As stated on LBC this afternoon, in an interview -
as well as on the Andrew Neil show this morning by Lord Hesketh,
the poltico/power, civil service elite, here and in Brussels, France etc ,
made decisions; having a political ideologue, that, the
European Union, was the dream.
The concept of a public expression of democracy .....by a vote or referendum, would, does and forever, will never stand in their way,
or dream of accomplishing the same ..
THAT IS HOW DANGEROUS THESE SHADOW PEOPLE ARE...IN THEIR BELIEF SYSTEM AND WHAT LENGTHS they may be prepared to use!!!!!
------------------------------
Soon it will be mainstream to say ‘leave the EU’
Daniel Finkelstein
November 2 2011 12:01AM
Greece has made stark the choices facing Europe and now questioning the whole project is not a fringe position
Sweat dripping from his nose, his collar soaking wet, Hugh Gaitskell finally sat down after speaking for 105 minutes. The Brighton ice-rink erupted. The Labour leader’s rejection of entry into the Common Market on the terms proposed by the Government in 1962 received an extraordinary ovation.
But there was something odd about the scene. For Gaitskell’s friends on the centre right of the party were dismayed. Some stayed silently in their seats. Others rose (to acknowledge the man) while keeping their arms folded (to signal disapproval of his words). Meanwhile, his party enemies exulted. Gaitskell’s rival, Harold Wilson, called for the speech to be printed, and the left-wing union leader Frank Cousins said that the transport workers would pay for it.
Surveying the scene as her husband acknowledged the applause, Dora Gaitskell turned to a friend and commented: “But Charlie, the wrong people are clapping.”
The wrong people are clapping. Almost from the moment that Harold Macmillan first proposed entry into the Common Market it has enjoyed the support of the broad mainstream of British politicians. Some (Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Rab Butler) were less enthusiastic than others (Roy Jenkins, Jo Grimond, Geoffrey Howe) but in practice and in power they have backed membership. Opponents have been on the extremes, been the “wrong people”.
Perhaps if Gaitskell had lived, it might have been different. But by the end of January 1963, just three months after his Brighton speech, he was dead. No comparable figures at the height of their power and this includes Margaret Thatcher have reached the same conclusion.
The alliance that has supported membership proved vital in 1975, when the question of continuing in the Common Market was the subject of a referendum. Six months before polling day those who wanted to leave had the support of 41 per cent of voters, those who wanted to stay 33 per cent, uncannily similar to polls this weekend on the same question. But the campaign pitched both ends (Enoch Powell, Tony Benn and Michael Foot) against the middle and the middle won, convincingly. (41% of those eligible to vote is not particularly convincing Idris)
Now, after months of crisis in the euro and after the news from Greece about its referendum, one has to ask: for how long will this alliance hold? For how long will it remain the case that questioning Britain’s membership of the EU will be something that cannot be done by a mainstream political figure?
The creation of the eurozone and the troubles that have engulfed it have changed the EU for ever. There can be no going back to the status quo. The EU that survives the great disruption will be a very different body. And our relationship with it will be very different.
Gaitskell warned of the danger that entry into the Common Market could mean the “end of Britain as an independent European state. I make no apology for repeating it. It means the end of a thousand years of history.” But he acknowledged that this would be the result only if those who wanted a federal Europe had their way. He accepted that, while there were some who had that objective, attaining it was a long way off. His warning about a thousand years of history was, therefore, his most effective piece of rhetoric but always seemed rather an abstract point.
It doesn’t now. Now the point is very real. Now it stares us in the face.
During the eurozone crisis, a euphemism has been used repeatedly, one that Greece yesterday exposed. The euphemism is that the future success of the euro requires “a greater degree of fiscal union”.
What this actually means is that Europe will have to have sufficient common resources to deal with a future crisis. And this in turn means that it will have to have a wide range of common tax and spending policies so that the fund does not end up as a transfer from responsible countries to irresponsible ones. How long will Germans agree to pay for Greek public sector workers to have, say, better pension terms than they do?
Greece yesterday revealed the consequence of this. You cannot proceed to common policies without popular consent. But it is madness to allow one country that democratic right unilaterally, saying yes or no in a referendum to a deal that someone else is paying for. Fiscal union requires shared democratic control. To make a single currency work you have to have a state.
If the eurozone countries proceed in an orderly fashion to attempt to create a state, it would change the dynamic of the single market and the functioning of the political institutions of the European Union. Britain would stay outside to protect its thousand years of history, but it would still feel the impact. For a European state would require a fundamental renegotiation of the relationship between those in the eurozone and those outside.
Much more likely is that the process would not be so orderly. As has happened in the past, the aim of creating a state would be disguised, in order to reduce the prospect of popular resistance. Instead, the eurozone would attempt to solve its problems by using the institutions of the EU and existing treaty powers, a stealthy power grab. This, too, would alter our relationship sufficiently as to call it into question.
And then there is a third option. The eurozone might not find a way to deal with its problems, either directly or by stealth. It might find that asking German taxpayers to pay everyone else’s debts, and everyone else to agree German policies, just won’t work. Ever. Collapse of the euro would be calamitous, and the consequences for the EU hard to predict, but that doesn’t make it impossible.
So what is about to happen whether orderly, disorderly or catastrophic will change the terms of our membership and is likely to break the alliance that has always supported it. There will probably remain strong arguments for being in the EU and much to be lost by leaving. But the politics will have changed; it will no longer be a fringe position to question membership.
