This week’s announcement by Sir Max Hastings that was supposed to reverberate around the media bubble with the force of a volcanic eruption – namely that he has changed his unimpeachable view and now thinks his precious EU has been a disaster – landed with all the impact of a downy feather gliding slowly down on to a paving slab.
Despite his 1800+ words of grandiose moral superiority, Hastings still didn’t ‘get it’, a point illustrated superbly by EU Referendum. Now, following on the heels of that clinical assessment of Hastings’ waffle, Christopher Booker uses column in the Sunday Telegraph to point out the vacuous nature of Hastings and the Tory Europlastics and remind readers of the reality of the EU that is either ignored or disregarded by our craven politicians and useless media:
Until the points Booker makes are understood and accepted there is little point listening to anything the politicians and hacks have to say about the EU issue.
Talking to the political class’ non-issues will help expose their ignorance and duplicity but it will not move us forward very far. Perhaps we are finally approaching the time when we should switch our focus from attacking the failing EU to presenting a positive vision for Britain’s future as the independent nation it would be if it threw off governance by Brussels. Events are changing the terms of the debate.
Autonomous Mind 
Patrick O’Flynn sheds some more light about the new Conservative “euro-sceptic” grouping……..
“PURPOSE OF THE NEW CONSERVATIVE EUROPE GROUP REMAINS A MYSTERY ”
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/271764/Purpose-of-the-new-Conservative-Europe-group-remains-a-mystery/
I have to say I think all the talk of the EU being on the verge of collapse may be premature. I hate the EU but I don’t under-estimate it. In the current crises the EU’s ability to survive is directly proportional to the amount of pain the Eurocrats are prepared to inflict on the rest of us, and I suspect that is virtually unlimited.
That having been said, you are correct that the UK will probably be the last to leave. One of the forum members over at EUReferendum nailed it “The UK will be like Belarus, still sticking to the Soviet system long after the union has broken up and moved on”. What do you want to bet that bureaucrats in Whitehall are still following EU directives a decade after the EU is just a memory?
As for “presenting a positive vision for Britain’s future as the independent nation it would be” the time for that has long been due. No-one is going to contemplate a jump into the dark unless they have an idea of what’s ahead. In that we should be as broad and vague as possible. The EU has been going for sixty years and it still manages to be vague to most people – that’s part of it’s strength. A picture of that possible future should exclude policy prescriptions wherever possible as these will end up alienating people who would support the UK making it’s own decisions, but fear that it would become socialist, neo-liberal, fascist (or whatever your bogey man is) without the EU.
The Daily Mail editorial commenters, like the pointless Max Hastings, don’t get it either as they bang on about only “reforming” the EU….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2038362/Eurozone-crisis-Greek-debt-Seize-moment-reform-EU-deal.html
“Seize the moment to reform our EU deal”
“So this is David Cameron’s big chance. He must tell Europe that, if it wants his name upon the new treaty, Britain must be given the mass repatriation of powers needed to ensure economic recovery.”
and this nonsense from March 2011 :
“Europe and the case for a referendum”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1365967/Europe-case-referendum.html
“The Mail doesn’t support a wholesale withdrawal from the EU. There are many important trade partnerships to preserve.”
Complete rubbish !!!
Change the EU rules that govern the Lisbon Treaty! We all know this is a Conservative gimmick to win around their loyal voters at the next election.
The only way they can do this is change the Lisbon Treaty. Therefore they must receive approval from the rest of Europe to make any changes to that Treaty, and even then a future British Government can then cancel these changes.
I go back to the point I have made on many occasions:
I say we should not forget to talk about the future by taking all political party claims they do not want to lose British Sovereignty to Europe.
Therefore for to all those who claim we must retain our sovereignty, or make claims to modify the Lisbon Treaty, I ask the following question.
If our final objective is to retain our Sovereignty, why do we claim it is an advantage to maintain membership of the EU, which its final objective is to take away Sovereignty?
That question goes out to all politicians. Honest people will see our membership is totally incompatible with our objectives.
With the greatest respect, if AM and EUReferendum had bothered to look elsewhere, they would know that UKIP has been talking about the fatuous position of the “in Europe but not run by Europe” crowd for more than 15 years now…
But no, Nigel Farage got up their pretty little noses, and that was that.
@Peter Brown…
Not if UKIP have anything to do with it, after EU withdrawal, their most important and urgent legislation is the introduction of direct democracy both at national and local levels. Which means that if we do not like a particular quango, or edict from the non-productive public services, we can vote on it and stop it. If we want to bring our troops back from the endless foreign wars, or increase the defence budget, we can do that as well, although a UKIP government would attend to that anyway.
I struggle to understand why *you* take offence and get personal because I don’t support UKIP and because I don’t rate Nigel Farage’s political approach or ability.
But at least you make a good point Right Writes. 15 years of talking about an issue where they are pushing against an open door when it comes to public opinion, and UKIP think 7% in the opinion polls and a handful of virtually anonymous MEPs is an achievement. That tells its own story.
And why do people say ‘with the greatest respect’ when they mean the opposite?
The agenda from the very start (over the last century) has been a political union (united states of europe). This agenda has even been admitted by various retired politicians who were involved in pushing so called ‘free trade’ decades ago (as it was sold to us at the time, although it was always just a stepping stone to full political/ fiscal union).
