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Britons Must Demand A Vote On Europe
Labour Would Make Britain The Only E.U. Member Denied A Voice
If The Government won’t, organise one anyway; Hey, Paul Sykes!
If The Treaty Is Dead, Let’s Go For The European Commonwealth
We British must vote on the European Constitution, and we must vote soon. If we are denied a vote by this government of incompetent bullies and self-servers, even though the ratification process is continuing across the rest of the European Union, surely it isn’t beyond the wit and private finance of my fellow citizens to organise a vote anyway.
Where are you, Paul Sykes, the Yorkshire multi-millionaire, who bank-rolled the United Kingdom Independence Party? Let’s show the class-war warriors who govern us poor unfortunates that we don’t need their say-so to vote on this most crucial of issues.
If the fools in neo-Labour have their way, Britain will be the only country in the European Union which won’t be allowed to vote on the European Constitution.
If Sykes can be persuaded to part with a couple of million pounds, we could have a vote. And the vote needn’t be on the constitution as offered by our would-be masters at the European Union either. Why not vote on the kind of constitution that the people of Britain might actually say “yes” to?
I offer you the 9 point constitution for the European Commonwealth, published by the Sunday Telegraph, and reproduced below.
This constitution would kill dead once and for all the power of Brussels to interfere in British politics by limiting action to cross-border matters only. It would leave useful bits like the right to trade and work freely in any state of the European Union.
It would claw back powers that would have been lost if the European Constitution had passed, including foreign affairs, and defence, and would make sure that sovereignty lost over crucial areas like fisheries and justice were repatriated to London.
Dump European Parliament
The European Commonwealth would not allow the European Commission to initiate legislation. The Commission would become a neutral civil service answerable to the elected governments of the member states. The European Parliament would be dumped and replaced by an Assembly comprising members of national parliaments who would attend European sessions for a maximum of 4 days a month. They would have no powers to initiate laws, only oversee the civil servants of the Commission.
The European Central Bank would be abolished and Commonwealth members would be free to set their own interest rates and monetary policy.
Any clash of legal jurisdiction would assume national laws had supremacy.
Now that’s a constitution we British would go for.
Student Agitator
Meanwhile, the dissemblers of neo-Labour spin on. Student agitator in disguise Jack Straw has said that because the treaty is effectively dead, there is no point in Britain voting. It seemed like only minutes later, that our Prime Minister Tony Blair (I’ve run out of adjectives to describe this unspeakable liar, this repulsive, glory seeking egomaniac, so I won’t bother) spoke out of the other side of the government’s mouth and suggested that, far from being dead, bits of the treaty might well find themselves surfacing and bypassing the attempt at democratic control that the ratification process purported to represent.
In an interview with the Financial Times shortly before he flew to Washington to meet George W. Bush, Blair insisted the UK did not think the EU treaty was dead.
Don’t Let Blair Off The Hook
“I think the constitution is a perfectly sensible way forward and at some point Europe is going to have to adopt rules for the future of Europe and if it doesn't it is not going to function properly,” Bliar told the Financial Times.
It is so convenient for Blair to shelve Britain’s right to vote on the constitution. Everybody knew that defeat next Spring in the referendum would mean curtains for him, but in the interests of prolonging his ill-fated career, the people of Britain are being denied their say.
I agree with Blair. The treaty is not dead, although for the time being it looks as though it is breathing its last. Euro maniacs like Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, French President Jacques Chirac, and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will stop at nothing to revive the corpse. The Tories are going along with Labour, saying a vote on a dead treaty is pointless. But if we don’t vote, we run the risk of being blindsided and finding the most obnoxious aspects of the constitution being forced on us against our will.
Cook His Goose
The British are being left in limbo by our useless leaders. Seasoned observers of neo-Labour are on the alert. We know that Blair sees this as not only a chance to get off the hook of a losing referendum next Spring which would have cooked his goose good, but now he can wheel and deal and lie behind the scenes to try and salvage the federal superstate aspects of the constitution that would have been dumped forever if the British had voted with a resounding “No”. This is double-bubble for Blair. He can hang on to his tainted, but still highly paying and limo-enhanced life as premier by denying us a vote, and he can suck up to European leaders, giving them the powers they want in exchange for a nice tax-free sinecure in Brussels when he is finally dumped as British prime minister.
