One does wonder about their political understanding

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/

One does wonder about their political understanding

Among the various anti-EU parties, set up temporarily for the nonce, there was an old-fashioned socialist trade union one, called No2EU. We mentioned it a few times and expressed the view that it would not do terribly well in the election. Nor did it.

Presumably, it was an attempt to rouse left-wing eurosceptics, a somewhat elusive group though I have come across its members on and off. It was also, one must assume, intended to undercut the BNP, the argument being that the latter has largely working class support and these people are so stupid as to accept international socialism as a substitute for the national kind.

Both parts of that are wrong: the BNP has a strong middle class and what used to be called lower middle class support with a strong dash of aspirational working class and none of them are not stupid enough to buy into the old Marxist propaganda.

However, the real stupidity of that group was putting up as front man Bob Crow, the man who periodically snarls up London completely by bringing his union members out on strike; in between those strikes, those union members help to ensure that London has the most expensive and least efficient underground train service in the developed world.

Whom does it affect? Well, there are eight million people in London, there are another eight or nine million who come in to work every day, there are untold millions who come in for various events, meetings and entertainments (or would like to do so if the transport allowed them to do so). A lot of people, all of whom hate Bob Crow more than anybody else in this country. You have to be politically suicidal to put such a man at the head of your organization.

What these people need is an old-fashioned Communist organizer of the kind that clearly does not exist any more. One of those comrades would have known that Mr Crow must be kept in the background and nice emollient people should be made into the pin-ups of No2EU. Too late now.

I was meditating on this as the heavily packed bus I was on crawled slowly towards Westminster because Mr Crow's merry men have once again made life hell on earth for those many millions. There is, I decided, a solution to this.

This evening there will be an international football match at Wembley, which will probably be played without any audience as nobody can get there with the tube lines either closed or barely functioning. The players will not be happy - having a cheering audience does wonders for the sporting morale; the fans must be furious. 

Could somebody, perhaps, let the players and, especially, the fans know where Mr Crow and his merry men are to be found? They would then become directly accountable to the people, something that, surely, every good trade unionist yearns to be.

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Disabled …

Such is our humiliating lack of power as a nation, at the hands of Brussels, that no one wants to know any more. The details are hidden in the financial pages, while the British politicians prattle and political journalists play their games in the entertainment section.

Humiliation it is though, charted byAmbrose Evans-Pritchard as he tells us that Britain has been unable to block plans for an EU regulatory machinery with binding legal powers.

At the epicentre of what has amounted to a craven climbdown is the British reluctance to agree EU financial regulatory authorities with oversight powers over national agencies, with supreme arbitration powers awarded to the ECJ.

The FSA thus becomes a body subordinate to the EU apparatus, essentially a branch office of Brussels, carrying out local enforcement and administration on behalf of our supreme government.

The British government has consistently opposed this development but, since it comes under the "internal market" – agreed courtesy of Margaret Thatcher – new legislation is decided by qualified majority vote (QMV) – and we have been outvoted.

All of this has been so much of a pattern that no one can be in the least surprised. The EU has developed this model for some time, where national agencies are set up and then, gradually brought under the control of an EU central agency, thus to rule us as a Vichyite construct, giving it a local address to fool the natives into believing we are still in charge of our own destiny.

Thus, the financial turmoil of past months is turning out to be one of those "beneficial crises", facilitating yet another power grab by Brussels. In time, this one will destroy the City, substantially undermining attempts at economic recovery. 

Soon, when you go onto the DirectGov site which is the portal to UK government services, we will see – in classic computer style – but a single word: "disabled". We are not quite there yet, but this takes us a whole lot closer.

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This is so boring …

When is David Cameron going to grow up - if ever?

If ever a man misjudged the mood of the nation, it is he. This is a leader of the opposition, against possibly the worst government in living memory, who has just gone through a major national election where only one in ten of the electorate actually turned out to vote for his party.

Having watched part of the "debate" on the prime minister's statement, to watch Brown make his proposals and then to listen to Cameron deliver his fatuous response is to invite embarrassment and frustration in equal measure.

Back in October, we wrote a piece entitled "This is not a game". Away from the political claque, ordinary people are sick to the hind teeth of the empty, vain posturing from our politicians, and the bear garden of the Commons chamber. If a local pub got that disorderly, the landlord would be calling out the police.

Mr Cameron needs to latch on to that figure. Only one in ten voters in this entire nation voted for him. Nine out of ten, therefore, did not. He is not engaging, he is not carrying the nation with him. He is not speaking to them or for them. 

We'll cover the debate when the transcript is up on Hansard, but what the written record does not convey is the truculent, smug and puerile tone of a man who can only attract the support of ten percent of the electorate. One in ten may be happy with his performance but, if Cameron is to carry any weight, he needs to speak to the other nine.

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A "victory for the European project"

Courtesy of The Talking Clock and Get 2 Vote we rather tardily pick up the staggering comments of José Manuel thingy, expressed in the Sophia Echo.

According to this excuse for a human being, the EU elections "confirmed that voters wanted a strong and ambitious European Union", his "take" being that the elections were a "victory for [the] European project." 

In fact, Barroso went even further, declaring that the results were "an undeniable victory for those parties and candidates that support the European project and want to see the European Union delivering policy responses to their everyday concerns."

He thus burbles on, "The political forces that constructively address policy challenges, and that have constructively engaged with the Commission during the past legislature, occupy the overwhelming majority of the seats in the next European Parliament."

This brings to mind the occasional europhile who strays onto our forum, suggesting we engage in "constructive dialogue" about the EU. What Barroso does in this instance is demonstrate beyond peradventure the fatuity of such a course of action.

We complain of the detachment of our own political classes from reality, but they are paragons of virtue compared with the "colleagues". The only way to deal with these people is to shoot them which, some day, someone undoubtedly will.

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