Is Taps Appropriate?

Accross the pond, the United Kingdom, as a sovereign nation, passed from history today. The Treaty of Lisbon, the EU's Constitution, has come into force, creating a single European government with sovereignty over all member states. This was not the will of the people of Europe, and certainly not the will of the people of Britain. Despite promises from Labour, Brits were never given a say. Instead, this anti-democratic socialist empire came about as the result of the world's slowest coup.

Dr. Richard North at EU Referendum provides a short obituary for his once great country:

From today, as the Lisbon treaty comes into force, we are no longer masters in our own house. Our prime minister, as a member of the European Council, is obligated under this new treaty to promote the aims and objectives of the European Union, over and above those of the UK, and is bound by the rules of the Union.

Of course, this will make no immediate difference. It simply renders de jure what has been de facto for several decades, but the coming into force of the treaty marks an important symbolic turning point. We are no longer an independent country, de jure. Our prime minister and his government are now working for an alien government, based in Brussels.

In effect, that makes us an occupied country, . . .

The worst of it is that, in the streets today, nothing will appear to have changed. Everything will look much the same as it did yesterday. In No 10, a man by the name of Gordon Brown will still be calling himself prime minister. In the Houses of Parliament, there will still be MPs and peers, and the Union Jack will adorn the building.

But everything is different. We are a satellite state of the Greater European Empire, ruled by a supreme government in Brussels. And things will stay different until we have regained our freedom. Until then, as I remarked before, we owe this government neither loyalty nor obedience. It is not our government. It is theirs. It is our enemy.

This is indeed a sad day.

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UK's Continued March Towards The EU

As I pointed out two weeks ago, Britain only had three chances to stay out of the EU - the vote in the House of Lords, the Irish Referendum, and the court case challenging Labour's refusal to grant a referendum to the people of Britain. As an aside, voting in the Tories would be utterly useless - Tory leader (term used loosely) David Cameron has already shrugged his shoulders and announced that he would treat Labour's acts as a fait accompli. Since I wrote that post, The House of Lords, gerrymandered by Labour PM Tony Blair near a decade ago, rolled over for Labour. Ireland voted against ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon / EU Constitution, but the EU is doing all it can to ignore its own laws and go ahead with the Treaty anyway. And today, the court case by Stuart Wheeler predicated on enforcing Labour's promise in their 2005 election plank to put any EU Constitution to a vote of the people, has failed at the lower court.
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This from the Telegraph:

A High court ruling removed the last obstacle to Britain's ratification of the European Union's treaty despite Labour's manifesto for a public vote.

Mr Brown has been under intense pressure to declare the treaty dead after Irish voters rejected it in a referendum earlier this month.

Mr Wheeler's case had forced the Prime Minister to delay the formal ratification of the treaty until the court's ruling.

At the heart of the case was the question of whether a political party's election manifesto was legally enforceable and whether the public have a "legitimate expectation" to see measures pledged during an election campaign enacted.

Rabinder Singh QC, appearing for Mr Wheeler, 73, said at a recent two-day hearing: "The Government promised a referendum and should keep its promise."

At stake were the fundamental principles "of good administration, fair play and straight dealing with the public," he said.

However, Jonathan Sumption QC, appearing for the Office of the Prime Minister, told the judges: "This case is politics dressed up as law."

. . . Ruth Lea, Director of the Global Vision think-tank, said: "Today's ruling by the High Court is extremely dispiriting especially as many European politicians have made it quite clear that the Lisbon Treaty is the Constitutional Treaty in all but name.

"Under these circumstances, the British people are surely entitled to their referendum on the Treaty as the Irish people did. All our polling shows an overwhelming majority in favour of a referendum."

Read the entire article. You can find the Court's decision here. According to the Court, Mr. Wheeler did not establish to the Court's satisfaction that the original EU Constitution and the new Lisbon Treaty are essentially identical documents and that, as a matter of policy, the Court would not enforce a campaign promise.

As to the argument that Wheeler's case that this was nothing more than politics dressed up as the law, what does that attorney think the law is if not politics "dressed up" with the police power of the state? This was really a case of whether politicians can be held to their political promises, which I happen to think is the weakest of arguments that could have been brought in this matter. As a policy matter, I do not think that appropriate for a court to decide for that as, carried to its logical extreme, it has the potential for havoc as circumstances or minds may validly change. That said, this particular promise was on a matter that goes to the heart of democracy in Britain and, as such, is I think a special case. Further, Courts in Britain, just as in the U.S., seem wholly unable to stay out of making inappropriate policy decisions of late, so we shall see.

The EU Referendum proclaims itself "disappointed but not surprised." They note that Mr. Wheeler's chances on appeal are, at best, slim.

The approval process for the EU is going forward with the Queen apparently having already given her assent. At Brits At Their Best, they have posted an open letter to the Queen noting that she has violated her Coronation Oath to defend the laws of Britain and withdrawing their fealty to the Crown. The fight is hardly over, and the Irish No vote has at least exposed how the EU's ruthless determination to put its plans in place wholly irrespective of democracy or law - something that will surely come back to haunt them. And perhaps the Irish vote may yet prove decisive.

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A Socialist Coup (Updated)

At least one rule of the EU is simple and unambiguous. A failure of any one member country to ratify an EU treaty (or in this case, the Constitution disingenuously renamed a treaty to get around the need for national referendums) means the Treaty does not come into force. But the EU is not going to let democracy or its own laws stand in the way. It has brushed aside the one democratic referendum held the other day in Ireland and plans to enforce the Treaty of Lisbon regardless. There is a true coup going on in Europe. The rule of law and democracy have been tossed out, and what is being created in their stead is something both both Marx and Orwell would recognize.
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If you believe in democracy and the rule of law, what you see today across the pond and in Europe should be horrifying. The Irish referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon, blogged below, by law should have ended this socialist coup. But it has not. The EU Referendum quotes a press release from Hans-Gert Pöttering, the president of the EU parliament:

It is of course a great disappointment for all those who wanted to achieve greater democracy, greater political effectiveness and greater clarity and transparency in decision-making in the European Union that the majority of the Irish could not be convinced of the need for these reforms of the European Union. We must not forget, however, that the European Union has experienced crises and times of difficulty several times before. Today, as in the past, we must keep a cool head.

The rejection of the Treaty text by one European Union country cannot mean that the ratifications which have already been carried out by 18 EU countries become invalid. The ratifications in the other EU Member States must be respected just as much as the Irish vote. For that reason, the ratification process must continue in those Member States which have not yet ratified. . . .

Read the entire post.

There is nothing democratic or transparent about the manner in which the EU operates. And indeed, the opacity and centralization of power without any institutionalized system of checks and balances will only increase significantly once the EU is operating under its Constitution. Pöttering's rejection of EU rules regarding complete ratification of the Treaty by all EU member nations as a prerequisite for the Treaty going into effect is unlawful - but it tells you precisely how undemocratic and how utterly determined the intelligentsia of Europe are to impose the EU upon its citizens, wholly irrespective of whatever the wishes of the citizens may be.

And this from the Times:

Britain is pressing on with the tortuous ratification of the European Union’s Lisbon treaty, despite Ireland rejecting it in a referendum.

Jim Murphy, the Europe minister, said today the Irish would be left isolated when the other 26 EU member nations passed the treaty into law later this year. The treaty would establish the offices of a European president and foreign minister, and would reduce the power of individual nations to veto reforms.

Gordon Brown, the prime minister, has rejected calls for a referendum on the treaty, but in Ireland, where constitutional law obliged a referendum, citizens rejected it overwhelmingly.

. . . Legally the treaty requires the ratification of all 27 member states to come into force - but Britain has joined France and Germany in signalling that it will look for a way around that technicality [emphasis added].

. . . The treaty was still good for Britain, he insisted, and the onus was now on Ireland to propose a means of resolving the crisis when EU leaders meet in Brussels next week.

The rest of the EU could proceed with the document in some form without the Irish, he signalled, and would finish ratifying it at the end of this year.

He said: “It is important to reflect then, is it 26 governments who have ratified and is it one that hasn’t? And then we discuss the way forward.”

. . . European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso said the treaty was not dead. France and Germany, too, have urged the EU to press ahead with the project despite admitting that the referendum result was a serious blow.