I was hugely amused at the brilliantly short speech of the MP Charles Walker last week, calling for a referendum: “If not now, when?” He had managed to find in four short words and a comma almost the only question on Europe that actually has a clear answer.
November 2 2011 12:01AMGreece has made stark the choices facing Europe and now questioning the whole project is not a fringe position
Sweat dripping from his nose, his collar soaking wet, Hugh Gaitskell finally sat down after speaking for 105 minutes. The Brighton ice-rink erupted. The Labour leader’s rejection of entry into the Common Market on the terms proposed by the Government in 1962 received an extraordinary ovation.
But there was something odd about the scene. For Gaitskell’s friends on the centre right of the party were dismayed. Some stayed silently in their seats. Others rose (to acknowledge the man) while keeping their arms folded (to signal disapproval of his words). Meanwhile, his party enemies exulted. Gaitskell’s rival, Harold Wilson, called for the speech to be printed, and the left-wing union leader Frank Cousins said that the transport workers would pay for it.
Surveying the scene as her husband acknowledged the applause, Dora Gaitskell turned to a friend and commented: “But Charlie, the wrong people are clapping.”
The wrong people are clapping. Almost from the moment that Harold Macmillan first proposed entry into the Common Market it has enjoyed the support of the broad mainstream of British politicians. Some (Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Rab Butler) were less enthusiastic than others (Roy Jenkins, Jo Grimond, Geoffrey Howe) but in practice and in power they have backed membership. Opponents have been on the extremes, been the “wrong people”.
Perhaps if Gaitskell had lived, it might have been different. But by the end of January 1963, just three months after his Brighton speech, he was dead. No comparable figures at the height of their power and this includes Margaret Thatcher have reached the same conclusion.
The alliance that has supported membership proved vital in 1975, when the question of continuing in the Common Market was the subject of a referendum. Six months before polling day those who wanted to leave had the support of 41 per cent of voters, those who wanted to stay 33 per cent, uncannily similar to polls this weekend on the same question. But the campaign pitched both ends (Enoch Powell, Tony Benn and Michael Foot) against the middle and the middle won, convincingly. (41% of those eligible to vote is not particularly convincing Idris)
Now, after months of crisis in the euro and after the news from Greece about its referendum, one has to ask: for how long will this alliance hold? For how long will it remain the case that questioning Britain’s membership of the EU will be something that cannot be done by a mainstream political figure?
The creation of the eurozone and the troubles that have engulfed it have changed the EU for ever. There can be no going back to the status quo. The EU that survives the great disruption will be a very different body. And our relationship with it will be very different.
Gaitskell warned of the danger that entry into the Common Market could mean the “end of Britain as an independent European state. I make no apology for repeating it. It means the end of a thousand years of history.” But he acknowledged that this would be the result only if those who wanted a federal Europe had their way. He accepted that, while there were some who had that objective, attaining it was a long way off. His warning about a thousand years of history was, therefore, his most effective piece of rhetoric but always seemed rather an abstract point.
It doesn’t now. Now the point is very real. Now it stares us in the face.
During the eurozone crisis, a euphemism has been used repeatedly, one that Greece yesterday exposed. The euphemism is that the future success of the euro requires “a greater degree of fiscal union”.
What this actually means is that Europe will have to have sufficient common resources to deal with a future crisis. And this in turn means that it will have to have a wide range of common tax and spending policies so that the fund does not end up as a transfer from responsible countries to irresponsible ones. How long will Germans agree to pay for Greek public sector workers to have, say, better pension terms than they do?
Greece yesterday revealed the consequence of this. You cannot proceed to common policies without popular consent. But it is madness to allow one country that democratic right unilaterally, saying yes or no in a referendum to a deal that someone else is paying for. Fiscal union requires shared democratic control. To make a single currency work you have to have a state.
If the eurozone countries proceed in an orderly fashion to attempt to create a state, it would change the dynamic of the single market and the functioning of the political institutions of the European Union. Britain would stay outside to protect its thousand years of history, but it would still feel the impact. For a European state would require a fundamental renegotiation of the relationship between those in the eurozone and those outside.
Much more likely is that the process would not be so orderly. As has happened in the past, the aim of creating a state would be disguised, in order to reduce the prospect of popular resistance. Instead, the eurozone would attempt to solve its problems by using the institutions of the EU and existing treaty powers, a stealthy power grab. This, too, would alter our relationship sufficiently as to call it into question.
And then there is a third option. The eurozone might not find a way to deal with its problems, either directly or by stealth. It might find that asking German taxpayers to pay everyone else’s debts, and everyone else to agree German policies, just won’t work. Ever. Collapse of the euro would be calamitous, and the consequences for the EU hard to predict, but that doesn’t make it impossible.
So what is about to happen whether orderly, disorderly or catastrophic will change the terms of our membership and is likely to break the alliance that has always supported it. There will probably remain strong arguments for being in the EU and much to be lost by leaving. But the politics will have changed; it will no longer be a fringe position to question membership.
I was hugely amused at the brilliantly short speech of the MP Charles Walker last week, calling for a referendum: “If not now, when?” He had managed to find in four short words and a comma almost the only question on Europe that actually has a clear answer.
“Not now” is the answer. Not now because we don’t know what sort of Europe we would be voting for or against. Not now, but it’s coming
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