No Referendum

Rejecting in a referendum what the Labour Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer accepted last week in Brussels fails to provide sufficiently for the democratic expression of what is wanted by the electorate.

Only a general election, fought on the policies of remaining in the European Union as it is now constituted, or leaving on the friendliest of terms but with the governance of our country secured in our own hands, can do this; and only a general election can encompass the issues that must be decided, and recognize their centrality in the nature and structure of our country.

What was enacted last week by the Labour government was a democratic outrage.

A referendum is not enough.

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum

The European Union has everything it wanted:

The ending of veto by a single member-state;
The Charter of Fundamental Rights;
A permanent President;
A Foreign Office and Minister for European Union relations with the rest of the world;
And, to all intents and purposes, a single identity.

The optouts inserted for itself by the United Kingdom affect only the UK, and possibly only England, and possibly not even England; that is for the courts to decide.

The main effect of the failure to impose a view of the European Union as a free trade and competition area of nation states was to consolidate a tightly-knit group intent on acting as a federal state both internally and externally.

That is theirs to choose, and they have the strong support of their electorates now that the defence of European interests against globalised competition has been asserted.

It will not be a choice the electorate here has made. Here we have chosen neither what is now settled, nor what the Labour regime tried to impose. Nor will we be allowed any expression of dissent to any of it, either in a general election, or in a more narrowly based referendum on our country's future.

Falling Apart

The outgoing Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has demanded that the Charter of Fundamental Rights, adjunct to the European Union amended treaties, should be explicitly non-justiciable under English and Scottish law.

How good to see the recognition that these are separate legal systems.

Has the Scottish government been consulted on these demands? Under the Concordats it most certainly should have been. What would the Scottish Parliament and people like? It's quite clear what the English people want.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Parliament has voted in the first stage of abolishing Council Tax. It is to be replaced with a local income tax.

Agreement has been reached between the Welsh and northern Irish Assemblies and the Scottish Parliament, to alter the fiscal relationships with the Westminster regime. The Barnet formula arrangements are at least as unsatisfactory to the Welsh, Irish and Scottish as they are to the long-suffering English taxpayer, though for different reasons; not unnaturally, as theirs are very different agendas from those of the Labour junta in Westminster .

European Union Redux

What will be signed-up to will be a simple statement of intent to move European Union governance into greater transparency and ordered simplification. The Charter of Fundamental Rights will be accepted by all but the United Kingdom, which will have an optout; this optout from the Charter is already agreed and the window dressing is the written-in explicit confirmation of the optout, which will be emphasized in the English press as standing out for the defence of the common law and the provisions for the 'war against terror'. The text of the Charter will be accessed by a single clause in the Treaties but not embodied there.

Much of the agreed text of the new Treaty will be consolidation and cleaning up of extant treaties - the Treaty on the European Union, and the Treaty on the establishing of the European Community; there will be two Supplementary Protocols by which innovations to these two treaties will be adopted and ratified together with the new Treaty - A Protocol on the Functioning of the Union and, A Protocol on the Developments of the Union's Policies in Order to Meet the Challenges of the XXIst Century. This last will provide the structural framework for innovations to be agreed at future IGCs (intergovernmental conferences).

So after the consolidation of the amendments introduced by the Protocols the European Union will be governed by two treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights.

Expect all attention to be focused on the Charter optout and its explicit confirmation, and on the future policies of the EU. A Downing Street official spokesperson stated "we believe it is in the national interest of this country and the interests of Europe as a whole that we move on from discussing the constitution to practical matters.

"Europe has shown that when it talks about issues such as energy and energy security and climate change it can make a real difference. That's where the focus should be and therefore we need to agree a practical way of working together to get the maximum benefit out of European co-operation,".

Got it? You will, whether you like it or not.