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climb down on his formerly ‘cast iron’ guarantee of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty has signalled that the party no longer represents their interests.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.

The Foreseeable Future

The resignation of James Purnell as the Work and Pensions Secretary basically sums up the story of British Government and politics over the past two decades – and sadly, it would seem, for the foreseeable future too.

Mr Purnell called for the resignation of Gordon Brown as Labour Party leader and Prime Minister and for an immediate election contest to replace him. Yet, like so many other Labour rebels who have taken to the airwaves in recent days, Mr Purnell did not cite a disagreement with the policies of Mr Brown.

It is the case that Mr Purnell and all the other Labour rebels do not actually have any problems with the current policies of the Labour Party. They merely disagree with the way in which they are being presented and the negative light that the media now continually cast upon Gordon Brown and the Labour Party.

Thus, this is not an issue of policy but personality and rather blatant careerism. Sky News claimed tonight that in resigning Mr Purnell sacrificed his career on principle. Rubbish. James Purnell had only his career in mind and believes that, by ditching Brown, he could further it. Similarly, to which principles exactly was he adhering? Certainly not those of policy or ideology.

Furthermore, if you honestly think that a UK General Election will change anything other than the personalities of those MPs in Westminster and Whitehall then you are sadly mistaken. Mr Cameron and the Conservatives seek to continue the policies and political direction of the current Government with only very minor alterations. If you do not believe this to be true then please prove my assertion to be incorrect with cold hard evidence. If you cannot then you must accept that I am right.

It does not matter whether or not Gordon Brown is replaced as Prime Minister by another Labour leader or by the Conservative Party and David Cameron; the governance and policies in Westminster will remain identical for the foreseeable future, as they have done for the past two decades. Nothing will change.

Hiding From The Truth

Today brings yet more coverage of the ongoing struggle between Labour Party rebels and the Government over the partial privatisation of Royal Mail. Unsurprisingly most articles do not bring a single mention of the role of the European Union.

It never ceases to amaze me how newspapers and our media manage to ignore the elephant in the room on this issue which is, of course, EU regulatory and legislative influence.

Why, they wonder out loud in their inverted columns, are Gordon Brown and the Government so determined to privatise Royal Mail and risk unpopularity from their voters and backbench MPs? Many times has this important question been asked, but so very rarely has the real answer been revealed by our mainstream press.

As I had previously discussed here, here and here, the European Union’s Postal Service Directives are responsible for this latest bout of angst over privatisation. Many journalists and MPs know about these laws, but, because it is not part of their official narrative, they are publicly ignored, as if they did not even exist.

Desperately they struggle on, twisting and turning over the same old ground in a bitter attempt to come up with any reason, any excuse, anything about the privatisation of Royal Mail by the Labour Government, except to mention the EU dimension.

Yet, the power and influence of the EU can only be ignored for so long. I realise that there are many on the Left who have for some time seen it as an entirely favourable proposition to abolish Britain because it does not conform to their political vision.

Britain has retained its monarchy and yet is democratic, it was traditional and yet able to modernise, was capitalist but had a social conscience, and had a class system but did not present a bar to talent. According to the theories of the Left, Britain should not have existed, and so, slowly but surely, they have sought to make absolutely sure that it did not.

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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.