"The latest brainwave is to preserve part of the
innovations of the constitutional treaty, but hide them by breaking them up
into several texts. The most innovative provisions would become simple
amendments to the treaties of Maastricht and Nice. The technical improvements
would be regrouped in a colourless, harmless treaty. The texts would be sent to
national parliaments, which would vote separately. Thus public opinion would be
led to adopt, without knowing it, the provisions that we dare not present directly.
This process of 'dividing to ratify' is obviously unworthy of the challenge at
stake. It may be a good magician's act. But it will confirm European citizens
in the idea that the construction of Europe is organised behind their backs by
lawyers and diplomats."
President Valery
Giscard d’Estaing, Irish Times, 26
June, 2008
Hotel California Brexit
Alphen, Netherlands. 31 January. There are two sides
negotiating Brexit and they both want to keep Britain IN the European Union –
either in fact or in name only. It becomes
clearer by the day that the London Establishment and the Brussels Establishment
are working in close harness to thwart Brexit.
This is an attack on the very fundamentals of democracy masquerading
under the false flag of ‘getting the best deal’ for Britain. For Brussels the prize is clear; a Hotel
California Brexit by which although we Brits can check out any time we like from the EU, we will never leave. The plan is also clear – to create such fear in the
minds of the British public that they will soon willingly accept the need for a
second referendum on EU membership and, like sheep, vote willingly for Brexit’s
demise. In other words, they will have
been ‘done an Ireland’.
Even though I
am a Big Picture Remainer, and I believe deeply in Europeans working closely
together, my concerns about the EU and its attitude to national democracy go
back a long way. Brussels is a theological capital brim full of a ‘we know best’
elite, driving towards a Babel-esque vision of ‘Europe’, reinforced by
think-tank hangers-on, with a dismissive attitude to democracy or anything else that might lead
to ‘heresy’. The EU, for all the rhetoric about values, is really
about about power. It is also a mechanism for the grand manipulation of the masses so that
power is centralised inexorably on an elite few who are charged with taking the
‘best’ decisions for ‘Europe’. Yes, the
European Council represents the states but only one state matters – Germany. And, if Germany, the Commission and the European Parliament are aligned on
policy there is little place for dissent, even for a formerly great power like
Britain.
‘Doing an
Ireland’
There is a
precedent for such manipulation. In 2008 and 2009 the Irish people voted in two
referenda on the then unratified Lisbon Treaty.
As Giscard d’Estaing’s statement above attests the Irish people, along
with the peoples of five other states including Britain, had been promised a
referendum on the constitution-bending European Constitution Treaty (ECT). Tony
Blair cancelled the planned referendum in Britain for fear of losing it, as did
the leaders in the other states.
As domestic opposition
grew to the ECT in Ireland grew the promised referendum there was also cancelled. However, in the wake of rejections in France and the
Netherlands the Constitution Treaty – part domestic law, part international
treaty – was replaced with a treaty that was designed to achieve the same
Brussels-centralising effect as the ECT. Indeed, rather than going for a
radical new ‘constitution,’ which would have established the principle for the
EU to become a European super-state, Brussels and the European elite backed-off
and simply adopted a back door political approach to deeper integration.
Still the contention in Ireland raged. Article 29 of
the Irish Constitution stated that no law can be supreme over their own and the
Irish would still not accept the over-turning of a fundamental principle in
their national constitution whatever the name of a treaty or ‘constitution’. On
12 June 2008 the Irish people voted down the Lisbon Treaty by 53.4% to 46.6%
on a turnout of 53% of the population. For the EU elite it was the ‘wrong’
answer to a question that should never have been posed in what was meant to
have been a one-off yes or no referendum. And yet, just over a year later on 2 October 2009, a few
meaningless blandishments having been offered, the Irish
people voted ‘yes’ to an ‘amended’ Treaty of Lisbon. It marked the end of any hope I had for a ‘Europe’
in which I had once believed, and for which I had worked.
