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Two years until doomsday Tony Blair has given himself until 2006 to win round a sceptical British public to a new European constitution after having signed the ghastly document yesterday in Rome. Whilst nothing is certain in this life and two years is a long time in politics, I think a third term in the White House for Ronald Reagan is slightly more likely than him succeeding on that count.
There will come a day when the obfuscation and doublespeak will finally come to an end and it appears that day will be in 2006. British people have it within their grasp to smash the brittle foundations of the European Union and I hope that there will be many people working to ensure that is exactly what happens regardless of what the apparatchiks of all three main parties want.
I see some interesting times ahead.
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Considering that Reagan is dead, this would be quite a trick.
I hope you’re right, but two years really is an eternity these days. I expect that a shamelessly dishonest campaign by the government, with a huge assist from the state media, will make it a very close run thing.
The government will win the referendum. The whole process will be as rigged as an 18th Century man o’war.
And, yes, they will get away with it. It is already a done deal.
A good test on whether the government will be able to win a Euro Constitution referendum will be the North East Regional Assembly referendum – result out next week.
The idea of a regional assembly is an expensive absurdity (part of the idea of breaking England up into Euro regions) and most people in the north east of England (the counties of the north east of England) are against the idea.
If the government wins then David is correct – the powers that be can do anything they like.
However, if the government loses then it may well be that Perry is correct.
Perhaps not Paul, there seems to be much more voter apathy towards some generic bureaucratic institution with its equally generic manifesto promises than this towering Brussels menace which brings out the patriotic small-t tory side much faster than the anti-statist libertarian side.
The only exceptions I’v met have been those with a deep fondness for local history (and therefore traditional regional boundaries), farmers against surrendering their liberty to geordies a couple of hours away, and the europhobes who see the assembly for what it really is.
I’m with Perry de Havilland on this one – but cautiously. Given that the bastards have two more years to lie to us, running huge propaganda campaigns at our expense and, no doubt, with countless stunts and scares to nudge the great herd in the direct they wish it to go, I fear that David Carr might turn out to be right.
Which means that it is every single person’s responsibility to fight this – every bit as much as if the country were threatened by a foreign invader (which, in effect, it is).
What a tragedy that the preening gadfly Kilroy Silk was allowed to do so much harm to the UKIP and, consequently, the entire anti-EU movement. Still, at least we’ve got him out of the way now and can get back to some serious campaigning.
Apologies for being pedantic, Dalmaster. Don’t you mean EUrophobe? I have a hatred and a fear of the EU, but not of ‘Europe’. I’ve mentioned it as I think its very important for anyone who longs to see the end of the EU to knock back and destroy the pro-EU line that anyone anti is therefore a ‘Little Englander’ and a knuckle-scraping, goose-stepping Nazi (see Blair/NuLabour/The Guardian/BBC et al).
Getting back on topic I think that Mike’s right. This government will do anything, including anything illegal, to win the referendum.
In the USA, we are in love with your Pime Minister for his stance with us in the WoT. However, his insistence on transferring your soverignty to Brussels is something only a John Kerry could love. I don’t know if it is possible for the US to join the EU, but I bet Kerry is studying it.
EddieP writes:
“However, his insistence on transferring your soverignty to Brussels is something only a John Kerry could love. I don’t know if it is possible for the US to join the EU, but I bet Kerry is studying it.”
Regrettably, US policy under successive administrations has been to promote British membership of the EU – it is far from being only a Leftist policy.
There have been American voices raised against this (notably Newt Gingrich’s, I seem to recall), but they’ve been in the minority.
As for the widely-held US admiration for Bliar, I’m sure I’m not alone in appreciating the intent, but the reality for those of us forced to suffer under this lying toad’s government makes its frequent expression positively toe-curling.
Sorry to sound ungrateful, but he really is a wretched little man who has done incalculable harm to this country.
It might be sacreligous to say so but being against the EU and against its rediculous constitution doesn’t mean you have on principle to be against the idea of a United States of Europe.
My problem with the EU is that the ruling elites of its dominant members France and Germany are slavishly obsessed with a dirigiste big government model. A model which not only makes the EU the hated behemoth its is now but is disastrously failing in their own countries.
When the rest of Europe wakes up from its 70’s nightmare and discovers its own Reagans or Thatchers then I might listen to suggestions for a European constitution.
Until then i will vote against the current proposed constitution when(if) it is voted on even if it has to be alongside people whose understandable hatred of the EU is blurred with a hatred for europeans
dunderheid writes:
“… even if it has to be alongside people whose understandable hatred of the EU is blurred with a hatred for europeans”
I frequently hear these assertions and imputations but rarely see any evidence to support them. I’m rabidly anti-EU but am professionally in regular and close contact with people all over continental Europe, whom I respect, like and am very happy to work with. And yes, just to save some smart arse from chiming-in with the “some of my best friends are…” comment, I’m quite aware of it, thank you.
I’d go further. As far as I am concerned, I’d be a lot happier if my Italian colleagues with whom I have such good relations remained as Italian as possible. To use that awful word, the “diversity” is a bonus – the differences to be cherished. I find this sort of attitude quite common among my equally anti-EU friends. Why is enforced homogeneity something to be desired?