Read the entire article. And there is this, also in the Times, from socialist Labour MP, Dennis MacShane. He gives you some idea of the mindset of those determined to make the EU super-state a reality, democracy be damned:

It took hundreds of pages of the Federalist Papers, a few dozen men locked for weeks in a sealed room in Philadelphia and a bloody civil war for the US constitution to be accepted. So the little local difficulties in France, the Netherlands and now Ireland must be seen in a broader perspective.

Anti-Europeans are lacing their champagne with Guinness as they celebrate the “no” vote and proclaim with W.B. Yeats “all changed, changed utterly”. Yet the EU, its Commission, existing treaties and directives will still be in place tomorrow. Europe has been here before and will be again.

. . . Ireland and the rest of Europe will wake up on Monday with a headache but not much else. Not a single Eurocrat will lose his job. . .

The big losers are Turkey and Croatia. British Tory Eurosceptics hypocritically proclaim their support for Turkish accession, but know that demanding referendums on future treaties means an end to enlargement [emphasis added].

No EU treaty can come into force until all signatory nations ratify it. But Ireland represents 1 per cent of the EU's total population and some old-fashioned democrats may feel that 1 per cent does not outweigh the rest of Europe's nations which are saying “yes” to the treaty [emphasis added].

But the rules are clear. Had the Irish voted “yes” and the British Parliament voted “no”, it is unlikely that Open Europe and Stuart Wheeler would describe the Irish popular vote as superior to one by Britain's sovereign parliament.

But amid the clamour from anti-EU campaigners in Britain and other nations to ignore sovereign parliamentary decisions, some way forward will have to be found.

. . . “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,” Yeats wrote, and its complacent political establishment may feel that Ireland is falling apart. Yeats added that “anarchy is loosed upon the world”, and an anarchic bust-up is what many Eurosceptics hope for. But it won't happen. Europe will go on its summer holidays. Perhaps when it comes back, ways will be found to make the treaty work, or the parts of it that do not need any treaty change.

. . . As the hysteria dies down, ways will be found to make Europe work, with or without the treaty. For both pro- and anti-Europeans, things have not changed so utterly at all.

Read the entire article. Mr. MacShane seems to be a little off in his U.S. history. There was no civil war involved in the crafting of the U.S. Constitution. Nor was it a thing crafted in hiding. Indeed, the Federalist Papers he cites and the like are a testament to just how open and democratic the process was in crafting the Constitution. That stands in stark contrast to everything about the EU. Indeed, every effort has been made to muddle the water. The Treaty of Lisbon stood for months as hundreds of pages of incomprehensible amendments apart from the original documents being amended - thus making it impossible for the average person to make heads or tails to what the Treaty actually said or to compare it to the Consitution from 2005. Indeed, it is hard to think of a more grotesque and improper comparison than that which Mr. MacShane makes between the U.S. and the socialist coup that is occurring today in Europe.

And how Orwellian is it for MacShane to appeal to "democracy" to reject the "no" vote of Ireland? The reason only 1% of the citizens of Europe voted against this socialist nightmare is because only 1% of Europe's citizens have yet to be given a vote on it, at least under its current disingenous categorization as a "treaty" rather than a "constitution." When it was named the latter, both the people of France and the Netherlands voted it down in 2005. Which is precisely why the EU renamed it a treaty and sought to ram it down citizen's throats without their opportunity to vote on it.

And what does it tell you of the thought process of Mr. MacShane to attack the Tory party over a referendum on EU enlargement, claiming hypocrisy on the Tory's part because they, the Tories, know a referendum to enlarge the EU will fail. These people have nothing but utter disdain for democracy and a complete belief in their right to impose their will. They are dangerous.

Update: More from EU Referendum on the plans impose the Treaty of Lisbon irrespective of the Irish vote here.

The people of Britain and Europe have collectively shrugged their shoulders and allowed their democratic votes to be taken from them without, seemingly, any concern. I do not understand how this can occur without blood in the streets. I will never understand this mindset and apathy. What is going on in Europe is no less a coup with a bare patina of democracy than was Hitler's accretion of power in the 1930's. I expect the long term ramifications of this grand experiment in socialism to be no less disastrous.

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A Tip O' The Hat To Democracy, A Tip O' The Knickers To The EU

Ireland, the only country out of 27 given an opportunity to vote on the new EU Constitution, have just saved the other half billion people in Europe. They have pulled Britain's crown jewels out of the fire. They have voted no to the Treaty of Lisbon. One can only imagine the number of Guiness Stouts being poured across Britain and the rest of Europe today.

As I blogged below, Britain had three last chances to stay out of the EU. One was the a vote on ratification of the EU Constitution by the House of Lords, an institution radically altered by Labour PM Tony Blair when they were not seeing things his way. Unfortunately, but predictably, they voted with Labour to approve the transfer of Britain's sovereignty to the EU. A second chance was a law suit to force a referendum in Britain based on Labour's pre-election promises to the nation. That one is ongoing. The third chance was the Irish vote. And they have not disappointed.

The Irish just tossed a huge wrench into the anti-democratic wheels of EU. Every other nation in the EU was having the new Constitution imposed on them by their political class. Ireland was required by the terms of its Constitution to hold a referendum. And hold it they did. All 27 nations have to agree for the Treaty of Lisbon to come into effect and the new EU super-state to be born - at least according to existing treaties. There are without doubt thousands of socialists in Brussels right now combing every possible nuance of every EU treaty to see if there is a way around that.

The EU Referendum, whose raison d'etre has been to fight this EU coup in Britain, should have the first word on this:

Overall result so far: 53.6 - 46.4 for the "noes", but Corbett speaks (see bottom of this post) - and so does Barroso. Despite that, there is no way that the "colleagues" can get round this. Spin they might, but the fact is that, in the ONLY referendum on the treaty, the voters said Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! . . .

OPENING A NEW FRONT: As this is not the end, the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning, a new front has been opened in the war. In a day or so there will be more about the BrugesGroupBlog and the thinking behind it.

What you will now hear is loud squealing from the direction of Brussels as the incredibly anti-democratic folks who are determined to make an EU super-state wholly irrespective of the wishes of Europe's citizens try and figure a way around this. And as the EU Referendum documents, it has already started:

UPDATE: Reuters is reporting that France's secretary of state for European affairs, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, is saying that an Irish "no" should not stop other member states ratifying the treaty. "The most important thing is that ratification should continue in other countries and I have good reasons to think that the process of ratification will continue," he told LCI television. "We would have to see with the Irish at the end of the ratification process how we could make it work and what legal arrangement we could come to."

So, the mice are gnawing away at it already. We told you this would happen! . . .

UPDATE: David Heathcoat-Amory says on BBC Radio 4 that the Conservatives should press for the UK ratification to be abandoned. Some chance!

UPDATE: Ahern says: "We're in uncharted waters." You bet!

UPDATE: The founder of Libertas, Declan Ganley, says: "The Irish people have rejected the Lisbon Treaty. "it is a great day for Irish democracy ... This is democracy in action ... and Europe needs to listen to the voice of the people." Ganley adds that Brian Cowen, "has a mandate to go back to Europe and do the best job possible".

Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins has said the likely "no" vote is a "huge rebuff to the political establishment" but a vindication of the rights of "tens of millions of workers" in the European Union. He believes the "no" side "won the argument", despite the fact that the main political parties and "big business" were in favour of the treaty. . . .

UPDATE: Poland's President Lech Kaczynski's office says he will still sign the treaty. "The president has already said the issue of ratification is a done deal," Mariusz Handzlik, head of the foreign affairs department in the president's office, told Reuters.

UPDATE: Andrew Duff, Lib-Dim leader says, "we cannot accept this result". Corbett on his blog says, "there are 26 other member states whose opinion matters too. It is inconceivable that all of the others will simply say 'too bad - one country has said no to the package as it stands, so let's forget reform and stick with the current system for evermore."

UPDATE: Deutsche Welle reports: "A feeling of gloom and uncertainty fell on Brussels on Friday after Ireland's justice minister said it appeared that the 'no' camp had pulled ahead in the referendum on the European Union's new reform treaty." The eurosceptics, meanwhile, have decamped to Kitty O'Shea's - yards from the commission building - drinking pints of Guiness while they hold an impromptu press conference.

