Brown Loses the Plot

It was desperate for Brown that he should shovel the United Kingdom into the European Union as it is conceived by the Lisbon Constitution. Otherwise Scotland would continue steadily towards asserting its independence and changing its federal relationship with the United Kingdom; so, too, altering the relationships with Wales and Northern Ireland. This spells the end of the Labour party itself, not just the end to Brown's premiership without election or mandate. Once within the Lisbon EU Scotland would have been reduced to a region with its options for leaving either federation, EU or UK, grossly restricted. Terms for smaller countries under the Lisbon EU are so unattractive it might not want to be in the EU at all.

Most Europeans wish the EU to continue - but not in its present form and even less in the Lisbon form, which effectively hands authority to France and Germany. Among his many failings, Gordon Brown is a fool and, in his frantic desire to save himself, his ruling elite, and his precarious claim to rule the UK he will be intensely vulnerable to German and French pretence that he too is part of Europe's ruling group of large countries. The merest glance shows that the UK is not: not part of the euro, not part of Schengen, with a separate nuclear force, unwilling to co-operate even on large defence expenditures such as aircraft carriers with other member states, constantly obstructive and hence much disliked on pan-European tax and welfare measures, civil liberties and justice measures, workplace and union conditions, the list goes on and on.

Conceit assists Brown in his delusion that he matters. Vilified at home for his clumsy, ugly, so public dishonesty and constant stream of lies about what he has done and what he is doing, his personal distastefulness, his twisted authoritarianism, Brown can be bought cheaply by Sarkozy's flattery to his wounded amour propre, as France finds a home for its nuclear waste in England.

We need a general election now to choose a government and prime minister who will advance the UK's interests in Europe, and advance a European Union as an association of equal member-states for the purposes of trade. We cannot allow Brown to blunder on in return for a kiss from Carla Bruni.