Britannia Radio

The politicians wiil not be surprised that this totally disgraceful 
decision will have caused such criticism.  But criticism to them is 
merely a bore.  Their hope and expectation is that the excitement 
will have died down by the time the referendum comes round and the 
voters are made to have another 'go'.

But ask yourself one question.  If this treaty is a merely to make 
things in Europe run more smoothly why does it need a new Treaty?  
All these 'nuts and bolts' issues could be settled separately.  NO!

   The real reason is that it finally removes from the peoples of 
Europe the last vestige of any  democratic control.  If it goes 
through there'll be no stopping the eurocrats from doing exactly what 
they want as and when they want.  There'll be no more popular votes 
anywhere.

xxxxxxxcs
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TELEGRAPH Blogs   14.12.08
Why Eurocrats believe that No to EU treaty is the Irish for Yes
For Euro-hirelings, Lisbon isn't about democracy, it's about their 
mortgages.
By Daniel Hannan

This is becoming like the closing scenes of Terminator. However many 
times you kill the European Constitution, it keeps lurching to its 
feet again. Blam! Fifty-five per cent of French voters say "Non". 
Zap! Sixty-two per cent of Dutch voters say "Nee".

But the automaton keeps advancing, its flesh burned away, its charred 
metal skeleton stamped with the words "Lisbon Treaty". Then - pow! - 
53 per cent of Irish voters vote "No". The machine is briefly 
swallowed by orange flames. Then, after a short lull, the red lights 
go on in its skull and, once again, it starts clawing its way forward.

Shortly before Ireland voted, the president of the European 
Commission, José Manuel Durrão Barroso, warned electors that there 
was no Plan B. Irish commentators innocently took this to mean that, 
if the treaty was rejected, it would be dropped. What Barroso in fact 
meant, as is now clear, is that Plan A would be resubmitted over and 
over again.

This is how EU leaders invariably behave after a "No" vote. They 
machine-gun out a couple of platitudes about listening to the people, 
then carry on regardless. For them, public opinion is an obstacle to 
tear aside, not a reason to change direction.

Their desire for a second Irish referendum next autumn isn't really 
to do with voting weights or numbers of commissioners or extensions 
of majority voting. Many of the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty can 
be - indeed, have been - implemented in anticipation of formal 
ratification.

For example, the European elections on June 4 will be fought on the 
basis of the number of MEPs that would have been authorised by 
Lisbon, not the ones provided for by the current treaties.

No, this is about keeping the project going - a project from which 
millions now earn their living. The EU employs more than 170,000 
officials, on handsome and largely untaxed retainers.

And for every formal Eurocrat there are dozens of fellow travellers: 
the Europe officers retained by every local council, large 
corporation and NGO. Their salaries might not be paid directly by 
Brussels but their livelihoods depend on the process of integration.

For Euro-hirelings, Lisbon isn't about federalism or democracy; it's 
about mortgages and school fees. They realise, to borrow their 
favourite simile, that the EU is like a bicycle that will fall over 
if it stops moving.

And so they have convinced themselves that voters are suffering from 
what Engels called "false consciousness": that they secretly want 
their leaders to disregard their votes and push ahead with deeper 
integration.

If you think I exaggerate, consider these words, spoken to the Czech 
President last week by Brian Crowley, leader of Ireland's governing 
party, Fianna Fáil, in the European Parliament: "All his life my 
father fought against the British domination. Many of my relatives 
lost their lives. That is why I dare to say that the Irish wish for 
the Lisbon Treaty."

Disregard the curious way in which Crowley equates his father's 
campaign for national independence with his campaign against it. 
Ignore, too, the anachronism: since Crowley's father was born 13 
years after independence, he can hardly have spent his life fighting 
"the British domination".

Focus, instead, on the extraordinary presumption: "the Irish wish for 
the Lisbon Treaty". So much for the referendum result. Crowley 
believes he knows the voters' desires better than they do.

Will a second referendum succeed? Irish politicians think so: they 
calculate that the financial crisis has changed the mood, that their 
constituents want to be part of a big bloc.

But Irish voters might remember the EU's aggressive attitude when 
their government sought to guarantee bank deposits. They might have 
spotted that euro membership exacerbated their crisis by artificially 
fuelling the boom. They might even notice that the people telling 
them to vote "Yes", in Dublin and in Brussels, are the ones who 
presided over the breakdown.

An opinion poll in The Irish Times last month showed the Pro-Treaty 
Forces (if I might use that loaded term in an Irish context) four 
points ahead. Then again, they were 18 points ahead at this stage 
last time, and still got thumped. Received opinion can be woefully 
wrong.

Two weeks before the last referendum, I urged readers of my Telegraph 
blog to bet their shirts on a "No" vote, at odds of 7-2. In the 
event, the "Yes" side was so complacent that the bookies had already 
started paying out the wrong way before polling stations closed.

I won't repeat that advice, for one reason. The consequences of a 
second "No" for Brian Cowen would be disastrous: he would have to 
resign, and would go down in history as the Taoiseach who wouldn't 
take "No" for an answer.