UPDATE: EU commission President Jose Manuel Barroso is still calling on other members states to ratify the treaty. "I believe the treaty is alive and we should now try to find a solution," he says.

UPDATE: Minister for Justice Brian Lenihan says Ireland has lost influence in Europe. He was "very, very disappointed" with the outcome, adding: "I think it is a very sad day for this country and for Europe as well." It was a "serious matter for Ireland," he said, then declaring:"We have to accept the decision of the people… and that's democracy and I accept that." . . .

Read the entire post. This certainly ought to be a signal to Tory Leader David Cameron to finally get off the fence and start challenging this stealth coup being imposed on Britain. And hopefully it will put much more pressure on Labour and Gordon Brown to stop the ratification process.

We will give the last word on this to Brits At Their Best who say a very sincere "Thank You" to Ireland:

We think the Irish have said NO to the EU with gusto!

They alone, three million of the half a billion people in the 27 nations of the European Union, had a democratic vote on the undemocratic EU constitution.

Read the entire post. The war is hardly over. But think of this as Dunkirk. The socialists are not defeated, but they just lost their best opportunity to destroy the allies.

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Britain's Final Chances

The EU will become a super-state once its Constitution, embodied in the Treaty of Lisbon, is fully ratified by all member countries. The EU is an anti-democratic experiment in socialism that stands in contradiction to Britain’s anglo-saxon traditions of representative democracy, individual rights and capitalism (see here, here, here and here). While membership in the EU has proven a boon for Britain’s political class, it has proven very bad for the rest of Britain in innumerable ways that only portend to worsen.

Britain's integration as an EU province is also very bad for the U.S. Britain has been America's closest European ally. As Britain is subsumed into the EU, so goes both its special relationship with the U.S. and, in a larger context, a critically important member of the anglosphere whose traditions and values animate the freest and most prosperous nations on earth.

Britain is at a tipping point on the EU membership in many ways. Things look bleak at the moment. Gordon Brown and Labour are determined to transfer Britain’s sovereignty to the EU without any vote of the people. The "conservative" Tory Party is little more than a light version of the socialist Labour party. As I posted here, it is led by David Cameron, a weak man driven by political expediency rather than conservative principles who has said that he will treat Labour’s actions as a fait accompli. What is going on in Britain is a stealth coup by a disingenuous political class that is being largely supported by British media though minimalist and superficial coverage.

We are down now to the last three chances to derail British ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and transfer of the bulk of its sovereign powers to the EU. The House of Lords must vote on the Lisbon Treaty this week. Ireland is the only country to hold a referendum on the treaty, and they do so on Thursday. Lastly, there is a court case seeking to force Labour to uphold its pledge and hold a referendum on the EU. Speaking on these issues are Melanie Phillips, John Bolton and EU Referendum’s Dr. Richard North.
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Author Melanie Phillips has written an exceptional article documenting the current situation and the stakes at issue:

. . . The EU is the issue that all politicians are ignoring in the hope we will forget about it. Most immediately, they hope we have forgotten to be concerned about the European Constitution, which is masquerading as a bog standard treaty over which we need lose no sleep.

This constitution, which would bring into being an unprecedented bureaucratic super-state and end once and for all what remains of the independence of EU member nations, was dumped after it was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. It was then resurrected in all but name as the Treaty of Lisbon, which Parliament is in the process of ratifying. This week, that constitution faces a triple test.

Today, businessman Stuart Wheeler's legal challenge to Labour's refusal to honour its manifesto pledge to put it to a referendum reaches the High Court. On Wednesday, the ratification Bill reaches the House of Lords. This Bill was ruthlessly shoe-horned through the Commons. This week we will see whether their Lordships will also spinelessly roll over, or recall their historic role as a last- ditch defence of this country's interests against such abuse of power.

But something else is happening which our politicians didn't bargain for. As we know, the constitution has to be approved by every member state or else it falls. On Thursday, Ireland votes on the treaty - and it looks as if it might vote against it.
The Irish government is filled with panic and horror at the possibility that the Irish public might actually be thinking for themselves. For the EU has always relied on bamboozling the public about the joys of EUtopia and terrifying them that their whole world will collapse if it is thwarted.

More and more people, however, are realising that they have been lied to, not only about the constitution but about the whole EU project. In Britain, we were told from the start that it was only an economic union which would entail no loss of sovereignty.

That was the very opposite of the truth. The dirty little secret is that, even without the constitution, political power has simply drained away from Westminster to Brussels.

In a little-noticed but quite devastating speech in the Commons last week, the Tory MP Peter Lilley recorded that last year the EU passed no fewer than 177 directives - more or less equivalent to our Acts of Parliament - and 2,033 regulations enforceable in the UK, as well as making 1,045 decisions which affect us.

Our own Trade Minister has admitted that 'around half of all UK legislation with an impact on business, charities and the voluntary sector' stems from laws passed in Brussels. . . .

Now the former Tory policy adviser Lord Blackwell is arguing that Britain should renegotiate the terms of its EU membership, restricting it to trade agreements and common security and environment policies, but rejecting EU control over monetary policy, foreign affairs, defence and justice.

An opinion poll run by his group Global Vision suggests that more than a third of voters across all parties would back a prospective Conservative Government pledge to negotiate such a change, and that people would support it in a referendum by more than two to one.

The fact is that those opposed to the creation of a European super-state are not the 'xenophobes' or 'Little Englanders' of the overheated Eurofanatic imagination.

. . . The EU is fundamentally an anti- democratic project, based on the belief that the individual nation is the source of the ills of the world and that by contrast supra-national institutions offer the solution to all its problems.

It is that absence of democratic transparency which is now corrupting not just European politics but our own. The fresh outbreak of 'Tory sleaze' over the expenses gravy train is rooted in Brussels, where corruption is the accepted way of EU life.

Yesterday, the Irish government said that a 'no' vote over the constitution would be a crisis for Europe. What rubbish. The plain fact is that the EU has brought about a crisis for democracy within Europe. Which is why it is essential that we should renegotiate our place within it.

Politicians, however, run a mile from any such suggestion. The terror of acknowledging the true nature of what has happened, in case he is required to address it, has propelled David Cameron into a cul-de-sac.

His pledge to allow the British people a vote on the constitution is worthless since - as he has only now admitted explicitly - once the treaty is ratified it will be almost impossible to do anything about it.

But since his party has warned that the constitution will spell the end of British self-government, this turns Mr Cameron into the Hamlet of the European debate - an awesome talent for speeches denouncing tyranny, but a complete inability to act against it.

Mr Cameron is paralysed by fear of reigniting the Tories' internal civil war over Europe. But the Tory Europhiles are now moth- eaten has-beens who have comprehensively lost the argument with the British people.

The fact is that Parliament is now so emasculated it is becoming the equivalent of Westminster regional council in the Republic of Euroland.

. . . It is time to end this charade. Whatever happens to the constitutional treaty in Ireland or anywhere else, Britain must now re-negotiate its relationship with the EU. The politician who does so will be a hero to the nation. Which is why Mr Cameron should ignore the faint-hearts and suede-shod Euro-fanatics in his ranks. This country must rediscover its identity and sense of purpose, or else it is finished. It can do so only if it regains the power to govern itself.

The issue is quite simply whether democracy in Britain has a future at all. It could not be more fundamental. . . .

Read the entire article. Former UN Ambassador John Bolton spoke at the University of Dublin against ratification of the EU treaty, both because it is anti-democratic and its effects on NATO and the US-British relationship:

The Lisbon Treaty poses a threat to NATO and undermines democracy by handing more power to Brussels, a former senior advisor to President George W Bush has warned.

John Bolton, . . . said the new Treaty could hurt the military alliance between Europe and the US.

He was speaking only days before Ireland hold a referendum on the EU Treaty, the only member country to do so, with the latest polls showing the Yes campaign slightly ahead.

But an Irish vote No on Thursday will mean the Treaty, which abolishes dozens of national vetoes and creates the new post of EU president, cannot come into force in any of the 27 member states.

. . . Mr Bolton has previously warned the deal threatens Britain's special relationship with the United States and yesterday said he would not understand the Irish giving "more powers to bureaucrats."

He added: "The only people you elect have a very limited role and I think this treaty will further enhance the power of institutions in Brussels without extending democratic authority to people."

