A Bill Of Indictment Against The EU

At Brits At Their Best, Iris Binstead of Save Our Sovereignty has nailed her 95 theses to the door of the EU castle. It is a damning bill of indictment enumerating the many ways Britian is being harmed by the EU.

Unfortunately, the political system of Britain is becoming ever more dysfunctional. As I pointed out here, the Brits practice a form of democracy that no longer gives substantive voice to the will of the people. Labour's decision two years ago to transfer the sovereignty of Britain to the EU without a promised referendum of the people of Britain should have resulted in open warfare on the streets of London. It did not. And indeed, David Cameron, the leader of the Tory party, who initially ran on a platform of holding such a referendum, later gave indications that, even if Tories were elected, he would not allow such a referendum to be held. And now Britain is ruled by a Tory-Lib Dem coalition that has ratified Labour's actions.

As Ms. Binstead writes in her preamble:

THOSE READERS who voted at the recent general election for a Conservative Government believing it to be eurosceptic must be feeling utterly betrayed. They were led to believe that Mr Cameron and Mr Hague would not allow the European Union to take further powers away from this country without a referendum. But already there is talk of new financial regulation and supervision, member states’ budgets being supervised, new powers for EU police forces, EU control over immigration and asylum matters, and much more.

Was Mr Cameron’s euroscepticism just a ploy to get votes or has he now been forced to co-operate by the extremely pro-European Union Liberal Democrats with whom the Conservatives are in coalition? Whichever is true, the Sunday Telegraph, 18.7.10, reported that he tried to intervene in the election of eurosceptic MP, Bill Cash as Chairman of the Parliamentary European Scrutiny Committee in an attempt to head off a Tory rebellion on Europe. Many members of the Tory Party were angered by this. There are also doubts about William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, who has vowed to increase Britain’s influence in the European Union by boosting the numbers of UK nationals in the Brussels Civil Service. (UK Press Association, 1.7.10.

Do read the entire post. And as Richard North at EU Referendum recently wrote:

[Co-Prime Minister] David Cameron is happier sharing power with the Liberal Democrats than he would be with an all-Conservative government, according to "one of his inner circle".

If this is true, and it could very well be, it sort of confirms a lot of what we have been saying – the man is not a Conservative, never has been and never will be. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that he would be more at home with his own kind in the Lib-Dims than with a Tory majority. . . .

And yet the British people have no say in the choosing of their chief executive. That is certainly one of the principal reasons that their form of democracy is not responsive to the will of the electorate.

At any rate, all of this comes after last week's announcement that our British cousins were about to start suffering something with which we in the U.S. have some historical experience - "taxation without representation." This from Mary Ellen Synon writing in the Daily Mail last week:

. . . The European Commission has decided to fire up the powers of taxation given to the EU by the Lisbon Treaty. Thanks to David Cameron's refusal to fight the transfer of sovereignty the treaty makes, the British people can now be subject to taxation direct from Brussels, with the Commons -- indeed, with the Chancellor -- having no control over the tax at all.

Today Janusz Lewandowski, the commissioner in charge of the EU's £116bn budget, announced he intends to press for a new EU tax. The euro-elite want to be able to get their hands on your money without having to ask your Government even for a perfunctory agreement. All this talk about belt-tightening around Europe is making the euro-elite edgy: they have their luxurious pay and pensions and travel allowances, and all their empire-building to protect, after all.

Britain and every other member state is going through terrible budget turmoil, with spending cuts and citizens furious about increases in taxation -- yet now Brussels is getting ready to activate Art 311 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (part of the Lisbon bundle -- the euro-elite don't want to make it easy for you to find it).

It says, 'The Union shall provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives and carry through its policies.'

The 'means.' That means money. Your money. Taken away by an unelected single party government (the commission) enabled by politicians over whom the British voters have no political control (the council). The British will have to pay the tax these people demand, but can never vote them out. The commission wants to start with a tax on all bank transactions, or perhaps air travel. It doesn't really matter which. Their point now is to establish the power of Brussels to tax the populations of the countries of the EU without any control by national parliaments. Once that power is in place, the taxes can be ratcheted up.

There you have it, people forced to pay taxes by people they did not vote into office, and whom they cannot vote out of office, and over whom they have no control.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere, a lot a determined men on board a tea ship in Boston Harbour, a lot of other brave men at a green in Lexington, and plenty other men with much to lose, all decided long ago they would not tolerate such a thing. They could not tolerate taxation without representation.

Question: will the British tolerate it? Or will they let themselves be humiliated in a way that even the small ragtag population of 13 British colonies would not allow in 1776?

Given the systemic failure of democracy as practiced in Britain, I think it really will take a "tea party" or two to make their governing class see the light. And I use the term "tea party" in both its historic and modern political contexts. As to the former, in the absence of actual tea to toss in the Thames, perhaps they can start by tossing in David Cameron and William Hague.