Inevitability Mr Anderson

So, the Irish people have had the good sense to vote against the Lisbon Treaty. Hurrah! Or at least it would be if their say actually mattered – which quite clearly it won’t.

Even before the final result was announced, numerous European politicians including José Manuel Barroso had made plain that the Lisbon Treaty was not dead and that ratification in all member states must continue.

Thus the Irish will discover in time that within the European Union there is no such thing as real choice. Either you subjugate yourself to the will of the Brussels bureaucracy or leave – and since all political parties in Ireland are in favour of remaining within the Union, in much the same way they were all in favour of the EU Constitution, then it is almost guaranteed that the Lisbon Treaty will be forced upon the Irish people eventually.

Some people still talk of creating a looser European Union of independent trading nations. They fail to realise that if the EU and its politicians are prepared to ignore the will of the French, Dutch and Irish voters in very specific referendums, then it is entirely unlikely they will suddenly feel the need to allow members to simply trade freely without any political baggage.

The EU is irreversibly set on the course of ever closer political union. Its elites will not listen to the people, whom they secretly despite for democratically voicing their doubts, and will plough on regardless – even in the face of popular adversity. How does anyone continue to believe that is democratic or favourable?

EU To Ban Eurosceptic Groups

Writing in the Telegraph on Tuesday, Bruno Waterfield uncovered fresh plans by MEPs to eliminate eurosceptics as an organised opposition within the European Parliament.

Richard North continued the story by pointing out that the affect of amending these parliamentary rules will probably be to prevent David Cameron from forming a new eurosceptic group as he had pledged during his party leadership campaign and breaking away from the EPP-ED.

Gawain Towler also talks us through the procedure of how the vote came to pass and the way in which Europhile Tory MEP, Timothy Kirkhope helped Labour’s Richard Corbett escape defeat. Whether this was intentional on Mr Kirkhope’s part is open to debate – though he had ample motivation since he has been against Cameron’s pledge to leave the EPP-ED from the start.

Rather sadly, a significant number of people in politics and the media (who probably should know much better) continue to have a fairly rose-tinted view of what they would like the European Union to be, rather than acknowledge what it has actually become. Despite all evidence to the contrary they persist in believing the Union to be a free trading area when it is not; a bastion of democratic ideals when it is not, and a co-operative but loose association of sovereign nations when it is not.

The sole aim of the EU’s fore-fathers and subsequent torch bearers always has and always will be ‘ever closer union’ and political integration. As a consequence EU institutions and supporters will not tolerate any dissent against their grand project which they have spent so much time and effort slowly constructing, and will often break their own rules of procedure simply to evade any semblance of democratic opposition.

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Some Thoughts On Conway

The media will no doubt inundate us tomorrow with their analysis of this scandal just as they did with Peter Hain the other day, however, I thought I would point out a few things that others seem to be missing or not highlighting.

Now, this is not a new story. In fact The Times covered Derek Conway’s abuse of Parliamentary expenses back in May last year – therefore why has it taken so long for the Conservatives or the media to call him to account?

Well, obviously there is the fact that quite a few MPs have recently been caught breaking their own party funding rules or having their snouts shoved in the trough – so this is perhaps just another story to keep the bandwagon rolling. Yet, I also see on ConservativeHome that Tim Montgomerie is calling for Derek Conway to stand down at the next election, which he has now just done as I write this post.

What Tim Montgomerie says on ConservativeHome can sometimes provide a good insight into what higher echelons of the Conservative party are thinking. I suspect therefore that a number of higher ranking Conservative MPs are behind the scenes probably calling for Derek Conway’s resignation. Couple this with a recent increase in discussion on how to remove bed-blocking MPs from their seats and you begin to see that there may be something more to this than it would first appear.

No doubt some new, modern, liberal Cameron-clone Conservative was or is being lined up to take over Mr Conway’s nice safe seat. The latest media furore has no doubt given the party hierarchy an opportunity to achieve that aim.

Non-Event Alert

And the winner of this week’s non-event goes to the resignation of the Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, who is almost certain to be replaced by someone equally useless and incompetent.

Most people should have realised by now that many of our right honourable members are prone to corruption and breaking the laws they themselves created, especially with regard to party funding.

I explained back in December why this is really not as important an issue as it will be made out to be. Yet, unfortunately and without really surprising anyone, the British mainstream media will be on full alert tomorrow, ready to cram their papers full of pointless discussion and analysis on this non-event until everyone is completely sick and tired of the whole issue.

This will undoubtedly be at the expense of highlighting far more important issues such as a certain EU Constitution making its way through Parliament at the moment – though having said that, the British media were unlikely to have discussed that anyway – but there is even less chance of it happening now.