The Great Deception
Today in the Daily Telegraph, Bruno Waterfield confirms that the EU and the Irish Government have indeed been working on plans to implement the Lisbon Treaty even if the Irish people vote against the document in their referendum.
Since the Irish Government is not required to hold a referendum on an enlargement treaty, the remaining Lisbon protocols could easily be slipped past the Irish electorate when Croatia joins the European Union in 2009 or 2010.
This really is as much as to be expected. When faced with the thorny issue of ‘Europe’ even the usual pretence of democracy disappears out the window as national governments and ministers fall over one another to please their European masters and deny their own electorates a say on their future.
Equally unsurprisingly were yesterday’s events and the way in which this country’s political class and media had everyone looking the other way again when it could have mattered.
Last night in the House of Lords a coalition of Labour and Liberal Democrat Lords defeated a Conservative bid to force a Referendum by 280 to 218 votes, but most people were too busy focusing on the House of Commons vote on the Government’s amendments to its forty two day detention policy.
So enveloped were the political commentariat with the issues surrounding detention without charge that they missed the last ditch attempt to secure a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (aka. the EU Constitution) that all major political parties solemnly promised at the last election – or rather, is more likely the case, they conveniently chose to ignore it.
What a coincidence that the vote on detention policy fell on exactly the same day as the Lords’ referendum vote – or perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence at all…
Frankly though, the issue of detention is rather minor when compared with the huge issue of whether we remain an independent democratic nation state or continue to cede our powers and liberties to the undemocratic bureaucracy in Brussels.
I find that those who rather noisily but uselessly opposed the Government’s plans on forty two day detention on the grounds that it reduced our civil liberties (which it does) had very little, if anything, to say on the fact that the Lisbon Treaty will massively reduce our civil liberties in the sense that our own elected Parliament will be made even more irrelevant.
Still, at the end of the day the politicians maintain their privileges and the media have their supposed controversy and headlines – and that’s all that matters to them. To hell with the rest of us.