I’m sure there are anti-EU types who have all sorts of prejudices against Europeans. I’ve just never met any.
G Cooper – I’ve never met (so far as I know) a “little Englander” either. BTW, this phrase so ancient and clapped out, it shows how far back the socialists have to reach to find an insult. Weren’t “little Englanders” from the ’20s and ’30s? Why should we accept this dated insult as being part of contemporary verbal currency? We should ask them what “little Englander” means, as most of us weren’t born when it was all the rage as a catch phrase.
Xenophobe is another charge that doesn’t hold up. Surely at least 90% of Brits have had a minimum of one holiday overseas – and by far the greatest majority go overseas for their holidays or weekend breaks regularly. And the unemployed don’t even have to wait for the weekend! Many people who are strongly opposed to further (or even any) EU integration are people who live in France, or have a holiday home in France in which they spend considerable time, speak French, socialise with the French – as well as expatriates from Germany and Holland and are, in general, big fans of European cultures and customs. But they don’t want to be French or a hybrid.
And like G Cooper, I do understand – theoretically – what Americans admire about Blair and they cannot really judge him from afar. (From close up, Janet Daley does a good job.) But Americans should know that he is in this war as an act of self-promotion. He is a one-worlder, UN-loving multiculturalist, diversity-driven, constitutionally illiterate, kumbaya, hisssy, prissy, priggy preener and I wish I could find the words to explain how much I loathe him.
I think you made your point rather well, Verity, in a Jabberwocky kind of way.
Look—Americans like Blair because they know very little about him, and the Labor party, other than his support for our actions militarily and his very impressive speaking style. You must remember, we don’t have good speakers in general, and this bunch is particularly lame.
If Blair’s various policy positions, and the overall Labor party platform, were presented to the US electorate for approval, the vote would be hugely negative. But for most people, he’s a supportive ally, and that’s all they care about.
Blair jumped on 9/11 in the same way he did Princess Diana’s funeral,the man is an opertunist of the first water.
I remember in the first years of his office one of his henchpersons said,” We can’t wait to see him in Khaki”,the implication being that a war would be a good selling point.
Why all the crap about his bravery? The worst that can happen is he gets to write his bestseller and tour the lecture circuit.
Blog Jones… no shit, Sherlock. They wrote about Reagan’s death on this blog in several articles when he snuffed it so I kinda think that was the point.
Peter – Agreed. Blair jumped into Diana’s funeral like a feral cat, except cats don’t do the stiff upper lip, trembly jawed bit. Especially for people they’ve only met once. Or twice, maybe, in passing.
Americans might like to note that the wife of the British prime minister declined to curtesy to the Queen, our head of state, at Diana’s funeral or the funeral of the Queen’s own mother.
Just wanted the Americans to get the picture. And veryretired, Blair’s ‘very impressive’ speaking style? He makes Laurence Olivier look as though he had respect for the scenery.
Verity makes a very important point. I personally hate a hatred of the EU and everything it stands for. At the same time, I live in another country, speak a second language and travel extensively in Europe. I am far more typical of the EU haters than the knuckle dragging Xenophobes so beloved of the Lefty Press.
One of the UKIP MEP’s has a German Wife for gods sake.
The government will try to link us to the Little Englander stereotype during the campaign, and we must be careful not to give them excuses. The NO campaign needs some prominent Scots, Welsh and Ulstermen. That way Little Englander will be seen for the lie it is.
Use preview
That should say Have a hatred
At the risk of being a bore, I’d like to reiterate my point.
The term “Little Englander” is desperately old fashioned. It was used to describe people 50 or 60 years ago who were proud never to have been outside England. Now you would have to go through the country with a fine-tooth comb to find someone who hasn’t been abroad, and the EUrophiles know it. This jokey slur, which has the stale, dusty smell of coming from another age, is a measure of their desperation for an insult and we should call them on it. We should ask, “Could you explain what you mean by this funny, outdated term?” It’s used purely for dishonest (gosh, in the Blair government, what else is new?) purposes. Because they cannot think of any honest insult to describe people who want to keep their own country. That is because there isn’t one.
Words are things and they are important. Unthinking people are accepting this slur as though it were a valid description of people who, as EU Serf says, may well have a fair facility in a second and sometimes a third language, may well be married to someone from a European country, may send their children overseas on student exchanges in the summer holidays, may have a timeshare in Spain, may go on bargain flights to Greece, may send their children on school trips to visit museums in Munich, may indeed not speak a second language but go over to Portugal on an economy holiday break anyway, go overseas for sports events or to compete in dance competitions or the like, or to meet someone they encountered in an internet dating service, or attend a sales meeting and a million other reasons.
I just went to Rynair’s site and counted 65 bargain break offers to European destinations, including Riga. And Ryanair planes fly full. At an unexceptional company I worked for briefly in London, they took the 20 or so staff for their Christmas lunch to Amsterdam.
How dare the lying Blair and his sleazy cohorts describe their fellow countrymen as Little Englanders?
