This could well be the tipping point in Britain’s relations with the EU. We’ve swallowed a great deal in the interests of solidarity with our neighbours in Europe. The acceptabity of the EU as a whole is wearing extremely thin. Blair could be the last bloody straw.
Christina
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MAIL ON SUNDAY
25.10.09
WILLIAM REES-MOGG: Why do they think we want President Blair?
I wish the European Leaders, particularly the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, would pay a smidgin of attention to British public opinion.
They seem to think it would recommend the European Union and the Lisbon Treaty to us if we were given Tony Blair as a British President of Europe. The opposite is the truth.
We had Blair as Prime Minister for ten years. We never thought we would get him back as an unelected President of Europe. He let us down too often. We do not trust him, we no longer like him, we do not want him.
This is not only the view of people who could be called Euro-sceptics; it is a view even more vehemently held by those who believe he took us into the Iraq War on a lie about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
Blair is a consummate politician. Unfortunately, he is an expert politician in the sense in which 'politician' is a synonym for 'cheat'.
In As You Like It, Shakespeare has the Clown define the seven degrees of lying: 'The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct.'
Those of us who followed Blair's career will have memories of him, when he was Prime Minister, proving to be the master of all these modes of rhetoric, equally brilliant at the Quip Courteous or the Lie Direct.
On the issue of Europe, his most important lie was the assurance he gave in the Labour manifesto for the 2005 General Election. 'The new Constitutional Treaty is a good treaty for Britain and for the New Europe. We will put it to the British people in a referendum and campaign wholeheartedly for a "yes" vote to keep Britain a leading nation in Europe.'
We all know what happened. Labour won the General Election, though with a reduced majority of 65. If the promise of a referendum had not been made, Labour could not have expected to win the Election. Subsequent European elections have made it very probable that an Election in 2005 fought by Labour on the European Constitutional issue, but without a referendum promise, would have been lost.
In fact, referendums were held on the Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands, and they were both lost. The European Union responded to these defeats by renaming and redrafting the Constitutional Treaty as the Lisbon Treaty, without altering its commitment to further integration.
The redrafting was deliberately organised in a complex way in order to make the Treaty less intelligible both to MPs and to the general public. Very few MPs could pass a simple exam on the Lisbon Treaty.
The British were not given a referendum, and the Lisbon Treaty was ratified by Parliament without a referendum and without a General Election. This was not only a breach of Labour's election promise, but a deliberate evasion of democracy. It was a slap across the face of democracy.
Blair must be regarded as the person most responsible, though other European politicians, and the British Cabinet itself, share the responsibility. The Lisbon Treaty was an elaborate conspiracy to deprive the British people of a vote.
The appointment of Blair as an unelected President of Europe would only emphasise the extent to which Lisbon is an anti-democratic Treaty, not just in terms of Britain, but also in terms of the electorates of France and the Netherlands. Lisbon is bad for Britain and bad for Europe; above all, it is bad for European democracy.
William Hague is the Shadow Foreign Secretary. He is also effectively the deputy to David Cameron, the Shadow Prime Minister. Last Thursday Hague spoke privately to the 26 EU ambassadors in London. He told them an incoming Conservative Government would regard it as 'a hostile act' if the EU were to appoint Blair as the first President of Europe under the Lisbon Treaty.
The European countries expect the Conservatives will, in fact, win the next Election. Every effort has been made to complete the ratification of Lisbon before the Tories are returned to power; Cameron would hold a referendum if he got the chance.
The ratification of Lisbon in this way may have been a successful stratagem, but it was in itself an unfriendly as well as a dishonest action. If now we are to be lumbered with a discredited former Prime Minister as the unelected President of Europe, that will be a European insult not just to the potential Conservative government, but also to the British people. It is, after all, the British people who have been deprived of the referendum that Blair promised them.
Apparently, the EU ambassadors were taken aback when Hague warned that the appointment of Blair would be seen in Britain as 'a hostile act'. They expressed surprise that Hague 'could not see the advantage for Britain in having such a big European post'. That shows how little they understand the current state of British public opinion. We do not trust Blair to act in the interest of either Britain or democracy.
From the time of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 it became apparent that two views of the constitutional future of Europe were diverging. One is the Franco-German view of further integration into a bureaucratic federal state; the other is the British view of co-operation between independent democracies. As a result of Blair's broken promise, the British now feel Blair and the Europhile bureaucrats simply cannot be trusted.
If we do have Blair foisted on us as a pseudo-president, the question of Britain leaving the EU will become a live political issue in this country.
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