. . . A Global Vison/ICM poll published yesterday found 64 per cent of Britons would back a renegotiated looser relationship with the EU in a referendum, against 26 per cent who would oppose it.

Read the entire article. Dr. Richard North, who runs the EU Referendum blog, added his own thoughts to those of John Bolton:

. . . For sure, the official US view is very much at variance, expressed in a report last month from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. This stated that Washington would support a more "muscular" EU, provided that European defence spending was sufficient for a radical improvement in military capabilities on this side of the Atlantic. Some four months previously, in a speech in Paris, Victoria Nuland, the US ambassador to NATO, had overtly supported a militarily stronger European Union . . . That support, though, was conditional on the Europeans embarking on a "radical improvement in military capabilities, with a far more focused policy on defence spending.

"While we cannot say that Bolton's view in any way reflects official US policy, it may be a straw in the wind. From the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, we recently had a report indicating that many of the EU member states were having trouble meeting their existing defence commitments. While between 2001 and 2006, France, Britain and Spain spent more than three percent of gross domestic product on defence, Italy spent only 1.47 percent, and spending in Germany and Sweden sharply declined.

Even more recently, we had seen reports that the French military is in trouble, with most of France's tanks, helicopters and jet fighters are unusable and its defence apparatus on the verge of "falling apart".

Elsewhere on this blog we recorded the difficulties EU member states had in equipping its force for Chad and latterly we concluded that – in terms of military performance, the idea of European defence was an "unrealisable dream".Despite this, we have seen continued attempts by the EU to create a "European Army" – but all that actually amounts to is a "dedicated military headquarters", more structures and oversight of the military function by the EU parliament.

. . . For some member states . . . the objective of pooling military structure is to spend less money on defence.

Going back in history, one must recall that one of the greatest supporters of the nascent European "project" – in the fifties and sixties – was the US government, with CIA money being channelled into the European Movement. Not least, the US then saw in a united Europe a bastion against the emerging threat of Communism which threatened to engulf the whole of Europe.

Now, if Bolton is seeing the EU defence ambitions as a threat, he cannot be the only influential American to take that view. This may reflect the assiduous work of a number of British teams who have been over to the States, working through right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation – warning them of the dangers.

As did it help the EU on its way, therefore, there is now a glimmer of hope that the US could be instrumental in prising away the UK from the "project", having seen – at last – that the EU represents a danger to the interests of democracy and global security.

Read the entire post. NATO as it is has significant, possibly existential problems. Most NATO nations other than Britain do not field a functional military and most NATO members are not fully supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Moreover, given the anti-democratic nature of the EU, having all of the member nation’s forces integrated and under EU central control could prove problematic down the road for any states whose restive populations decide they no longer want to be part of the grand socialist experiment that is the EU.

At any rate, we are nearing the end of Britain's chances to sidestep the transfer of their sovereign rights to the EU. Much will be decided by week’s end.

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Tory Perfidy and British Sheep

If ever you questioned whether the Tory "Conservative Party" presented an alternative to the socialist Labour Party, put your questions to rest. They are no different. Even as Labour transfers British sovereignty to the EU without any say of the British people, the Boy Wonder shows his true colors. David Cameron states that he will not hold a referendum on the EU. And in reply, nary a "baa" is heard from the sheep across the pond.
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All three major British political parties, Tory, Lib Dem and Labour, promised the electorate three years ago that they would not transfer sovereignty to the EU without a referendum of the electorate. Labour ripped up that promise and has signed on the EU dotted line, refusing a referendum. Now the Tory party has tossed up its arms and said that they will not hold a referendum either. This from the Telegraph:

[Tory Leader] David Cameron has admitted that he may never be able to fulfill his promise to hold a referendum on the European Treaty.

The Conservative leader had wanted a poll on the Lisbon Treaty before its powers came into force, but has said it may be too late to reverse them by the time he becomes Prime Minister.

Legislation to ratify the EU Treaty is currently being pushed through Parliament by the Government, and should complete its final stages well before the next General Election, which is likely to be held in just under two year's time.

. . . Addressing a meeting in Harlow, in Essex, Mr Cameron admitted it would be "almost impossible" to have a referendum on the Treaty if it was already law in the UK and the rest of Europe.

He added: "We may have to say, well look, we're not happy with this situation, here are some of the powers we'd like to have back.

"But we can't give you that referendum on the Lisbon Treaty because it's already been put in place across the rest of Europe."

Read the entire article.

This is the penultimate betrayal of the British electorate. Cameron's excuse for his position is pure prevarication. Per the new Constitution, there is clearly delinieated method for withdraw from the EU which Britain could accomplish and then negotiate any method they want with the EU for trade, etc. That is not what the professional politicos of the Tory Party want. This must be a God send for Cameron, as he and his cronies get fully onto the EU gravy train and now use the laughable excuse of a Labour fait accompli to justify their complicity. As Peter Hitchens said not long ago, "I can guarantee that, as long as the Tories occupy the place which should be taken by a proper opposition, there's not the slightest hope of real change for the better." He is spot on in his assessment.

The Tory Party, since the day they got rid of Margaret Thatcher because of her opposition to the EU, has been sleeping in the same bed with Labour on this. The EU is a gravy train for the professional politicos of Britain. It is anything but that for the British populace, but that matters little since they have no say in the matter.

In America, a change on the scale of what is happening in Britain would require a fundamental revision of the Constitution - and indeed, the tsunami of laws and regulations from the EU are working a fundamental and quite likely irreversible change in Britain. My sense is - and I say this without any sort of melodrama - were a fundamental change of such a magnitude to our structure of government be taken fiat in America as it is being done in Britain, blood would fill the streets. Yet there is nary a "baa" from the sheep across the pond. I will simply never understand this - not from the country that has fought so dearly and repeatedly for its rights, from the time of the Magna Carta forward through to the battlefields of Europe.

Update: I do stand corrected. I forgot for a moment the EU Referendum, possibly the best blog on both sides of the pond, which has been leading the fight on the EU. Unfortunately, even they see no hope in the foreseeable future.

Update 2: The one country holding a referendum on this new EU Constitution is Ireland. They will vote on 12 June. As it stands today, the "No" votes hold a slight lead. Even if Ireland does vote down the Constitution, it will probably not even slow down the EU.

It should also be noted that the EU's latest anti-democratic effort is to do away with representation of Eurosceptic parties in the EU parliament.

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Peter Hitchens Makes The Case For Withdrawal From the EU & Explains Why It Won't Happen

There are Euroskeptics, and then there is the Daily Mail's Peter Hitchins. Mr. Hitchins believes that Britian would best be served by withdrawing from the EU in toto and then negotiating trade rights. In light of the looming economic debacle as set forth here and here, and for a host of other reasons set out below, I concur. This from Mr. Hitchins:

. . . [The EU] has become more and more unpopular since 1975, as those who are paying attention (or are personally affected) have come to realise that the supposed crackpots of 1975 -Tony Benn and Enoch Powell - were actually quite right. Just as they warned, we were being asked to give away our national independence and this was the most important issue. Those who are dismissed as 'bonkers' almost always do turn out to be right later on, and there is probably a historical study to be done about this.

The obvious conclusion from this is that we should now leave. We were sold a fraudulent prospectus nearly 33 years ago. We have since suffered quite badly as a country, economically and politically - the full cost has been detailed by Christopher Booker and Richard North in a series of books, the best of all being 'The Great Deception' - books largely ignored by many reviewers and journals. We have held back ( quite rightly) from plunging fully into the project, so that we still more or less retain our own currency and our own legal system , our own diplomatic service and our own armed forces, so there is not too much unscrambling to do. And there is a strong, reasoned case for negotiating an amicable departure. If Norway and Switzerland, both far smaller and less globally-connected than we, can negotiate individual terms with the EU, then why can't we?

Now, I am not saying these terms would be perfect. But thanks to the existence of the World Trade Organisation, the EU simply cannot erect huge trade barriers against us, as it could once have done, and would be crazy to do so anyway - as it sells far more to us than we do to it. Mexico, most certainly not an EU member, has excellent trade terms with the EU. If we want to keep the much-touted rights to live and work in the EU, we no doubt can. Norwegians and Swiss nationals have them. They even have - which we should never agree to - passport-free travel to and from EU countries.