The Establishment
is now ‘doing an Ireland’ on the British people. In June 2015 Parliament voted overwhelmingly to
pass the EU Referendum Bill by 544 votes to 53 votes and paved the way to the
holding of a referendum on the question, “Should the United Kingdom remain a
member of the European Union?” In June
2016 the British people voted in what was meant to be a one-off yes or no
referendum by 51.9% to 48.1%. A year ago
Parliament voted by 498 votes to 114 votes in favour of Article 50 of the Treaty
of Lisbon to trigger Britain’s formal departure from the EU, due to take place
midnight Brussels time on 29 March, 2019. In other words, both parliamentary
and popular sovereignty has been exercised at every stage of Brexit.
May Day!
Then things
changed. The day after the Brexit referendum the successful insurgent and populist
‘Leave’ campaign declared victory, packed up their collective bags, and went
home. After they had overcome the shock of defeat the defeated Establishment ‘Remain’
campaign simply re-grouped, and began the long haul to ‘do an Ireland’ on the British
people. That campaign is now reaching its zenith and has two main
objectives. The first would be to hold a
wholly unconstitutional second referendum on EU membership, whilst the second
would see Parliament vote down the final deal on Brexit via a so-called ‘meaningful
vote’. This would, in effect, commit Britain to remain in the EU, and challenge Prime
Minister May to call another general election on the issue.
This
appalling state of political affairs was made worse by May’s disastrous
performance in the June 2017 general election, an election she called. Her
disastrous performance has since been compounded by her own indecision –
Churchill or Thatcher she ain’t – and a Cabinet split asunder by Leavers and Remainders. The now clear retreat from Brexit has been
accelerated by a re-calibrated and re-launched Project Fear which is reinforced, in turn, by the almost daily serial leaking by
either senior politicians or civil servants at strategic moments of ‘evidence’
purporting to show the dire consequences of Britain’s departure from the EU.
There have
been two such demarches over the past
week. First, there was a leak of a Cabinet Office document which purported to
show that under any model the British economy would suffer egregiously upon leaving
the EU. As with all such documents it was only the result that was leaked, not
the methodology. If, as seems likely, Government economists used the so-called’
‘gravity’ approach, the findings are likely to be as wide of the mark as
those employed by the architect of Project
Fear, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne.
The other demarche involves the former boss of GCHQ
Robert Hannigan and the former head of MI6 Sir John Sawers. These are people that anyone interested in
security should take very seriously, and I am decidedly not accusing them of any
collusion with Brussels. This morning they told the BBC that post-Brexit
Britain needs a deal with the EU on data-sharing to prevent damage to Britain’s
economy and its security. At the same time they warned that Britain should not
use its dominance (yes, dominance) in intelligence-gathering and analysis as a
bargaining tool in Brexit negotiations.
At one level they are right. It would be unconscionable for Britain to
be aware of a pending terrorist attack on a European state and withhold such
information simply because of Brexit negotiations. No sensible government would go there. On another level they are utterly wrong.
Vassal State?
Last week in
a Parliamentary committee the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is an undoubted
contender to pick up Theresa May’s sullied crown from the mud in which it now
lies when she falls, warned of Britain becoming a “vassal state’ during the
planned two year implementation/transition period between 2019 and 2021. My
concern is that given the way London is deliberately mishandling the Brexit negotiations
Britain will in effect be reduced ad Perpetua
to a vassal state of the EU – all pay, but no say.
The Hannigan
and Sawers demarches also reveals all-too-clearly that Britain’s negotiating ‘strategy’
is self-defeating. It is
perfectly OK, it seems, for the likes of Jean-Claude Juncker and Michel Barnier
to issue threats against Britain and the British people as part of the Brexit
negotiations, but unacceptable for Britain to employ any of the undoubted
levers it has at its disposal by way of response. In effect, the British Establishment is tying
at least one of its own arms behind its back, whilst inviting the European Commission
and others to punch Britain in the face.
As negotiating goes it is like something out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Britain’s Perpetual EU
Purgatory
So, what
choices do the British people now face, if any?
Brexit is fast becoming like being a little bit pregnant;
impossible. Britain can either be in the
EU or out of it, not both. There is
simply no middle ground that would not see Brexit denied. And yet, it is precisely towards such a
non-existent middle ground the London Establishment seems determined to
steer Britain – a kind of EU purgatory between heaven and hell (I will leave
you to decide which is which). The wheeze seems to be to create a deal that is
so patently unworkable that the British people will in-the-end ‘decide’ to stay
in the EU, either via parliamentary fiat or a second referendum.
