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.

Britain is being dismantled before our very eyes, piece by piece. Centuries of tradition have and are being swept away to be replaced with bland conformism and blind allegiance to the benevolent new social and political order.

Yet, there are those within the Labour Party and the Left who still do not believe that capitulation to the anti-democratic European Union is right. These people must quickly learn that if they want to remain a member of the European Union then they will have to accept that their country will be run by the European Union to an ever increasing extent – with further privatisation down the road.

You cannot, as the Conservative Party pretends, find a solution between two such opposing ends of the spectrum. Either you pledge yourself to ‘ever closer union’ and privatisation, or leave.

Perhaps, for some of those on the Left, the privatisation of Royal Mail by their eurofanatical leaders will act as a wakeup call. The national institutions including the Postal Service that they cherish will be wiped away by Euro decree unless they make a stand.

But it cannot simply be a stand against their party’s leaders but a stand against our real Government in Brussels and for the rapid reimplementation of British Parliamentary sovereignty. Only then can we have an open and honest debate about privatisation. Only then will we be able to save our Postal Service.

Similarly, Gordon Brown said in a speech in Bristol yesterday that private investment in Royal Mail was imperative in being able to guarantee its £25bn pension fund and maintain a universal postal service.

The strength of feeling on this issue in the Labour party is clearly quite strong. I was in the Lords Gallery on Wednesday when the Labour peer Lord Clarke of Hampstead, who is a former postman, shouted ‘shame on you’ as Lord Mandelson brought the Bill to the House of Lords for a first reading. In the House of Commons well over one hundred Labour MPs have signed an early day motion criticising the Government’s plans to sell a stake in Royal Mail.

Furthermore, in opposition to Gordon Brown and Lord Mandelson, Billy Hayes, General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union, told BBC News that the privatisation plan was ‘baffling’ and just didn’t make any sense. He also said to Sky News:

I don’t want to see Mrs Thatcher’s ideas, Conservative ideas, being introduced by a Labour government. Let’s be clear: 25%, 30%, Peter Mandelson has talked about 49% owned by a foreign company.

That’s not what people in the Labour Party want, that’s not what people in the country want – they want to see a modern Royal Mail.

Yet, despite so much anger and bitter opposition from many of their key supporters, the Labour Government has ploughed on regardless with the privatisation of Royal Mail.

There has been much discussion in the media and in political circles about why Mr Brown and Lord Mandelson would risk the ire of the Unions and a backbench rebellion when the Labour party is in a weak position in the opinion polls. Unsurprisingly most of this speculation has been far wide of the mark.

The answer is actually quite obvious to anyone who looks further than the end of their own nose – an act which our perennially blind media and political class seem incapable of doing.

The fact of the matter is that Gordon Brown and his Labour administration have no real choice in the matter. They must privatise Royal Mail, not because of pension problems or the need for increased investment in the universal postal service, but because they are required by force of law to obey the European Union’s 3rd Postal Services Directive.

As I previously highlighted, the European Union’s 3rd Postal Service Directive 2008/6/EC clearly states that our Postal Service must be privatised, saying:

Member States shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive by 31 December 2010 at the latest. They shall forthwith inform the Commission thereof.

So, if the likes of those such as CWU Union leader, Billy Hayes, are confused as to why Labour are pushing ahead with Royal Mail privatisation in the face of adversity, then they now should have their answer. It’s an undemocratic decision with which the Unions will have to live – as unfortunately will we all.

This merely points out the true inevitability of the situation – that the future of Royal Mail is in ‘privatisation’. It does not matter what we think about this; whether we agree or disagree with ‘privatisation’, it is not up to us to decide any longer – and it has not been our decision for quite some time.

As I previously highlighted, the European Union Postal Services Directive 2008/6/EC, which amended the previous Postal Service Directive 97/67/EC has decreed that ‘privatisation’ will indeed occur. Furthermore, as Directive 2008/6/EC clearly states:

Member States shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive by 31 December 2010 at the latest. They shall forthwith inform the Commission thereof.

Therefore the ‘privatisation’ of Royal Mail from its position as majority universal service provider must occur by 2011. In targeting April for a sell-off, our Labour administration is simply doing as it is being told by our EU masters in the Commission rather than following the advice of any policy groups or reports.

I should also point out that even if the Conservative party were against the ‘privatisation’ of Royal Mail (which they are not), then it wouldn’t make the blindest bit of difference. Our continued membership of the European Union confers upon us the necessity of obeying its legislation which is now part of our own law.

I suppose I could briefly highlight what may seem like an interesting contrast between the likely sale of a longstanding public service to a foreign postal company by our Government and the fact that Labour are still imagined by many to be against the privatisation of public industries – but then, what exactly would be the point?

We should know by now that Labour and the Left haven’t been interested in nationalisation and the ownership of industry for years. Labour’s supposed clause four moment in which Blair amended the Labour party’s constitution and its commitment to ‘secure … the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange’ was entirely irrelevant.

Decades before that moment there had been a radical revolution in thinking on the Left, since which Leftists have become steadily more interested in bringing about cultural rather than political revolution in order to successfully pursue their social and political agenda. As such the Left and the Labour party haven’t seriously been committed to nationalisation since the early sixties.

Nonetheless, we should still be asking ourselves why our Labour Government has been so openly hasty in seeking to privatise Royal Mail. As usual though, it doesn’t take us long to discover the answer, with unsurprisingly the European Union having had a major hand in this affair – specifically in the form of Directive 2008/6/EC (aka. The European Union Postal Services Directive) which amends Directive 97/67/EC and came into force in EU law (ie. our law) in February of this year.

Under Directive 97/67/EC, incumbent national postal services such Royal Mail were allowed to hold on to a ‘reserved area’ to maintain their positions as universal service providers. However, the recently adopted Directive 2008/6/EC makes clear that the ‘reserved area’ will be abolished and that monopoly providers must be opened up to competition. And like good little Europeans our Government have merely been doing our EU masters bidding.

The supposed purpose of these EU Directives is to introduce competition into the postal systems of European member states as a benefit to consumers. However, as Richard North noted previously back in May:

The postal services directives have exactly the same agenda as all the other so-called ‘liberalising’ instruments, whether they are dealing with energy, rail, telecommunications, or whatever. The intent is to break up national monopolies, not for the sake of it, but in order to recreate then on a European level, under the direct control of the EU commission.

The attack on national monopolies is not an attack on the monopolies, per se but an attack on nationalism – it is an attack on the nation state, an attempt to reduce the power and influence of the member states. As such, the EU has no rooted objection to monopolies – it is, after all, itself a monopoly. Its apparent enthusiasm for ‘competition’ is simply a smokescreen to gull free-market liberals into supporting its deeper agenda.

Our undemocratic and unaccountable government in Brussels continues to busily legislate away on the future of important national services, proving once again (if it were needed) that we do not any longer govern ourselves.