To the extent that we wish to trade with the EU, we would be under pressure to agree to EU rules about what we sell. We would no doubt have to pay some sort of contribution to obtain the 'benefits' of EU membership. But we would be able to negotiate this from a position of strength much more advantageous than the one a British prime Minister now finds himself in at Euro-summits. They want our markets far more than we need theirs. We would have no need to need to accept the supremacy over our Parliament of the European Court of Justice at Luxembourg. We would not be obliged to enact EU commission directives as British Acts of Parliament. We could issue our own passports in whatever colour we preferred (I favour a stiff-backed blue booklet myself) and (as does the USA and...Thailand) we could give our own citizens (we might let them become subjects again) greater rights to enter the country than persons from Lithuania or Romania. We could halt the absorption of our independent diplomatic service into the EU's. We could make our own individual trade agreements with the USA, and wouldn't need to get caught in trade wars between Washington and Brussels, as we frequently have been in the past. We could withdraw from the European arrest warrant system, and ignore the new 'Human Rights' commission in Vienna which is shortly to be the fount of political correctness across the EU.

All this is practicable, possible and well within our abilities as a major nation, quite grown up enough to manage on its own. The only reason it doesn't happen is that the leaderships of the main political parties won't put such a case to the British people. That is because they are both firmly biased in favour of our absorption into the Superstate, for reasons they have never been required to explain because they have never faced coherent opposition.

The large but powerless minority who understand the issue and know we could go it alone remain just that - a large and powerless minority. . .

But the energy which ought to be going into this is wasted on a thing called 'Euroscepticism', a political position as futile as its name is unwieldy. MPs in both major parties fritter away their energies on micro-complaints about the detailed operation of the EU, or individual issues of EU membership, while veering away from the issue of membership itself which is in fact the only point at which these wrongs can be righted. Their behaviour allows the party leaderships to treat the matter as an argument between those who want Britain to me more European EU and those who want Britain to be less European.

Next time a Tory (or Labour) MP tells you he or she is a 'Eurosceptic. Ask them just how long it is they are going to continue sitting in the middle of the road. They have been doubting this project now for decades. Isn't it time they made up their minds whether they support or oppose it? Nothing will happen until they openly oppose it. Those of you who continue to have illusions about the Useless Tories should note that Tory MPs who sign up to the 'Better off Out’ organisation seem to come under mysterious pressure to withdraw. . . . Nothing will happen until the two major parties begin to collapse, and that's most easily begun with the Tories. . . .

Read the entire article.

When the British Parliament passes the Lisbon Treaty, the vast bulk of Britain's sovereign powers will be transferred to the EU. The Britain that gave to the world the concepts of democracy, capitalism, free trade, individual rights, representative government and a nation of laws will be lost to history. For that reason alone, this will be a giant step backwards for freedom.

Britain, has long been our most important ally. That relationship will be completely altered if not substantially ended when Britain goes from the status of a sovereign nation to that of a province of the EU. With the passage of this Treaty, if not now, then soon we will only be dealing diplomatically with the EU.

The only reason I could ever identify for the British government's desire to transfer the sovereignty of its nation to the EU is that such an act is the ultimate expression of the British left's disdain for the history and traditions of their own country. They view the colonial history of Britain as evil. Thus, for the multicultural left, the chance to create a socialist utopia by transferring the sovereignty of Britain makes complete sense.

But what about Conservative support for this insane transfer of sovereignty to the EU? It certainly exists - and indeed, has been the major schism in the Tory Party since the time Margaret Thatcher turned against the EU. That has long been, to me at least, a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

The EU itself a huge experiment in non-democratic socialism that thrives on centralized power. It has no internal checks and balances. It is the antithises of democratic, free market, small government conservatism. Thus, I have never been able to understand how anyone who calls themself a "conservative" could do anything other than hold up the sign of the cross to ward off the EU at the mere mention of its name. Yet that is certainly not what has occurred with Britain's Conservative Party.

Peter Hitchens explained it in an earlier post that suggests the desire of Conservatives to join the EU was initially a failure to understand precisely the nature of the beast. But today, the true allure of the EU is that it provides a gravy train for Britain's political class.

. . . Note, specially, the behaviour of the Tory Party. People sometimes ask why I call them 'useless'. Well, here's an example. You get a lot of something called 'Euroscepticism' from Tories. It's a stupid word and it describes a worthless thing.

They act as if they are against the EU grabbing our power and money, and talk sternly about how they disapprove.

But David Cameron, William Hague and Malcolm Rifkind are clear that, if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, that will be that. In the (highly unlikely) event of them coming to power, they won't hold a referendum because, oh dear, it will be too late.

In doing this, they are part of a great tradition. Harold Macmillan first sought British entry to the Common Market in 1962. Then Ted Heath succeeded in getting it, ramming our membership through Parliament with characteristic ruthlessness and sacrificing Britain's fisheries industry for his ambition.

When, in 1975, Harold Wilson held a referendum on staying in, Margaret Thatcher campaigned vigorously for Britain to remain in the Market, sporting a jumper bearing the flags of member states.

When she came to office, she pushed through the Single European Act, a huge surrender of British vetoes. Then she was bludgeoned by Cabinet colleagues into entering the Exchange Rate Mechanism.

By the end of her premiership, she had begun to realise what was at stake. But it was precisely because of this that the Tory Party then threw her out of office.

John Major went on to browbeat and bully his MPs into voting for the Maastricht Treaty, yet another huge surrender of independence.

Mr Cameron represents a firm return to the Europhile days before Lady Thatcher's rebellion.

When it comes to action, the Tory Party will continue to support the EU because they have been committed to it since the Sixties, and cannot admit that this was a mistake.

But they also recognise how unpopular it is, which is why they pretend to be hostile and invented 'Euroscepticism' to console disgruntled voters.

The longer this goes on, the harder it will be to unscramble. My advice is not to be diverted by campaigns for a referendum that will get us nowhere.

It is to consider, very carefully, whether you will be able to look your children and grandchildren in the face when, 20 years hence, they ask: "What did you do to stop the country being taken over by a foreign power?"

I shall continue, week by week, to suggest ways in which you might be able to ensure that they never need to ask that question.

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How Will The UK Be Freed From The EU?

Simon Heffer weighs in on the mendacious effort by Labour, through their adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon without a referendum of the people, to transfer British sovereignty to the EU. Heffer sees two viable options for stopping this coup - a successful bid for a referendum led by the David Cameron and the Tory party or massive civil unrest. Both Labour and Tory have shown little but disdain for the concept of democracy, though if British history has any lessons - and you can check Brits At Their Best to see what those lessons are - they do so at their own peril.

I do not pretend to understand how a British conservative can possibly support the UK's ascession to the EU as a province. Everything about the EU is antithetical to the concepts of capitalism, liberal democracy, and small government. Yet the issue of whether the EU should aspire to nationhood and whether the UK should be a member of the EU in such case has split the conservative Tory party in years past. In fact, this issue was responsible for the downfall of Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when she took a stand against the EU.

In a 1988 speech at in Belgium, Thacher spoke out against EU proposals for a federal structure and centralized decision making that were to become reality in the Treaty of Maastricht. Thatcher sagely opined that the role of the EC should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition: "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels." Could she have been more prophetic? But for her stand on this issue, she was driven from leadersip to the Tory party.

In any event, the Tory Party has been playing political games with this, hinting that they would grant a referendum to the people about whether to ratify the latest Treaty of Lisbon, but not saying it unequivocably. In other words, they are attempting to make the maximum political gain out opposing Labour's incredible act of cynicism, but are not going so far as to actually promising to do anything about it. It is no wonder Brits are so incredibly cynical about their politicians (and it is another reason I thank the Gods we directly elect our Chief Executive). At any rate, it says much when you have the opion pages of the nation's leading conservative newspaper given over to a piece that makes the case for insurrection as a second viable option.

This today from Simon Heffer:

For the avoidance of doubt - and I would never want you to have any of that - let me state where, for what it is worth, I stand on the European Union. I am against it. This is not a johnny-come-lately position. I have been against it since before we were in it. . .

The root of my opposition is straightforward. I wish to live in a country that governs itself. I wish to vote for people who, if elected, have power to take decisions and to alter the policies with which we are governed. I am not sure that is too much to ask.

