.

It works like this....European Union quotas strictly limit the amount of fish that vessels can bring back to port, but there is no restriction on the amount of fish they actually catch. So in the "mixed fishery" of the North Sea, where trawlers often accidentally catch various species, they have to throw anything back that exceeds their quota.

The EU estimates that between 40% and 60% of fish caught by trawlers in this area is dumped back into the sea.

The quota system, mark you, is designed to protect species of fish that are in danger of dying out. Instead trawler men are catching them unnecessarily, and throwing them back, leaving fewer fish for those trawler men actually trying to catch them in the first place.

This is just insane. I'm no expert on fishery policy, but there has to be a better way of doing this. Restrictions on the number of days at sea, allowing trawler men sell their catch onto others whose quota it would then count towards, or even just leaving it to the market would all be preferable to this.

Needless to say the EU are telling us that we're pretty much stuck with this, not least of all because it's well-nigh impossible to get any policy change past 27 different countries.

I was going to say that only the EU could come up with something so completely crazy, but actually there's probably a whole range of government agencies around the world capable of lunacy not far short of this. Thank God we only have to put up with some of them.

Mandelson Gets Something Right

EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson has been talking about the Treaty Referendum issue. Here is a selection of his pontifications.

1. "It is not for me to express a view on the UK's domestic decision about a referendum".
2. "I note the British government says that this is not a treaty which requires one".
3. "Britain is not a country governed by the use of referenda".
4. "And those who argue for one in reality all too often want Britain to withdraw".
5. "Those pro-Europeans arguing for a referendum risk being drawn into supporting this agenda".

Well he got the first one right, anyway. It's a pity he didn't quit while he was ahead. In fact it's a pity he didn't quit about 20 years ago.

Peter Mandelson is a civil servant. He is unelected. His salary is paid out of our taxes. He has no place preaching to us about our constitutional affairs, and he has no control over whether we have a vote on whether to cede more sovereignty to the EU. Doubtless he would like that situation to be different - referenda are very inconvenient for the likes of Mandelson; they let the people express a point of view.

But until such a time that we lose our voice entirely, or until he actually gets elected by someone, he should shut up, and get on with his job.

Sole-Searching On The EU

I've been in denial about the EU Reform Treaty and the calls for a referendum; conscious that I need to get a grip on the arguments, but not wanting to take the plunge. Now I've finally given it a go I have to say I'm not much the wiser.

I chose the BBC as the site most likely to give a neutral view of things. The headlines appear to be as follows:
when compared to the Constitution, the Treaty drops references to the EU flag and anthem;
the new President of the European Council will be more of a figurehead than the current President of the Commission, and will hold the title for 30 months, but will have no executive powers;
the treaty creates a single figurehead for EU foreign policy, speaking on behalf of the EU's 27 member states, but only able to implement policies that member states have agreed unanimously;
it appears impossible that Britain would lose its seat on the UN Security Council;
there appears to be a possibility than the EU may seek to extend its own legal personality - Britain does not have cast-iron guarantees on this;
the "ratchet clause" (allowing member states to agree that decisions currently taken only by means of a unanimous vote can in future be taken by a mere majority vote) and the provisions allowing the objectives of most EU policies to be amended can be enacted without an intergovernmental conference, but member states would still have to take the decision unanimously, and all national parliaments would have to approve;
there is some token provision for the European Parliament and national parliaments will be given a chance to challenge legislation forwarded by the Commission;
there is a scary "thou shalt do what thou is told" clause which says "National parliaments shall contribute actively to the good functioning of the Union";
the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights becomes legally binding, and there is huge debate - ranging from those who say that this paves the way for the European Court of Justice to rewrite national laws in the social sphere (on strikes, collective bargaining, social security, working hours, and so on) and those who say the charter applies to member states only when they are implementing EU law - as to just this will mean for Britain;
there is the usual debate about how many powers are genuinely and newly transferred from member states to the EU, and the BBC site offers precious little guidance, although it does say that we may lose our veto on social security for migrants;
the UK's ability to block unfavourable legislation is reduced by new voting systems which have come about because of enlargement;
some restrictions on the powers of the European Court to rule on cases dealing with EU justice and home affairs legislation (laws on asylum and visas, illegal immigration, or judicial co-operation and so on) would be removed - the UK has negotiated the right to pick and choose which EU policies to sign up to, but if we signed up to a piece of legislation then we would be affected by the rulings (and we've already signed up on asylum and immigration, among others).

So, there we have it. And what are we supposed to make of all that ? As little as possible, a cynic might say, so that the EU and member governments can continue on their merry way with as little public scrutiny as it's possible to get away with.

In fact one of the side effects of this being proposed in a treaty rather than via the Constitution is that it's much harder for Joe Public to understand - there's lots of "An Article 40 shall be inserted, with the wording of Article 52; it shall be amended as follows: (a) the following Article heading shall be inserted: 'Ratification and entry into force'; (b) in paragraph 1 the words..." etc.

Will it change the world ? Will it radically alter Britain's relationship with the EU and lead to a significant further transfer of power ? No, it doesn't sound like it to me. And until recently I'd have concluded that that should mean that calls for a referendum are not warranted. And then I started thinking some more.

Since we entered the (then) EEC in 1972 our relationship with it, and our ability to govern our own affairs have changed hugely. Before he died Ted Heath pretty much admitted that he lied to the British people about loss of sovereignty. And it is arguable that two of the most significant treaties we signed up to were long after his time - the Single European Act and Maastricht. In the 35 years since we joined we have had but one referendum on the subject, in 1975. Had the British people known then what they know now about Europe and our relationship with it, it strikes me as inconceivable that we would have voted to stay in. The fact that we have moved from an economic agreement to something nearing political union without the people being consulted is little short of scandalous.

What makes this any different from a whole range of other issues where the government has essentially ignored the wishes of the people (for instance over capital punishment) ? What is wrong with the democratic checks and balances whereby if the people don't like what their government is doing then they can just vote for someone else ?

What I think makes EU treaties fundamental is that they are about the mechanisms of government and often, to a greater or lesser degree, about who governs us and how they do it. This is different from many straight-forward policy areas like how the economy is run, the state of our prisons etc.. Many of the decisions made within EU treaties are about our delegating legislative or judicial authority to people or bodies in a different country over which we have little or no control.

Blair's government went referendum-crazy in its early years. The Scots, Welsh, Northern Irish, Londoners and residents of Hartlepool, to name but a few got referenda of one form or another. It almost became laughable in the end. But in one sense the referenda were justified, because they were about how the voters were governed, or about the transfer of power from one body to another.

Take this to its conclusion and there can be no question. There has to be a referendum on this, and on every future EU treaty. Some of them may be expensive rubber-stamping exercises but no matter; you can't take short cuts where the delegation of governmental power is concerned.