This week, when the Irish have a second chance to vote "Yes" to the Lisbon treaty, might just mark the beginning of the end for one of the more degrading and long-drawn-out farces of recent times – the eight-year-long battle to unite "Europe" under a single political constitution. Short of Karzai-style stuffing of the ballot boxes, the European and Irish political establishments could scarcely have done more to push this second Irish referendum in the way they want. To ensure a "Yes" vote, all the normal rules governing balanced media coverage were suspended. The European Commission has poured €1.5 million into an unprecedented advertising blitz. EU commissioners, led by President Jose-Manuel Barroso, MEPs and officials have been flooding in to promote the cause. However, when one or two British outsiders – including Nigel Farage, leader of a group in the European Parliament, and Lorraine Mullally, director of the think-tank Open Europe, and of good Irish stock – came over to campaign for a "No" vote, their "foreign intervention" was greeted by orchestrated howls of abuse. The question inevitably aroused by such startling behaviour is why has the political class of "Europe" been so desperate to get its way over this treaty? It was back in December 2001 that the EU's leaders met at Laeken in Belgium to agree that, to "bring Europe closer to its peoples" and to make it more "democratic", the EU should, like any aspiring state, be given a constitution. This was to be the consummation of the central driving force of the "European project" – the drive to place the nation states of Europe under an entirely new form of supra-national government. As long ago as 1957, the original Treaty of Rome put together what was always intended to be the embryo of a "government for Europe", as Jean Monnet put it. Treaty by treaty, without most people recognising its true underlying agenda – and leaving the nation states and their institutions in place as if nothing too dramatic was happening – this new government gradually took over the powers of national parliaments. It already decides far more of our laws and how we are governed than any mainstream politician ever dares admit. In 2001, however, the EU's leaders decided the moment had at last arrived for their project to come out in the open. It was ready to take its place on the world stage as a sovereign power in its own right, complete with president, foreign minister, currency, armed forces and all the attributes of a fully-fledged state. What was needed above all to mark this historic step was a constitution. A puppet convention spent two years drafting the constitution they wanted, and in 2004, after a further year of bickering about details, it was unveiled – on the assumption that its acceptance by the peoples of Europe would be little more than a formality. But in 2005 the French and Dutch had the audacity to say "No". Faced with the most serious reverse the project had ever suffered, the EU's leaders went into catatonic shock. Their eventual solution, of course, was simply to repackage the constitution as if it were just another of those treaties, ensuring that they would not repeat the mistake of allowing mere voters to turn it down. The only country under whose own constitution a referendum was unavoidable – because it would lose so much more of its power to govern itself – was little Ireland. And of course, in June last year, to the horror of the "European" political class, the Irish again said "No", pushing the constitution back into limbo. This was simply not in the script. Inevitably the EU's leaders pulled out all the stops to ensure that the Irish were whipped into line. The stakes were too high to contemplate anything else. So next Thursday, those who now rule over us are trusting that, after eight tortuous years, they will at last be on the verge of getting the new state and form of government they have wanted all along. Curiously, all this was foreshadowed nearly 70 years ago by one of the two men who, more than any others, were responsible for creating the government we now live under. Altiero Spinelli, an Italian Communist sitting in a Fascist jail, sketched out how, in order to build a new United States of Europe after the Second World War, it would be necessary to piece together the new form of government gradually over many years without explaining its ultimate aim.The day would come, however, when enough of it had been assembled and a convention could be summoned to draft, as its "crowning glory", a constitution. At last, said Spinelli, the peoples of Europe would see what had been done in their name and would greet it with "acclamation". Many years later, as Richard North and I described in our book The Great Deception, Spinelli would in effect be the posthumous father of the Maastricht Treaty on European Union, giving his name to the vast office block in Brussels which houses the European Parliament. Other than Jean Monnet, no visionary did more to shape the way the "project" was to develop through the 50 years after the war. The only lacuna in Spinelli's vision was that, when the peoples of Europe were presented with that constitution, they failed to acclaim it as the "crowning glory" he predicted. As they were by now at least dimly aware, what was offered them was no more than a hugely cumbersome, inefficient, corrupt and remote form of government, riddled with dishonesty and wholly undemocratic, which they could never again call to account. On Thursday the voters of Ireland will be the last in Europe with a chance to say "No" to the political class which now rules over us – thanks to what has amounted to the most extraordinary slow-motion coup d'état in history.Ireland's EU referendum is the last stand against the 'project'
Brussels has pulled out all the stops to get a Yes from the Irish, says Christopher Booker.
Sunday, 27 September 2009
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