Sleepwalking Into Tyranny

There are two YouTube videos that I will be linking to in the course of this post that I believe need to be as widely aired as possible. If you own a blog please write a piece linking to the videos too.

The first video is of a sizable protest made by MEPs of both the Left and Right from many different nations within the EU Parliament in December. The protestors were admirably calling for referendums to be held on the adoption of the Lisbon ‘Reform’ Treaty – a treaty which is essentially identical to the EU Constitution; a stance previously accepted by many MEPs and state governments until it became apparent that the people may in fact vote ‘no’.

In the video you will see the complete intolerance with which the European Parliament treats those protesting for a referendum. Parliamentary officials are ordered to remove Referendum banners and persistent attempts are made to prevent the perfectly legal filming of the event.

The second video assembles extracts from various speeches made by different MEPs in the European Parliament across a number of months. They go some way towards highlighting the complete hypocrisy of those opposing referendums on the Lisbon Treaty and just why the denial of such promised national votes is wholly undemocratic.

The video also highlights the plight of Conservative MEP, Daniel Hannan who has all but been thrown out of the EPP. The comments that he made can be seen in the video. Firstly watch the polite and mild-mannered way in which Mr Hannan compares the undemocratic and probably illegal actions that gave Parliamentary President, Hans Gert-Pöttering arbitrary powers to prevent protest within the EU’s chambers to that of the Enabling Act. Then watch and listen again to comments from Martin Schulz, Graham Watson and Daniel Cohn-Bendit which openly question the mental stability of those calling for referendums on the Lisbon Treaty; claim that such referendum protests were ‘intolerable’ and claim that eurosceptics remind them of Hitler.

Daniel Hannan on his Telegraph blog points out just why this is so utterly hypocritical:

You can see the Liberal leader, Graham Watson claiming that the sceptics’ behaviour “recalls the actions of the Communists in the Russian Diet and the National Socialists in the German Reichstag”. (Can this be the same Graham Watson who claimed that my own far more discreet reference to the Enabling Act “plumbs new depths in UK-EU relations and in the Tories’ approach to democracy in the EU”?) And you can see the Socialist leader Martin Shulz saying that the sceptics made him think of Adolf Hitler. (Can this be the same Martin Shulz who said I should have no home on the European Parliament?)

I’ve always been of the view that references to the Nazi era should be made, as the Common Prayer Book says of marriage, “reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly.” I’ve explained why before in this blog. Even so, I find myself attacked on all sides for making even the most tangential and qualified reference. So why does no one criticise the Watsons and Shulzes who habitually dismiss their opponents as Hitlerite?

This is the true face of the undemocratic European Union. These are the actions which the EU’s most ardent supporters do not want us to see. Without most people realising what is happening we are slowly sleepwalking into tyranny and away from the hard won democratic freedoms which took generations and two world wars to secure.

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.

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We Serve Hell And Suffer Well

It is perhaps nowhere more evident than in London the many reminders of Britain’s long and historic past.

As I walked the time-honoured streets of Whitehall, Parliament Square and the Victoria Embankment this grey morning, I was reminded by the presence of numerous solemn and silent bronze statues of celebrated Britons, that ours was once a great nation based on values of self-determination and self-governance that served us well for centuries before – and that this should not be forgotten.

Yet, arguably and very much unfortunately this is no longer the case. At today’s Steering group held Pro-Referendum Rally outside Parliament in London, I believe the most important point made by any of the assembled speakers was that the European Union did not take the supranational powers that it has slowly obtained without permission – in fact quite the opposite. Successive British governments elected by us, the people, have unfortunately and underhandedly frittered away sovereignty to a corrupt and undemocratic external body.

So, in reality, it has been a small and unrepresentative set of British people who have slowly whittled away our right to self-government. Furthermore, the great problem is that those powers of self-rule were not our Parliament’s to give away. MPs are merely custodians of our rights and constitution; powers which they must protect and return to us intact after every successive general election. Yet, for decades our MPs certainly have not been protecting these powers and without consulting us, leaving Britain at times in an utter mess, both politically and constitutionally.

This is all made more worrying by the fact that far from the initially projected half a million marchers today, attendance was rather dismal (or so I thought anyway.) My guess was that only about a thousand or so people turned out – if that. While a thousand people in itself it not too bad, you may have thought the enormity of the issue would command a higher level of participation – though admittedly the lack of support may have been more down to bad organisation and lack of publicity rather than apathy.

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Nothing Has Changed So Why The Fuss?

Yesterday, Gordon Brown ended months of constant media speculation by informing the BBC that he would not call an early General Election this year or next, unless extraordinary circumstances arose.

Personally I thought that Mr Brown would call an early election. If I was him, I would have wanted to secure a mandate to do things differently to the previous manifesto I had been elected under.

However, that said, I am not Gordon Brown, and since he will not be doing anything substantially different to his predecessor Tony Blair (just trying desperately to appear different,) and it’s not as though he’s sticking that closely to the current Labour manifesto anyway by refusing to hold a Referendum on the EU Constitution – it therefore can be assumed he probably does not need a new mandate after all.

Today, Gordon Brown claimed that even if he had chosen to call an early election, he would have won it. While he is probably right of course, in his assumption there is an underlying arrogance – believing and naturally assuming that he and his party would win. But then, as has been pointed out many times before, the underlying electoral system favours Labour maintaining power, and there is very little sign of that irregularity changing any time in the foreseeable future.

It does however seem extremely dubious that just the day after two opinions polls were released in national papers showing the Conservatives neck and neck with, or ahead of Labour, Gordon Brown announces that he wishes to give the British people a chance to experience his ‘vision’ for the country and cancels out an early poll. Coincidence? I think not.

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