So Where’s That Referendum Mr Cameron?

Before the General Election, you may recall that we were repeatedly assured, despite all evidence to the contrary, that David Cameron was actually really rather conservative and eurosceptic, and that he would show his true colours once in office.

Commentators within the right-wing media assured their readers that obtaining office was absolutely vital, and that in a press dominated by the BBC and the liberal-left then Mr Cameron was forced, hands behind his back, to kowtow to the liberal elite in order to not so much gain their support, but pacify their criticism.

Not to worry we were earnestly told. If the Conservatives portrayed themselves as the heirs to Blair and moved to the Left on a number of supposedly minor, largely irrelevant social and economic issues then the BBC and Guardian would be totally wrong-footed.

All that hugging of hoodies, understanding rather than punishing criminals, reneging on referendum pledges, capitulation to equality and diversity, dictatorial control of party candidate lists, promises to match Labour’s state spending plans, attacks on selection by academic ability, the protection of the bloated welfare state, sexual liberalism, ‘investing’ yet more of our money in the lumbering and inefficient NHS bureaucracy, further commitments to maintaining British troops in Afghanistan, and so on – it was all a front to deceive Parliament’s gatekeepers in the liberal media establishment into allowing the Tory party back into office.

Dave really didn’t mean it at all. Honest. Upon entering the door of Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister, his leftist visage would dissipate, and as if by a miracle, a great light would shine down upon him from the heavens and seconds later the real David Cameron would re-emerge to govern as a real, true-blooded Tory eurosceptic rather than under the very limp-wristed social democrat policies by which he had been elected.

Many of us didn’t believe it then, and of course even more are, if slowly, beginning to realise the truth now. David Cameron is not a conservative; he is a social democrat. He was elected as one and he will govern as one. Thus, the circle is now complete. The transfer from Blair and Brown to Cameron has seen the personnel change, but the policies have not – and they won’t change.

It therefore comes as little surprise that our Prime Minister has ruled out a Referendum vote on the proposed creation of a new EU Treasury, revealed today by the Daily Mail. That supposedly robust euroscepticism from our boy Dave is looking rather thin on the ground isn’t it? The Mail comments:

In a move likely to infuriate his party, Mr Cameron has already ruled out the prospect of giving the British public a say on the plans for a superstate. The Prime Minister will argue that a referendum on the proposals is unnecessary because the changes would only affect the countries in the single currency. But that stance was dismissed yesterday on the grounds that the plans will still have a profound effect on Britain by radically changing the nature of the EU, effectively shackling the UK to any new institutions. Tory MPs branded the likely changes ‘bigger than Maastricht’ – the treaty which led to the creation of the European Union and the single currency – and demanded a referendum.

In reality, Cameron’s referendum lock on transfers of power to the European Union was always a sham. When it was announced, the measure was used in an attempt to put the EU issue to bed, at a time when Mr Cameron was coming under sustained attack for his reneging on his commitment of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

The lock itself is utterly meaningless as the Government can simply deny that a transfer of power will occur, as many European states did with the Lisbon Treaty, and therefore deny a referendum. A more useful measure would be to ask the Government in what situations a transfer of power would exist to allow a referendum? I don’t think Mr Cameron and company would like that though.

Instead, while Dave continues to break his pledges and further increase the size of our national debt, the European Union lurches on with its usual attempts to further ever closer union in this latest ‘beneficial crisis’ in the Euro zone. Don’t expect our MPs and castrated Parliament to come riding to the rescue either. It’s mass economic default that lies ahead, or ever closer union (courtesy of Dave). Whichever way you look spells disaster on a grand scale.

Return From Hiatus

Two years. It really doesn’t seem all that long since I gave up posting on this website. At the time I had planned to just give blogging a rest for a week or so, but without quite realising, the weeks turned to months, and the months turned to years.

Never mind though. It’s not as though I’ve missed all that much, since very little on the British political scene has changed in that time. Yes, we may have had a General Election last year, but the Government’s policies have remained largely identical.

And so it came to past that the electorate were duped into believing that voting out New Labour and voting in Blue Labour – sorry, the Conservatives – would constitute a real and perceivable change in the way the country was run. Sadly though, they were wrong.

No longer does the ‘terrible’ and ‘awful’ Mr Gordon Brown head up our Westminster administration, but instead that nice young man, Mr ‘Dave’ Cameron, who in contrast to the great clunking fist seems unable to do wrong in the eyes of much of the liberal media. Such was the negative media frenzy at the time, people blamed Mr Brown if their train was late, or they dropped their coffee on the floor, or their shoelaces snapped while they were tying them, or if it rained.

Quite why Mr Brown was apparently so ‘terrible’ and ‘awful’ very few people remember or care. They’re just glad that he’s gone, and anyway, isn’t the new Prime Minister so much better looking than the last? He just looks the part doesn’t he? And hasn’t he got such a lovely, well dressed wife? She has such nice hats. And doesn’t he make such good speeches (though one can never quite remember what they were about)? And so on and so on.