Come on Britain.
Demand a vote now, and demand a vote for a Commonwealth which will show the rest of Europe that Britain will never be ruled by Europe. Come to think of it, the Commonwealth constitution makes so much sense, I can’t imagine any of our 24 European colleagues saying no to it.
Neil Winton – June 9, 2005
The Sunday Telegraph’s constitution –
WHEREAS the Peoples of France and the Netherlands have voted "No" to further European integration; WHEREAS their Governments argued, throughout the referendum campaigns, that a "No" vote would amount to a rejection of the entire European project; and WHEREAS said Governments are determined to abide by their own logic; we, the 25 Member States of the EU, HAVE DECIDED to cancel the proposed Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe and, in doing so, to annul the Treaties establishing the EEC, the ECSC and Euratom, the Treaty on European Union and all consequent accords. In their place, we hereby ESTABLISH a European Commonwealth, to be based on the following principles –
I The European Commonwealth shall be an association of parliamentary democracies that collaborate one with another for mutual benefit.
II The jurisdiction of common European institutions shall be confined to cross-border matters: that is, fields of policy where the actions of one Member State impact directly upon the internal affairs of another. These include: commerce between Member States (but not trade with Third Countries); cross-border environmental pollution; and the maintenance of a free market in goods, services, people and capital.
III For the avoidance of doubt, and as a defence against creative interpretation by European judges, a list of national Reserve Powers shall be drawn up in the Member States' constitutions (or by parliamentary statute in the United Kingdom). Such a list shall include: foreign affairs, defence, asylum and immigration, transport, energy, the powers of regional and local government, agriculture, fisheries, industry, social and employment policy, taxation, health, education, justice and home affairs. In these areas, the supremacy of national parliamentary and legal systems shall be guaranteed.
Common European policies shall come into effect only following a specific implementing decision by the national authorities.
IV Member States shall be free, if they wish, to adopt common policies in these areas. Such initiatives may happen bilaterally or multilaterally, without prejudice to the non-participating members.
V In order to give effect to these principles, the institutions of the old EU shall be reformed as follows:
1. The European Commission shall lose the right to initiate legislation. Such a right is incompatible with the principle of accountable democracy. The Commission shall instead fulfill the role of a neutral civil service, answerable to the elected governments of the Member States.
2. The European Parliament shall be replaced by an Assembly comprised of national deputies and senators, seconded from their home legislatures for a period of not more than four days a month. The Assembly shall not pretend to the role of a legislature. Its function, rather, shall be to oversee the Commission.
3. The European Court of Justice shall be comprised of judges, required as a condition of their appointment to have had experience on the bench in their home countries. It shall adjudicate disputes between the Member States as well as questions arising from the interpretation of this Treaty, but shall have no right to demarcate the border between national and European jurisdictions.
Any dispute over the location of power shall be referred to a European Tribunal, comprising the heads of national legal systems: the Master of the Rolls from the United Kingdom, the President of the Conseil d'Etat from France, the head of the Bundesverfassungsgericht from Germany and so on. These eminent jurists, retaining their national perspectives, shall adjudicate all questions touching on sovereignty.
4. The Council of Ministers shall be the supreme authority of the European Commonwealth. It shall propose common initiatives, open to such member states as choose to participate. Such initiatives should also be open to states from outside Europe.
5. The European Central Bank shall be abolished and member states shall be free to set their own interest rates or to combine their monetary policies bilaterally or multilaterally.
VI The European Commonwealth shall work towards international co-operation and the breaking down of global trade barriers.
VII The European Commonwealth shall encourage the progressive reduction of tariffs against produce from Third Countries, including in the fields of agriculture, textiles and raw materials.
VIII Any uncertainty arising from ambiguities in this Treaty shall be resolved in favour of the individual citizen rather than the state, and of national governments rather than European institutions.
IX Changes to this treaty shall take effect only following ratification by referendum in all signatory states.
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