The majority of those people mentioned above do not want to be governed in any way, shape or form by the citizens of the countries they visit, not even with, in Edward Heaths traitorous phrase, “shared sovereignty”. The average Brit loves going abroad, but wants to be able to come home to Britain and shut our own front door.
There have been innumerable incidents of “President” Blair and his dreadful minions snubbing The Queen, the most recent case being Blunkett’s statement to the House of Commons over the ‘batman on the balcony’ incident, where he stated that ‘The Queen has always expressed a desire to get closer to her people’ (a remark broadcast on the parliamentary channel, on the 10 o’clock news and on Newsnight, yet strangely edited out of Hansard).
There are plentiful examples otherwise of where Blair delberately avoids requesting the Queen’s permission to leave the country, a somewhat dated protocol which nonetheless every previous Prime Minister has had the grace to maintain. Additionally there are numerous incidents where Blair has sent someone else to stand in for him at the weekly audience or indeed failed to turn up at all, so much so that the Queen once remarked to Ian Duncan-Smith at the time that “if he won a general election she trusted she would see more of him that she sees of his opposite number”.
And now Blair’s wife “human rights” lawyer (meaning she gets paid out of the public purse for pursuing frivolous suits on behalf of attention-seekers) has said, on a trip to Washington, DC that the Supreme Court was correct to give legal protection to two “British” prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay – although President Bush opposed the move and it is against protocol when making official visits to comment on domestic policy.
Cherie Blair, a Hillary Clinton wannabee but without the smarts, is on the same base level as Guardian readers who wrote to US citizens in Clarke Co to tell them how to vote. She and Tony Blair. What a pair of crass old slappers.
Ah, but Cherie’s comments were ‘non-political’ according to Downing Street. One gets the impression that with Cherie making these offhanded comments and Gould meeting in secret with Mary Beth Cahill, apparently under Phoney’s direct orders, Labour might just be trying a lastminute desperate attempt to cosy up to the Democrats.
Cherie Blair’s comments shouldn’t have been categorised or explained at all by No 10’s press office, because it is the press office of the Prime Minister of Great Britain and N Ireland, not his wife, who should be paying for her own press office. She got into trouble about this once before for getting the press office to back and fill over her sleazy property deals. Did she ever pay that money back to the British taxpayers?
OTOH, here’s Matthew d’Acona on Blair’s probable strategy if Mr Bush loses. Which he won’t. (Link) I hope this works. Otherwise, it’s in Sunday’s Telegraph.
I like Blair and have voted for him in the past. This European policy of his though is a real weakpoint and he knows it, that’s why he’s seperated the election from the constitution. I will possibly vote for him again but there is a real need for a party in the UK to fight the EU on a solid, ongoing basis which isn’t there at the moment. This one off referenda on the constitution is in no way enough, especially when one learns that parts of the EU administration are already moving to implement the constitution already. Blair is to pro, Howard is useless, the Lib dems are … the lib dems. UKIP, well they also appear to be useless. What a dire state the UK political scene is in.
Richard….at last! We have found someone who still (to some extent) likes Blair.
I have often wondered – when he is hated by the right and libertarians for his stance on the EU and high taxes, by liberals AND libertarians for his (government’s) attitude towards personal liberty and an over-mighty state, by the left for his cosiness with big business, millionaires, rightist leaders in general and particularly GWB – where in the UK his constituency WAS…
It must be somewhere, because NuLabour is reckoned to be the easy winner of the next election, whenever it is held.
How would you describe yourself, Richard? A centrist, perhaps?
Actually, it doesn’t matter a toss which way the referendum goes (and if anybody cares, I’m with Perry, prediction-wise).
The implementation of the constitution has already begun; the things that can only be done once it is in force, are already being done.
The process will continue regardless; the laws and regulations will be promulgated just the same; the institutions (police, army, etc) are already in embryonic form and will flower in due course.
We can vote for Mickey Mouse if we want, it will all happen anyway, and our government will agree to it all afterwards, telling us as they do so, that it’s either inevitable or already done.
The 150-year experiment with democracy (since the second Reform Act) is over, and our masters won’t make that mistake again.
Get used to it.
It is always too easy to label Phoney with the Smith/Gould/Brown ‘NuLabour’ branding. We should always bear in mind, when dealing with this dreadful little man, that his political hero and mentor is none other than Neil Kinnock; and that his policies essentially reflect dusted off and rehashed 1970’s and 80’s faded Labour dogma. To that end I think I would rather have unprotected intercourse with Edwina Currie than ever vote for anyone who could hold such an odious buffoon as Kinnock in high regard.
I provide some intellectual ammunition to help in the destruction of the Evil European Union, as follows
1. The terms of the Bill of Rights are specific. The Crown has no permission, authority or right to hand the government of the British people over to any foreign power. The EU was always intended to become a state.
2. The Tories knew this when MacMillan decided to get us into this mess in 1961.
3. Recommended reading is “The Great Deception by Christopher Booker and Richard North. It tells the whole story of this collectivist conspiracy. ISBN 0-8264-7105-6 (Hardback)