( ITS ALRIGHT FOR HIM ON CIRCA£250,000-£500,000 P A?) By PETER HITCHENS President Tony Blair? The former PM will likely helm a 'Superstate' Any day now you could wake up and find that you are subject to the rule of After the Irish and the Czechs have been clubbed into submission this autumn, the long-planned European Superstate will at last come into being. And Mr Blair is likely to be its Head of State. For those of a sensitive disposition, this means two horrible things happening at once. It is bad enough that the ghastly Blair creature might rise from the political tomb, hands clasped in pious prayer, upper lip trembling with fake emotion, pockets crammed with money from the lecture circuit, drivel streaming from his mouth. That would perhaps be the only thing that might make the nation warm to Gordon Brown again. But far worse is the awful truth, which so many have hidden from themselves, that Britain will from that moment cease to be an independent nation in any important way. The EU will take on a ‘legal personality’ of its own, become a nation in its own right, one in which we are a subject province for the first time in more than a thousand years, less independent than Texas is of Washington DC. And this is why I hate the people in politics and the media who call themselves ‘Eurosceptics’. What are they for? What good have they done? They stand about, mainly in the Unconservative Party, claiming to be concerned about the way the EU is swallowing this country. But they refuse to take the one step that would actually make a difference. They will not call for this country to leave the EU. You will have to ask them why not. There is no reason Britain could not exist outside the EU, which sells more to us than it buys from us, drags us into trade disputes with the USA which are not in our interest, steals our fish, chokes our small business, mucks up our farms and milks us each year of incalculably large sums of money we could spend better ourselves. There is every reason for us to go our own way, especially if we wish to preserve our unique laws and liberties against the fast-approaching ‘Stockholm Programme’ which aims to impose continental law on this country, together with a menacing set of surveillance powers quite beyond the control of our Parliament. So the next time a ‘Eurosceptic’ presents himself to you for election, ask him why he won’t go the extra yard (not metre), and if he won’t do so, find a man who can. The time for scepticism is long past. What is there left to have doubts about? The thing is as bad as we feared. The time for secession has arrived. Why would the Government be so keen to repeal a law which protects free speech? You decide. Here are the details. Last year, in a law called The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, New Labour created a new criminal offence, called ‘incitement to hatred on grounds of sexual orientation’. I will not argue here about whether such a law is necessary or right. My point is different. What is important is that several Peers were concerned that such a law might one day They rightly did not trust assurances that such a law could never be used for such purposes. They had noticed the increasing tendency of the police to menace individuals for voicing unfashionable opinions about homosexuality. So they fought to insert a clause saying ‘for the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred’. Government spokesmen claimed this was not necessary. Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re wrong. Who can tell the future? That’s the whole Yet, probably this Tuesday, the liberal State will mobilise its forces in the House of Lords to rip away this sensible safety net. If it succeeds, I predict that the result will be the persecution of Christians and others who wish to resist the sexual revolution. Are we at last beginning to grasp that the massacre of the railways by Dr Richard Beeching was a grave mistake? Train companies are talking of reopening dozens of abandoned lines and stations, and about time too. Why not reopen the lot? Scores of medium-sized towns - absurdly - have no railway link. The countryside is closed to those without cars. Millions of tons of freight clog the roads, which in the USA would certainly travel by rail. Road-building has failed. As the M25 shows, the more you build, the more jammed they get. Railways were invented in this country because they suited our landscape. They still do. Whether you believe the global-warming panic merchants and the predictions that oil will run out, or whether you do not, there has never been a better time to bring back trains. The single biggest disaster of the Sixties was the introduction of easy divorce - a liberation for adults, paid for by the misery of millions of children ever since. I am glad to hear Mr Justice Coleridge, who sees the results in family courts, condemning the ‘endless game of “musical relationships” - or “pass the partner” - in which such a significant portion of the population is engaged, in the endless and futile quest for a perfect relationship which will be attained, it is supposed, by landing on the right chair or unwrapping a new and more exciting parcel’. But when will any politician have the nerve to admit that the Divorce Reform Act of 1969 was a grave error, and that marriage needs to be strengthened again? The subject is almost undebatable. As Judge Coleridge has pointed out, the BBC plan to screen a powerful documentary series on family breakdown in the middle of the night so that hardly anyone will see it, preferring to keep prime time for violence, swearing and moral slurry.The Eurosceptics are just as phoney as President Blair
Last updated at 2:32 AM on 21st June 2009
President-of-Europe Anthony Blair.Tearing down another safety net
More from Peter Hitchens...
be misused to prosecute the expression of opinion.
point, and wise law-makers know that laws are often used in ways never intended by those who drafted and passed them. But what harm can such a safeguard possibly do? None, obviously.Let Britain’s branch lines run again
Who will join the judge and speak against divorce?
Final notes...
Crucial, you might say. Yet when a group of Iranian footballers chose to don green armbands to show their support for the protesters, the BBC reported, in radio news bulletins, that they did this before a ‘crucial’ soccer match.
That’s right. The game was ‘crucial’. The struggle for the future of a great country was unworthy of any adjective.
If it is showing near you, I recommend you make the effort to see it.
Sunday 21 June 2009
There is every reason for us to go our own way, especially if we wish to preserve our unique laws and liberties against the fast-approaching ‘Stockholm Programme’ which aims to impose continental law on this country, together with a menacing set of surveillance powers quite beyond the control of our Parliament.
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