I grew up believing that was why my father and grandfather fought in two world wars. I have never understood why so many of our politicians, who bang on about "rights" and "democracy" when they stand in our elections seem quite happy to forgo the same where Europe is concerned.

What is the point of electing governments, if there are vital policies that they cannot alter? That to me has always been the clinching argument against our entering the single currency. We would be slaves to someone else's economic policy.

At present, if the way a government runs our economy is offensive, we can change the government and with it the policy. If we were economically administered from Frankfurt, simply unelecting one government and replacing it with another would be a footling exercise. The economic policy would stay the same.

The only way we might change things would be to riot to such an extent that a new European political accommodation would have to be made. If you think I exaggerate, look at France.

. . . We are not in the single currency, though its temporary strength is sure to provoke another round of ignorant claims that we should be. We are, however, in the process of ratifying the Treaty of Lisbon, which will allow much wider European interference in many of our already diminished sovereign rights: such as in home affairs and justice, immigration and energy policy, and that's only the start.

. . . Some of [Labour's] own backbenchers - but not so many as is hoped - will stand out against it. Some of the opposition parties will attempt to enhance the Government's discomfort by seeking to prevent ratification by joining forces with these rebels. If that does not succeed - and it is hard to see it will, at this stage - then, in the end, the wretched thing will be on the statute book.

The EU's principal aim - to get its own way, irrespective of the democratic feelings of its member states - would have been fulfilled. A significant step closer towards federalism would have been taken. The rioters will be a little nearer the barricades.

This treaty is, though, poisonous in a way even Maastricht was not. In 1992-93 we wanted a referendum, but none was promised: [Tory PM]John Major knew what the result would be. So, now, does Gordon Brown: and he therefore has reneged on his predecessor's promise to hold one. Do not believe the casuistic claptrap that the Prime Minister and his morally defective cronies come out with to seek to justify this breach of promise.

The treaty is substantially the same as the rejected constitution. Everybody knows that, and many high officials here and abroad have admitted as much. Mr Brown, who treats the electorate as if we were something he has trodden in on the pavement, may regard this as simply another act of contempt with which he will, in time, get away. He is wrong.

The EU is now reaching a point where its centralising, sovereignty-stealing obsessions will cause day-to-day outrage to the public. It may take this, or perhaps even one more federalising pile of dishonesty after it, to push us to breaking point: but we will break. We will break because we are, in our hearts, a democratic people.

We resent the spectacle of our politicians - low though so many of them are - being humiliated by having to kow-tow to their, and our, masters in Brussels. We are revolted by the sight of our Parliament being rendered impotent.

We feel special disgust - and here the Conservative Party should take note - at not being offered an adequate choice at elections on the future of Europe. That is why, for all the ridicule heaped on it, the UK Independence Party continues to have MEPs elected, and to cost the Tory party seats in Westminster elections.

I am in no doubt that, for all sorts of reasons, both honourable and cynical, the Conservatives will fight this treaty. I applaud their opposition to the ratification process, and their failed attempt - thwarted by the Speaker - to have the Bill amended to force a plebiscite.

But they need a clear plan of what to do if, or rather when, all else fails. It is obvious what it must be: an unequivocal commitment to repeal the Act ratifying the treaty should they be returned to office after the next election.

David Cameron is nervous about giving such an undertaking. Does he seriously want to win power, or is he interested only in making a series of fashion statements? . . .

. . . [Cameron] would simply be undoing the betrayal by the present Government that the treaty would represent, given the breach of promise about a referendum. Some of his MPs - seven who have signed up to the Better Off Out movement, and many more who lack the guts or have too much greasy ambition to do so - would rather he promised to repeal the 1972 Act ratifying the Treaty of Brussels, which took us in to this neo-soviet cartel in the first place.

I know he cannot go that far. But he can make a principled and populist commitment to stop any more of our democracy being flushed down the euro-lavatory. We must hope it doesn't come to that. However, there is no excuse for a responsible opposition - and an opposition that says it would like to win power - to have no plan in place for when and if the horrid day comes, however much it might frighten the horses.

Read the entire article here. I note as an aside that it may never come to Cameron and the Tories. You can read here about an untterly fascinating lawsuit, that if approved, would work a fundamental change to Briitsh politics and law and that would nullify Parliament's unilateral ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon.

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Fighting the UK's Transfer of Sovereignty to the EU in the Courts

The battle in Britain over whether to transfer sovereignty to the EU by approval of the Treaty of Lisbon is now fully engaged. The Labour Government of Gordon Brown, having renigged on its promise to allow the people of Britain to vote on this transfer, is now in the midst of forcing passage of the Treaty through Parliament. To follow this travesty and to understand what is at stake, there are two sites I highly recommend: EU Referendum and Brits At Their Best.

This fight has taken a fascinating turn with the filing of a lawsuit challenging the Labour Government's right to transfer British sovereignty to the EU on "constitutional grounds." What's fascinating about that is that there is no single British Constitution, if there is any at all. The rights of British citizens are set forth in an amalgam of documents that start with the Magna Carta in 1215 and continues with other similar compacts signed by the people and the Crown during the course of British history, such as the Declaration of Rights of 1689. And there are a series of common laws written by judges as part of their judicial decisions that are generally recognized as limiting the power of government.

If you want to know what "rights" British citizens had in the latter part of the eighteenth centurty, just open up the U.S. Constitution. The vast majority of rights we have as U.S. citizens, from the right of a free press to the right to keep and bear arms all derive from English law as it was in 1776.

But here is the rub. The Parliament has taken the position that its laws are supreme. Under this theory, the Parliament can pass any law it desires - extinguishing whatever rights - and the Courts have no power to rule on the constitutionality of any act of Parliament. Thus, while we have a triparte system of checks and balances, in Britain, you have a tyranny of Parliament.

Thus, you go from a society in which all Protestants had a right to keep arms for self defense to a society where, as a practical matter, only the criminals get to keep them. And you go from a country with half a millenium or more of democratic tradition whereby the citizens elect their officials with the intent that the officials govern to a country where the elected officials, without the say of the people, abrogate their responsibility and transfer the right to govern Britain's citizens to the EU.

But that claim of Parliament to be the supreme and unquestioned arbiter of what is legal is now being challenged. As Brits At Their Best point out, a law suit has been filed that seeks to duplicate in Britain our own Supreme Court's 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison. Our own Constitution does not say anything about our Courts having the duty or right to decide wether any legislative act comports with the Constitution. Chief Justice John Marshall's decision in Marbury v Madison established that duty as a part of interpreting the Constitution, and his decision was fundamental to the development of the judiciary as an independant and co-equal branch of government. The UK citizens have filed suit to declare that some amalgam of the courts and the crown are co-equal branches of government with Parliament and are imbued with Marbury type powers to declare acts of Parliament null as unconstitutional.

This today on the lawsuit and all that animates it from The Telegraph:

As the Government embarks this week on its concentrated procedure to persuade Parliament to approve ratification of the EU Reform Treaty, to which Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have already committed the United Kingdom, Stuart Wheeler, who founded the spread-betting group, IG Index, is preparing a determined challenge in the courts to confront the EU constitution head-on.

For a referendum, even if granted, would only indicate public opinion; the question may be slanted and the result shouldn't be binding unless it reveals the settled will of a clear majority of the whole electorate.

. . . [Gordon Brown's Labour government] has reneged on a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum on the EU Constitution, contrary to the wishes of over 80% of voters, because the new treaty signed in Lisbon is "not a constitution".

This is pure deceit based on the redrafting and amalgamation of the 2004 Constitution Treaty voted down by the French and Dutch and the 2007 Reform Treaty, but it retains some 96% of the constitutional principles published by former President Giscard D'Estaing in the original draft treaty.

. . . Amongst many restrictive conditions that are in conflict with our own long-established Constitution are first that the Lisbon Treaty establishes for the first time a single legal personality - a supranational state to be represented at the Security Council and global conferences, whereas in due course Britain may not.
Second that EU laws shall have supremacy over those of member states and third that the arrangements ratified in the Reform Treaty shall be for an unlimited period; i.e. forever. Fourth that henceforward the new treaty may be amended without further debate.