All well and good! Certainly not! The Masters of the Universe on both sides of the Channel need to be
careful. Let’s say there is a second referendum and the Establishments
successfully ‘do an Ireland’ on the British people. It is unlikely the European
Commission would accept the pre-Brexit status
quo ante. The Commission is
predatory and smells Britain’s weakness.
No doubt assurances have already been given that in time a Britain
hauled back within the EU with its tail between its legs would join the Euro
and lose all the other opt-outs hitherto ‘enjoyed’. Worse, a Britain humiliated could marking the
real beginning of the end for the United Kingdom. Why would the Scots want to
stay in one powerless union, when another has proved its might by humiliating a state that a generation or two ago was one of the
mightiest on the planet? Hotel California
re-confirmed?
Nor should
Leavers dwell in nostalgia. Even if the UK successfully extricates itself from
EU purgatory the future is unlikely to be the buccaneering, swashbuckling, swathe-cutting renaissance beloved of Boris Johnson. The simple truth is that in Britain’s unbalanced
economy the City of London influences too much power. What it wants is nothing to do with Britain
and its people, but rather to be the money-making depository of billions of
not-too-many-questions-asked dodgy ‘investments’ from all over the world. The fact that Theresa May is in Beijing today
kow-towing to President Xi suggests Britain’s future outside the EU could well
be one of selling its body-politic to powerful, but less than wholesome, states the world over. There is another word for that.
Brexit, Hotel California and another Bloody Referendum
Why is the
London Establishment actively undermining Britain’s departure from the EU? It is not because they are all traitors – far
from it. They have undertaken pretty
much the same analysis I have and reached pretty much the same set of conclusions. In other words, the EU might be a grand
manipulating, self-empowering, undemocratic Tower of Babel but it is, on
balance, better for a weak Britain to be anchored to it than forced to make
common cause with Chinese autocrats, Russian oligarchs and the like simply to
get their money to pay for the NHS.
Where I part company with much of Britain’s Establishment is that I still believe in my country, and many of them do not. Indeed, I still believe that a well-led Britain could be an important, sovereign power in Europe and the wider world. Which brings me to the real reason why Britain is in this mess – Britain’s high-bureaucratic Establishment have little faith in Britain’s high-political Establishment. Or, to put it more bluntly – Whitehall thinks Westminster is useless.
Where I part company with much of Britain’s Establishment is that I still believe in my country, and many of them do not. Indeed, I still believe that a well-led Britain could be an important, sovereign power in Europe and the wider world. Which brings me to the real reason why Britain is in this mess – Britain’s high-bureaucratic Establishment have little faith in Britain’s high-political Establishment. Or, to put it more bluntly – Whitehall thinks Westminster is useless.
Brexit
is now about far more than the collapse of effective government and governance
in London. Brexit is fast becoming a
fundamental struggle over the future of democracy. Indeed, if there is a second
Brexit referendum it will be just as bloody as the first, and further weaken a
country already close to breaking point. Therefore, even though I stand by my
belief that Brexit at this time undermines the security and defence of Europe, in
the event of a second referendum I would switch my vote to Leave. And, I suspect an awful lot more of ‘we’ pragmatic
Remainers would do the same because even though ‘we’ lost in June 2016 'we' will
honour the then decision of the British people and refuse to countenance
another example of grand manipulation by the elite of a supposedly ‘ill-informed
people’.
If those
seeking to over-turn the result of the June 2016 Brexit referendum are successful,
by ‘dividing to unratify’ to paraphrase Giscard, it will reduce ‘democracy’ in
Europe to little more than an exercise in irrelevance. We will be offered endless changes to vote for little, well-fed people with little
or no power over little or nothing of any import, whilst the big issues are confined to
the musings of a distant ‘we know best’ elite. It will also, as Giscard warned “…confirm European citizens in the idea that the
construction of Europe is organised behind their backs…”
President
Putin?
Julian
Lindley-French