Alphen, Netherlands. 26
February. The other day a senior
European Commission official asked me if my concerns about the growing democratic
illegitimacy of the EU were some form of psychological instability. With elections to the European Parliament due
in May at a time when liberal democracy is being steadily replaced by the EU’s liberal
bureaucracy the need for citizens to engage with today’s uber-elite is more important
than ever. However, the very process of ‘Europe’
has created a culture that places those on the right side of power on the wrong
side of democracy.
On three occasions in
the past couple of weeks I have witnessed the arrogance of power which sustains
such élites and which is so damaging democracy and respect for politicians.
My first brush with self-serving
power was to be told by the self-same Commission official that I was utterly
wrong about the EU. No, the European
Commission had not become more powerful since the 2007 Lisbon Treaty. Far from it, powers had been handed back to
the member-states. Moreover, the very
idea of an EU elite was absurd. Commission
officials were just ordinary people doing their damnedest on behalf of the
humble European citizen. On the defensive
he deployed the now time-honoured nonsense of Europe’s elite; if ever closer
political union was not driven forward one could not rule out the prospect of a
future pan-European war.
My second brush with
power came the same day courtesy of his boss.
Fully paid-up member of the Euro-Aristocracy Deputy Commission President
Viviane Reding demonstrated all too clearly the gulf between power and people
in Europe. She also demonstrated the extent
to which the Commission has become a political force rather than the impartial
enabler of European law.
In a 10th February
meeting of ‘citizens’ in London she told the British it was too late for them
to be debating sovereignty. Seventy
percent of Britain’s laws, she said, were now co-decided by the European
Parliament and European Commission. For
Reding the whole debate in Britain over sovereignty was irrelevant and
pointless. That bird had flown and
resistance was futile. She then went
onto infer the British people were too ignorant to vote in an in-out referendum
because their view of the EU was “distorted”.
As Open Europe director
Pavel Sidlicki put it succinctly. “Mrs Reding epitomises the EU elites’
approach to dealing with the public – superficially embracing debate with
citizens while dismissing substantive criticism”.
However, perhaps the
most egregious example of political arrogance came not from a member of the EU’s
uber-élite but a current British minister very close to the Prime Minister – David
Cameron’s cabal. In a conversation said
minister had with a very senior friend of mine about the need for Britain to
re-discover strategy he dismissed “not particularly courteously” the very
concept. Indeed, a national vision was
“a very silly idea” and quite pointless.
Events should be dealt with as they arose, he asserted.
When challenged with
the suggestion that the ability to respond to said events requires planning,
choices, investments and thus strategy he simply dismissed the whole concept.
According to my friend
he had, “…no grasp of, nor wish to grasp history and historical perspectives
and displayed a level of arrogance, ignorance, complacency and disdain which
were striking”. No wonder Britain is in
such a mess. This explains why so much national
sovereignty has been handed over to Brussels with little or no understanding of
the consequences for Britain as a self-governing state.
Cameron’s friend left
the best bit to last and remember this is an elected politician. There was no point in debating publicly such
issues because the public were too thick to understand. In other words the very people who elected
this serving minister are to his mind too stupid to be engaged on the huge
issues of the day which affect Britain, Europe and them. It is as though the people have become an inconvenience
to those in power. As my friend said
such a point of view, “…demonstrates an unsuitability to be a leader in a
democracy ( if he knows and accepts the concepts of democracy)”.
It is the assumption of
power and the intolerance of the ‘other’ that is the essential problem of many
of today’s political élites. In 1952 US
diplomat Adlai Stevenson standing up to Senator McCarthy and his awful
Un-American Activities Committee said, “The tragedy of our day is the climate
of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the bill of
rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of
anti-communism”. Anti-Europeanism?
When will Europe’s
political élites realise they are the problem, not we the ‘stupid’ or mad
citizens who pay for their many privileges. European democracy is tipping into crisis and
it is about time people realise that.
Julian Lindley-French
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