Democracy Defeated
And so it ends. David Miliband has signed the EU Constitution in Lisbon. Gordon Brown’s signature followed later this afternoon. Parliamentary approval is in little doubt as dissenting Labour MPs will surely be whipped into submission.
There was no referendum, and still no real chance of ever getting one. The European Political Classes successfully conspired to bypass the wishes of their own electorates, and in the end the ‘No’ votes in France and the Netherlands meant almost nothing – just a prolonging of the inevitable.
Dr Richard North was quick to unleash his contempt and fury for the whole ceremony and especially the pre-document speech made by José Manuel Barroso:
Burbling in his own vomit-inducing way that, ‘From an old continent, a new Europe is born,’ telling us that with this treaty, ‘the EU is preparing itself to serve its citizens better and address world issues.’
Similarly, The Daily Mail were also particularly quick to publish an online article including a number of very good photographs, one of which shows Barroso in a pose I found particularly reminiscent of the depiction of Big Brother in Michael Radford’s cinematic version of George Orwell’s 1984.
Overall the Mail’s piece chose to focus on the implications for British immigration and asylum as dictated by the small print of the Lisbon Treaty which it says:
Gives new rights to EU leaders to overturn decisions made by Britain’s Immigration and Asylum Tribunal.
This is unfortunately nothing all that new because we had already given up those powers some time ago.
By way of contrast, The Guardian was unsurprisingly jubilant about the signing of the Lisbon Treaty. Only this morning, Michael White highlighted the fact that the Guardian was never in favour of a referendum:
Trevor [Kavanagh], who is treated more respectfully than the Pope on radio and TV these days, tells listeners the ‘pro-European Guardian’ shares the Sun’s enthusiasm for a referendum on the treaty. Since this is not the Guardian’s leader line I feel free to point out that remarkably few readers have signed the Sun’s petition demanding one – or the Telegraph’s either – despite a hefty Churchillian propaganda drive last autumn.
He then went on to write that the Sun and Telegraph’s campaigns would be unsuccessful and therefore:
Spares the country a pointless referendum which would solve nothing, as the Tiggerish Labour MP Denis MacShane pointed out on Today.
Michael White is a great supporter of the EU Constitution and the Treaty it’s now dressed up as – so obviously he would think a referendum on it pointless. It is at this point also worth mentioning that even Venezuela’s dictatorial President Hugo Chavez submitted his proposed Constitutional amendments to a referendum and appeared to accept its result in which he lost earlier this month.
Now that the EU Treaty has been signed, and if it is ratified by Parliament; for a while little will appear different. European integration is a slow and quiet thing. Its impact and affects will be gradual and not immediately obvious. Yet, as sovereign power seeps away from our national Parliament in Westminster, every day our lives will become a little greyer and more miserable.