In the meantime the steady process of our MPs giving away yet more of our sovereignty to the EU has quietly continued without opposition. State expenditure and borrowing has continued to rise at an even faster rate than under Labour, despite boasts of ‘putting the finances in order’ and talk of those nasty, evil and increasingly non-existent cuts. Crime has gone up. So has immigration. And our taxes too. Yet some people just fail to notice, so distracted are they by the bread and circuses of modern British politics and media.

A great storm is approaching though, one that even those caught up in the usual media circuses of the moment won’t be able to ignore forever. The crisis in Greece is likely only the beginning of it, and quite where we will all be in another two years time is anyone’s guess – but I think we can safely predict that it’s not sunlit uplands which lie ahead. It’s going to be downhill from here on in.

Prepare For The Worst

You cannot be betrayed by those that you do not trust. Labour’s predictable reluctance and later refusal to fulfil their promise of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was not a betrayal because we had never placed our trust in them by voting their representatives into office.

What is more, the Labour Party, as a whole, are ideologically in favour of the European project and ever closer union between EU member states. They are willing backers of the increasing burden of unaccountable regulation that arrives daily from Brussels and now enthusiastically support ‘the destruction of a thousand years of history’ as their former leader Hugh Gaitskell once pertinently observed. They do little to disguise their views on the issue.

Meanwhile, millions of conservatives will feel deeply betrayed by the Conservative Party; an organisation in which they had placed their trust and support, often over decades, through the ballot box and paid membership. Cameron’s climb down on his formerly ‘cast iron’ guarantee of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty has signalled that the party no longer represents their interests.

Even after all that has happened many millions of people will continue to consider the Conservative Party to be ‘eurosceptic’ – a phrase that supposedly betokens a stance of disapproval and opposition to the European Union and all its works. In reality however, ‘euroscepticism’ has revealed itself to be nothing more than a facade for Conservative politicians both past and present to make vaguely anti-EU statements in opposition, only for them to betray their voters and capitulate to the perpetual slow motion coup d’état of ever closer union once safely in Government.

Tomorrow, David Cameron will announce his party’s new stance on the European Union. Do not expect much. Despite knowing for months that the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty would be likely, they had not prepared for such an eventuality. Such planning does not exactly bode well for their performance in Government.

In his statement tomorrow, much will be made by Cameron of Labour’s deceit in reneging on their promise of a referendum. Much will be made of how the Treaty will have been implemented into EU and our law by the time of any UK General Election in which the Conservatives could obtain office. Little however will be made of what the Conservatives might do about this. It will all be rather vague. Pointers will be made to the repatriation of powers, though without specifics or indeed how this will be achieved.

Cameron is therefore set for an historic moment. As Gerald Warner in the Daily Telegraph noted, he will be the first British leader to have ratted on his commitments before even taking office. Warner also remarked that:

There is always some shambling excuse, some pseudo-sophisticated ‘reason’ for submitting to humiliation: we cannot have a referendum on a ratified treaty… It would lead to our ejection from the European Union… We mustn’t let Labour back in… The illusion of inevitability – a fundamental Marxist tenet – has successfully been foisted upon British voters by the Frankfurt School Marxists who control the EU.

Despite Team Cameron’s best efforts to sideline the major issues surrounding our membership of the European Union, they have come back to bite him in the backside – as we knew they would.

Vote For Change

The BBC reports that David Cameron is calling on the electorate to vote Conservative in the local elections in June ‘for a change’ and to send a clear message to Brown that ‘enough is enough’.

But how exactly can you vote for a change when the alternative is virtually identical? What exactly are David Cameron and the Conservative Party going to do that is fundamentally different to the current Labour administration?

The BBC article suggests that Conservative run councils will ‘keep council tax down’. Yet, what is really mean by this is that taxes will rise by less than under the current administration. How very considerate, but what of all those millions of people who wish that their taxes would actually go down, rather than up?

At the weekend Neil Parish, likely to be the next Conservative MP for Tiverton and Honiton, told me that the Conservatives, when in Government, can’t lower taxes in the face of terrible economic conditions. But is it really that they can’t, or won’t – and is it any wonder when the Conservatives have now largely accepted the economic and high taxation arguments of the Left?

David Cameron also said that the Conservative Party believes in localism. So do I, but I know that such a view is incompatible with our membership of the EU. Will David Cameron admit that?

What’s more, when eighty per cent plus of our regulations and new laws are dictated to us by the European Union, without scrutiny from our Parliament, then the main political parties have even less reason to be radically different from one another on a whole range of issues over which we no longer have any control.

Yet, even if David Cameron and the Conservatives win the next UK General Election (which is still not anywhere near as certain as the media would have you believe) then we will, by and large, end up with exactly the same government we have already. The personalities will change, the policies will not.