A pivotal question to be answered by the courts is whether Parliament really enjoys, or has ever enjoyed unfettered "supremacy" to do whatever it likes, as it is wont to claim.

We have been studying the British Constitution, most of which is written but not codified in one document, for ten years. We believe that ministers are limited by the confines of the Constitution; that they have no authority to surrender, or lend, sovereignty to another power, especially one that is unelected, unaccountable, irremovable and owes no allegiance to the British Crown.

They have no power to assume Royal prerogative or the right to break their oaths of allegiance and office, or cause the Sovereign to break his or her contract (Coronation Oath) with the people to govern according to their laws and customs.

If ministers try to enact bad or damaging law, the Crown, one of the three legs of governance, has a duty to refuse assent. Anyway, how can the strictly impartial Crown accept partial advice based on political whim?

We belive parliamentary "supremacy" and the doctrine of no government "binding its successor" are confined to the statutes of administrative law, not constitutional law.

We also believe that constitutional law cannot simply be repealed by introducing a new act. If it can be repealed at all, it must be repealed expressly in full and normal procedure.

Furthermore if the doctrine that Parliament may not destroy its own "omnipotence" is correct, by adopting permanent subservience to Brussels, from which already nearly 80% of our laws originate, its so-called "omnipotence" would indeed be destroyed.

In 1803 in the United States in a significant case, Marbury v. Madison, a Supreme Court Judge, Marshall, held that the US Constitution, based on the English original, was superior to a certain ill-conceived Act introduced by Congress and he declared the offending statute void.

We urgently need a Marbury v. Madison type case here and every one in Britain should be thankful that Stuart Wheeler is to ask the courts urgently whether there is any lawful authority for our government to over-ride our existing Constitution and impose the EU version.

. . . [To support this lawsuit, please] send contributions marked DT and payable to, CONSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGE c/o This England, PO Box 52, Cheltenham GL50 1YQ.

Read the entire article. To simply say that I support Mr. Wheeler is an understatement.

I have stated my own observations and thoughts on this before, but will do so again here, if for no other reason than I love the sound of my own voice and etchings of my own quill. With a constituion (see here) created by Treaty of Lisbon, the EU will become a fully fledged state and the central government for subordinate "states" - i.e., EU member countries. The EU is a grand experiment in undemocratic socialism. It's manner of government and the goals of the socialists who control the reins of power in the EU differ in many respects from those of America. It is a measure of how undemocratic and unpopular the thought of an EU superstate is that none of the creators of this byzantine monolith are willing to allow the electorate in any of the member states to vote on whether to join with the exception of Ireland, whose constitution requires such a vote. The EU's creation is not by popular acclimation, but by socialist coup.

Some of the EU policies are suicidal. For example, open borders immigration within the EU and the EU dictated policies that allow huge immigration from Islamic countries is causing untold problems in the major countries, and in particular, Britain. The regulatory scheme of the EU is growing exponentially and threatens to strangle the member states. And then there is what portends to be the EU's economy busting response to global warming. Global warming is a concept that the EU has incredibly opted to write into their new Constitution.

While the EU seems a step up for many of the member countries whose governments have been historically dysfunctional, that is decidedly not the case for America's most important ally, Britain. Britain, whose anglo-saxon ideals of capitalism, the common law legal system, and democracy have animated the most advanced and free countries in the world from the U.S. to India, is about to see those traditions extinguished with its transfer of sovereignty to the EU. And indeed, if Britain remains in the EU but another decade it will see a massive and permanent change in the charachter of its country through immigration and emigration. The EU controls Britain's borders and the EU's goal is to extinguish nationalism and replace it with loyalty to the EU. The damage the EU is doing to Britain is severe and permanent.

The best thing that Britain can do for itself is to extricate itself from the EU immediately. Britian can then negotiate a trade agreement with the EU. On balance, that will save Britain economically, it will likely be a huge boon the economy, and it will save Britain's anglo-saxon heritage and traditions that are at the heart of democracy and free enterprise.

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Tossing Down The Gauntlet On The EU

Britain - and all of Europe - is in the midst of a slow motion coup by its socialist governments. In 2005, the EU drafted a Constitution to replace the existing EU treaties and create an EU superstate. Throughout Europe, referendums were planned to enact the Constitution. But the French and Dutch voters were of a different mind. They voted no.

The Labour Party, in its 2005 electoral platform, had promised the people of Britain a referendum on whether to approve the EU Constitution. But after the French and Dutch had voted no, the Constitution was deemed dead.

But the socialists of the EU had no intention of having their grand project sidetrack by such minor annoyances as democracy or the will of the people. They took the Constitution and merely relabled it "The Treaty of Lisbon," reformated it's contents as amendments to existing treaties, then took the position that there need be no referendums since this was merely a treaty. It was an act of breathtaking cynicism. Britain's Labour PM Gordon Brown signed the treaty in December and has refused to honor his original pledge to allow a referendum of the British public. And today, Rees-Moog of the Times puts that despicable act in context in his article, "They lied yesterday; they will lie tomorrow:"

The Lisbon treaty is a dangerous betrayal. The process of ratification of the Lisbon treaty will start this week in the House of Commons. I'm against the treaty because it involves an important constitutional transfer of powers from the European nations to the European institutions, from national democracy to supra-national bureaucracy. I'm in favour of a referendum, not only because it was promised by Labour, Tories and Liberal Democrats at the last general election, but also because it would be the best way to ratify - or reject - a big constitutional change. The people should be consulted when their powers of self-government are being given away.

I was struck yesterday by an observation of the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. He said: “The reform treaty gives Britain a bigger voice in Europe.” That seems to me to be the opposite of the truth. The reform or Lisbon treaty gives Europe a much bigger voice in Britain. It follows the original constitutional treaty in giving the European institutions that are not democratically accountable important additional powers, while failing to repatriate any powers to the individual European nations.

The original constitutional convention was supposed to reduce the democratic deficit of Europe. The Lisbon treaty has done the opposite, taking powers away from the nations and their electorate. The treaty is a defeat for the idea of a liberal democratic Europe; it is surprising that British Liberal Democrats are among its keenest supporters.

The Government's handling of the referendum issue has been shameful, because that, too, has been anti-democratic. The advantage of a referendum process is that it imposes a regard for public opinion on European politicians. If they want to win the referendums, they have to negotiate a popular and democratic constitution. . .

In the case of the European negotiations the original constitution, which led to the Lisbon treaty, was hijacked by Brussels federalists - contrary to the wishes of the people of Britain, France and the Netherlands. Having hijacked the negotiation, the federalists then found that their idea of a supra-European constitution was deeply unpopular. They could not face any more referendums in Europe because they would lose them. In particular, they could not face a British referendum. The British voters do not want to hand over more powers to the European federalist bureaucracy; they want to get some of them back.

The negotiations for the Lisbon treaty were, therefore, designed from the beginning to get round the need for referendums, except in Ireland, where the Irish constitution requires one. Naturally, this underhand process was designed to avoid the British having a referendum. The Labour Government was a co-conspirator in avoiding the need to fulfil what had become an awkward election pledge. The plot certainly involved Tony Blair, whose last public decision was to agree to the new treaty. He was not acting in order to fulfil his election commitment but in order to evade it. After some initial show of reluctance Gordon Brown accepted this deceitful subterfuge. The British people know they are being manipulated; they resent it.

The ratification of a treaty is a relatively difficult parliamentary process; any treaty will have been negotiated in detail by the Government. The language of a treaty cannot be amended like that of an ordinary Bill. Parliament has to say “yes” or “no” to the treaty as a whole. However, Parliament could impose conditions that might affect or defer the operation of a treaty, or require a referendum as a condition of the ratification process.

Such amendments are likely to be argued in the debate on the Lisbon treaty. One reasonable condition would be to defer ratification until the voters have had an opportunity to decide at a general election. If the Labour party could win an election with ratification of the Lisbon treaty as a manifesto commitment, that would satisfy the requirements of democracy. Of course, Labour might lose, but that would be democratic too.

A referendum would be easier and more straightforward than a general election. It is, after all, something that all three large parties promised at the past general election. The Government cannot honourably avoid it. House of Commons select committees with Labour majorities have found that the Lisbon treaty, on which a referendum is being refused, is really the same as the original constitutional treaty on which a referendum was promised. At present the Conservatives are the only party intending to honour their manifesto commitment.