If, after the European elections next year, the polls are still 
looking dicey, my guess is that Cowen would find a way to push the 
treaty through by a combination of parliamentary ratification, 
executive fiat and judicial activism. But he won't abandon it: that 
would be unthinkable.
----------------------------------------------
. Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP
======================
SUNDAY TIMES
Betrayal all around from the guardians of democracy

Minette Marrin

The apparatchiks of the European Union establishment have one thing, 
at least, in common with serial rapists. They cannot accept that no 
means no. These people all want it really, they say. They're not 
victims; they're gagging for it. And they'll love it really when we 
get our way with them. What the EU establishment wants, it gets. It 
takes, regardless.

Last week the Brussels nomenklatura once again proved that it won't 
accept a no, this time from the electorate of Ireland. In June the 
Irish voters firmly said no to the European constitution, or rather 
the Lisbon treaty, or whatever obfuscation the Europhiles dreamt up 
to bamboozle us. The Irish were not bamboozled; they didn't want the 
EU constitution. But no is not acceptable.

So last week Brian Cowen, the taoiseach and Europhile, reassured 
European leaders that he wouldn't take no for an answer from his 
people. He has promised to make them vote again on the matter. Dick 
Roche, his European affairs minister, then opined, in the majesty of 
his democratic office: "From a constitutional point of view, there's 
no other choice than a second referendum."

What can he mean? The truth is the precise opposite. Such deliberate 
untruth, backing Mr Cowen's promise to ignore his people's vote, 
gives new vigour to the phrase barefaced effrontery. Against such 
wilful, shameless betrayal of the democratic process it is useless to 
protest; democracy is being undermined by democratically elected 
governments that don't understand a constitutional no and smile 
benignly, or self-importantly, at our helpless rage.

Cowen and Roche should not be singled out for their effrontery. Jose 
Manuel Barroso, president of the European commission, is guilty of it 
too. Last week he brought out his weary charm on BBC television to 
ask, "Who are we to stop the Irish having a second referendum?" 
European leaders, far from stopping a second referendum in Ireland, 
have put huge pressure on its prime minister to have one or do 
something - anything - to deliver up an Irish yes.

Barroso must have known this; his question was shamefully misleading. 
Yet he actually said after last week's Brussels summit meeting that 
"Europe has passed its credibility test". The truth, once again, is 
the opposite. With its demand for an Irish yes, the EU has passed 
another incredibility test, in the manner of a deluded rapist.

Our own Gordon Brown, and Tony Blair before him, specialises in 
shameless, undemocratic effrontery, not least about the EU. Everyone 
knows Labour promised at the 2005 general election to hold a 
referendum on the proposed EU constitution. Everyone knows Blair and 
Brown broke that promise. Brown then sneakily signed the Lisbon 
treaty, knowing full well that most British voters would have said 
no. But Brown wasn't having no. He wasn't having democracy.

Brown does not restrict his astonishing effrontery to matters 
European. One of my favourite examples was his claim, many times 
repeated, that he had inherited "a broken economy" from the 
Conservatives. He must have known that the opposite was true, but he 
kept saying it.

I particularly enjoyed the way he and his ministers until recently 
went about intoning that Britain is one of the best-placed nations in 
the rich world to withstand the global crisis, since Britain is not 
overborrowed like other leading countries. The truth is the opposite. 
Clearly, they think they can get away with it. Perhaps they think we 
won't notice or won't care. Historians may say 'twas ever thus: all 
politicians lie.

I am not so sure. In my adult life I think there has been a growth in 
barefaced lies and deception in public office, along with a loss of 
respect for due process and respect for the freedoms of others. Maybe 
that's just because, with the information revolution, we know so much 
more about what public men and women get up to. Or perhaps there has 
been a real change.

It's an odd coincidence that while democracy and meritocracy have 
truly spread in the past 50 years, while all sorts of institutions 
and activities have been opened up to people who used never to get a 
look-in, political democracy seems to be coming under increasing threat.

A perfect example of this is the utterly incurious way Michael 
Martin, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and his unlucky 
placewoman Jill Pay, the serjeant-at-arms, were prepared to let the 
police into the Commons. I don't believe there was any conspiracy; 
both were just too ignorant to do their jobs properly and had too 
little real understanding of the point of parliamentary procedure.

It may be snobbish, but it's true. Neither is really qualified for 
the post by education or by experience. They both showed an 
unquestioning deference to the police. The rise of democracy was 
supposed to be the end of undue deference, yet here were the 
defenders of the people's Commons touching their forelocks to the filth.

The price of freedom is not just constant vigilance - it must be 
informed and educated vigilance. And that vigilance is protected by 
procedure. Yet watchers over us are often less well informed and 
educated than they used to be.

You see small signs of it everywhere. In little committees for local 
purposes, or in big ones, you see a gradual disappearance of proper 
procedure. In the past, trade unionists and charitable ladies always 
used to go by the committee book. Now the tendency is towards 
friendly consensus, an open show of hands and an indifference to the 
minutes - to the record, in fact.
One of the problems behind Haringey's first report on the death of 
Baby P was that the head of children's services, in having two roles, 
had conflicts of interest - a serious procedural problem that was 
ignored. Procedure is deadly, of course, but it's there to protect 
the truth-tellers and the vigilant, especially when they face undue 
pressure.

The EU is all too often indifferent to procedure, indifferent to the 
shameful fact that the auditors have not signed its accounts for 
years. In ignoring, jointly, the democratic procedures of other 
countries, it suborns individual Europhile leaders into an equal 
indifference. Procedure matters: it is there to protect us from, 
among other things, the barefaced effrontery of totalitarianism.