Janet Daley of the Daily Telegraph posted a rather apologist article regarding David Cameron's U-turn on Europe.
An associate of ours at The Bramble Bush posted this response.
@Janet
So… let’s get this straight… you believe that the EU is fundamentally anti-democratic, directly opposed to the will of the people, and deliberately designed to “dismantle the great 200-year-old experiment in modern democracy”.
OK, got that and personally I agree with every word. What I fundamentally disagree with you about (and I am not alone in this) is the way forward from this point.
I also agree with you that a referendum on Lisbon is now an exercise in futility. It is fact and it is fact NOT because of Cameron and chums but because of Brown and chums, we should not and many of us never will forget that fact nor forgive them for their betrayals, but that’s them, that’s a different argument altogether. However, having acknowledged that questions over Lisbon are futile that does not mean the arguments for a referendum are dead. We were promised a referendum by all the main political parties and one by one all of them have let us down. Having acknowledged and I presume factored in the cost of a referendum on Lisbon, the cost would be no different therefore in asking the people a different question, Eu in or out? Maybe. What type of relationship do we want with Europe? Possibly. Whatever question was proposed would have fulfilled their promises, put Gordon Brown on the back foot, satisfied the Eurosceptics, coalesced the party and also gone a long way to restoring faith in politicians. And lets face it our sovereignty and self determination should have no price tag attached to them. Isnt this exactly why we are told, our brave men and women are fighting and dying in Afghanistan? To preserve Afghan soverignty and protect their right to self determination? Ditto for Iraq?
The reason why many of us are disappointed and frankly very angry with Cameron and chums is that we believe he knew very well that there was no way his cast-iron guarantee would ever come true. His cast iron guarantee was very clear and many applauded it, but his retrospective caveats were less so. Sophistry at best and any misinterpretations thereof were actively encouraged. When it became more and more obvious that the Czechs would finally give in the press, rightly so, became very interested in what the Conservative position would be, what indeed would “not let the matter rest” actually mean? Well… now we know.
You say yourself that you are unsatisfied with many of the new proposals and you are right to be. The vast majority of those proposals would require the explicit permission of all 27 members to come about. Do you really think that’s going to happen? Even once? The rest is window dressing. More sophistry I’m afraid Janet. Furthermore, there will be no more treaties to get worked up about any time soon in order to fulfil the promise of future referenda simply because under a self amending Lisbon, the EU now has all the power it needs to grab all the power it wants.
I just watched William Hague on the Andrew Marr show, and when asked about this very issue he said “we will certainly try to get these things pased into law…” Not we will get … or we are determined to get… but we will try…
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