I do not know what the longer- term impact of ratifying without the promised referendum would be. It would certainly embitter politics. There are many Eurosceptics who feel very angry, who feel betrayed. Voters would become more cynical about politicians, and might regard them all as untrustworthy. The young Eurosceptics are as angry as the older.

In England there is a rising tide of nationalism responding in part to the success of the Scottish nationalists; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have had their devolutions, in each case ratified by a referendum. I think the English would claim their own devolution from Europe if they were forced into a centralising treaty and denied their promised referendum. . .

Read the entire article.

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Impact of the "Reform Treaty" of Lisbon

Christopher Booker at the Daily Mail takes a look at the practical effects of Gordon Brown's signing of the Treaty of Lisbon, surrendering British sovereignty in a few strokes of the pen. As Booker notes, "the fact that we have been denied the right to pronounce on whether we want it or not makes this arguably the most shameful betrayal in our island history." As to the practical effects of the betrayal:

1. For a start, the treaty will make us more formally than before "citizens of the European Union". . . . we are to become citizens of this "Union" before anything else - just as the inhabitants of Texas are above all American citizens - with rights and duties overriding those attaching to our subordinate role as citizens of Britain.

2. One of the most conspicuous ways in which this "country called Europe" will project itself on the world stage, and to us as its citizens, is that it will for the first time have a permanent President, a powerful figurehead in office for up to five years.

We shall not yet be allowed to choose that President ourselves - he or she will be chosen for us by the "heads of government", the 27 prime ministers making up the European Council - but there will soon be pressure for "our" new President to be elected by all the "Union's" 490million "citizens".

3. Alongside him will be the EU's foreign-minister - the so-called "High Representative" - parading on the world stage as the 'Union's' chief international spokesman.

He will have his own diplomatic corps and worldwide embassies, intended gradually to replace those of individual countries such as Britain - and he will be able to exercise the further new right given by the treaty empowering the Union to make any kind of international treaty in our name.

4. The "Cabinet" of this new government will be the European Council - which is given a wholly new status by the treaty, with its members placed under a wholly new obligation - to put the objectives of the Union above those of their own country.


So when Gordon Brown or his successors attend future Council meetings, they will not do so representing Britain's interests but as servants of the "Union"

5. Remembering that power to propose-EU laws is already exercised solely by the unelected European Commission, another innovation is that for the first time each country will no longer have the right to be represented by its own Commissioner.

That means that, on occasions, laws affecting all our lives will be put forward entirely by officials from other countries.

6. The new treaty greatly extends the powers of the unelected Brussels government to dictate laws and policies overriding the wishes of elected national parliaments - although in some cases it has already been exercising those powers even before the treaty is signed.

7. The treaty will, for example, give a huge boost to setting up a "Common Defence Policy", based on interlocking all our armed forces and defence industries so that it becomes impossible for any country to act independently.


8. The EU-wide police forces will not be far behind.

This week our Foreign Secretary was unable to deny that we might one day see armed Romanian or Latvian policemen of the EU Gendarmerie Force, already taking shape, operating on the streets of Britain.

9. The treaty will set up a "Common Energy Policy", making it impossible-for Britain to act independently in looking after its own national needs, just when this is becoming more critical than ever before.

10. Another very serious threat to Britain's interests - as yet another City think-tank was warning this week - lies in the new opportunities the treaty will give our "partners" to introduce intrusive and politicallymotivated financial regulations which would undermine the one area of economic strength in which we still reign supreme: All those banking and financial services centred on the City on which all our national prosperity ultimately depends.

Read the entire article. No good can come of this vast, left wing socialist construct for Britain. And just to add, as to the note about energy, the UK is the only European country with any oil rigs. The manner in which the new Constitution is written is general enough to allow the EU to take over those rigs should an "energy emergency" arise.

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There Is Something Elegant In This

It is posted here that Gordon Brown has surrendered Britain's sovereignty by affixing his signiture set upon the Treaty of Lisbon - the EU Constitution by any other name. The Treaty will bind upon Britain if it is not defeated in Parliament. And it appears now that a true anachronism, the knighted class of England sitting in the House of Lords, may prove the last best line of defense against Brown's perfidy. There is bit of lyrical and ancient poetry in that, really. This today from Brits At Their Best:

There will be a battle in the House of Lords

We wrote to Lord Stoddart of Swindon to thank him for his stand in the House of Lords against the EU Treaty that will destroy British freedom. He replied

Dear Mr. Abbott,

Thank you for including details of our battle to defend Britain on your website. There will be many more to come when the Bill comes before The House of Lords.

Yours sincerely,

David Stoddart

It would be a good thing to show public support for the Lords when they attempt to stop the Treaty. Ideas?

All of Crown's loyal subjects should be marching on the House of Parliament for that one, I would think.

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Across the Pond, Fury and Reflection

In the wake of the attempted socialist coup by Gordon Brown, the royal subjects are reacting differently – but there is no acceptance.

This from EU Referendum

It isn't over yet, of course. There is still the ratification, and the Lords could give the government a hard time on the referendum. It will be a pleasure watching them squirm.

In the meantime, we don't need to get (too) emotional. I prefer cold, hard hatred, from the deepest recesses of my soul, combined with a studied contempt for these fools who think they can ignore the lessons of centuries and run rough-shod over us. They have had their fun – the reckoning is to come.

And the fine folk at Brits At Their Best reflect on what could motivate Gordon Brown to take this action:

One reason is that he is a Socialist and Socialism is a global religion. It hates nation states. It wants one allegiance to one global state in which national politicians such as Master Blair can play lofty roles. Socialism is an ignorant religion that ignores the scientific facts of freedom, the essential connection between a people being free and being prosperous, the indisputable link between a people’s safety and education and happiness and their ability to make local decisions about their police and their schools and their livelihoods.

But there is another reason for Brown and Miliband and Blair and Heath and Clarke and Major and Heseltine and all the rest of them to support the creation of the EU and the destruction of Britain, aside from the obvious reason that they do not like Britain much, do not understand or love her history, do not forgive her imperfections and seek to support her real goodness, and do not understand political or economic science, and that reason is this –

They want to be part of the inner circle. They want to be in the circle for exactly the same reason that there are circles of girls and boys in schools and circles of men and women in clubs and at work . They want to feel that they are in a special circle and you and most other people are outside it. They think that they are something because they are in the circle. They think the circle is superb.

To walk out of the circle is frightening and, almost worse, embarrassing. Everyone in the circle will dislike them. Those men who jovially put an arm around them will give them the cold shoulder. The man or woman who leaves the circle finds her very sense of self threatened, if not her job and her lucrative contacts.

Besides, everyone in the circle thinks the same thing. They must be right. The 'cascade of information effect' leads them all over the waterfall in the same boat.

To join in fellowship with others is a good thing, but because it is a human thing it has the possibility of being terrible, even monstrous. That is the inner circle of Europe with its circle of stars. It makes grown men and women want to be part of it – to enjoy its lavish pensions and perks, to feel specially precious, to secretly enjoy their snobbish elitism, and to simultaneously feel self-righteous because they are helping to establish a new world order of high-sounding platitudes. Never mind that it will be a disaster because it ignores political science.

At the Huntsman, there was talk of rebellion and the fate of tyrants. And at the Tap Blog:

My take on these events is equally to feel sickened. To describe my feelings for Gordon Brown as hatred would be to err on the cautious side. I despise him totally. His fate should be appropriate to the treachery he has committed against his own country.

The folks at Iwantareferendum.com are trying to get Britons to sign up for a mass rally.

But let’s end the blog review with the Spectator Blog, and their report of this incredible bit of comic irony:

This morning, Gordon Brown told the Commons liaison committee:

"You cannot make decisions and assume that people will simply follow them. Most decisions can only be successful if people are part of the process."

After that, he jetted off to sign the Treaty formerly known as the European constitution having denied people the role in the process that the Labour manifesto had promised them.

For my part, as an unrepentant anglophile, this brings to mind thoughts of the Gun Powder Plot and the papist traitor, Guy Fawkes whose execution for treason against the crown is celebrated as the national holiday of Britain. Alas, it is a holiday sorely in need of update. May I propose a Gordon Brown Day in its stead . . .

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