The euro crisis is being used as an example of ‘Problem – Reaction – Solution’. Already a united europe has been offered as the solution to the crisis (caused by european fiscal integration)
Here’s how P-R-S works. They create or allow a problem….. managed the public’s reaction to it (through PR and a pathetic, obedient media) creating as much fear and anxiety as possible causing people to give up their common sense and turn to political ‘leaders’ to save them ….. they then offer us the ‘solution’ to the problem (the ‘solution’ being the agenda you wanted to put in place from the beginning, but which would never have been accepted without the perceived problem)
And so as the euro continues to crash people will be in fear. This fear will be played upon and we will be told it will be far worse if we don’t give up our fiscal sovereignty and accept a USoE, than if we allow it to break up and go our separate ways. Sure you wouldn’t normally want to be ruled by unelected european dictators, but under the extraordinary circumstances it’s the only option (we’re all in it together etc etc…..).
It is so predictable. All the long winded political/ financial analysis is just a smokescreen to blind us from the fact that it is an obvious power grab using tried and tested psychological methods (basically a sleazy sales pitch).
Here’s a brilliant discussion on this (regardless of whatever else you think of this man). As he so correctly points out – the agenda is the centralization of power and decision making and when it’s the agenda they just don’t take no for an answer! (as we have already seen).
This is also fascinating…
It is ridiculous to suggest that the EU cancer can be reformed or improved as some europlastics claim, that we could somehow distance ourselves or be allowed more ‘freedom’. We are either chained like a dog on a leash or we are free. You cannot loosen the chains of slavery, either we are chained slaves or we are free, there is no middle ground. The concept that if we are a minority within a giant superstate we would somehow have more say, more power, more influence over the majority has been the biggest lie amongst many.
We are either in our out, no middle ground, we are either ruled from Brussels or from Westminster, we are either independent or a subject vassal region beholden to the whims and diktats of foreigners who are not elected by us and do not represent the UKs national interests. Either we rule ourselves via a democratic process or we live in a dictatorship, there is no in between and to suggest there is is blatant dishonesty.
There is a future as a regional powerless subject statelet or a future as an independent sovereign state, a free trading nation state with the power to shape our own destiny. In or out no middle ground, it is up to the British people to decide by free and fair democratic means, the tragedy that has befallen us is that the political class have decided on our behalf to sell our nation into foreign ownership, they are determined to do this regardless of how we feel.
We have been subjected to decades of lies and deceptions about Europe and our relationship to it. Lies and treachery and deceit from a deranged political class in association with a compliant MSM has been a feature of this move from direct sovereign democracy to a foreign occupation. And that is what the EU truly is, it is a foreign occupation. The political class stared lying in order to get their own way, they then had to sustain those lies which they did for years, they did this because they believed that only they had the keys to the future, only they were qualified to direct our future and they truly believed that the future was a united states of Europe.
Why is the EU so corrupt? The political class built it, simple isnt it? The political class work on principles that are completely alien to normal people, they were allowed to build a state for themselves based on the dreams and fantasies of an insular supremacist elite, it was built on the singular premise that the individual nation state was dead, had no future, was the cause of war and conflict. This concept meant that the individual state had to be dismantled and a giant superstate constructed in its place and this state as designed from scratch and it has been a complete disaster! Rather like the 1960s housing estates built with grey concrete by architects with no conception of reality, the political class have designed and built their Elysium on Earth and it is an ugly disaster not least because real people have to live in this construct, a factor not included in the design process. Arrogance and hubris have brought us many disasters, the EU is perhaps the greatest of them thus far.
Hi Autonomous Mind….
I don’t take any offence, and I don’t think I ever get personal… I don’t know you sir.
I do have a sense of humour though, and I added the “with the greatest respect” after I had written my little “masterpiece” :-).
As to whether I am highlighting the failures of UKIP or not is a moot point….
Without any help from the MSM, bloggers with a withdrawalist agenda, abject fear and loathing from the pro-EU parties and only the occasional negative story about them anywhere, they have achieved a great deal…
The UK still has sterling, not because of any of the main pro-EU parties, but because of UKIP, if you remember there was only a sense of inevitability from the main parties and “public opinion”, until their campaign, which culminated in three seats at the EP, and led to all sorts of infiltrations by worried tories and ambitious Nazi’s.
They have become a full fledged political party, that even though it has no seats in the HOC yet (blame FPTP and the above), are the fourth most well supported party in the UK, and not far behind (sometimes ahead) of the LibDims.
No sir, my point is that bloggers such as yourself and to a greater extent, Dr. North’s EUReferendum (seemingly over a genuine personality clash), do not follow the logic…
Without a party whose primary purpose is opposition to the EU and consequently opposition to the other parties that now have nowhere to run. It is only through depriving those parties of votes… (UKIP is responsible for the troubled CONDEM “cobbleition”, even if it does not have any seats)… that the door of which you speak even exists, let alone stands ajar, and that was managed with the rather lacklustre leadership of Malcolm Pearson (during which I almost walked away myself).
So my argument is that antagonism to the focal point of EU resistance is unhelpful, and even a little bit childish. Better to get in and help, and if one does not like Farage, oust him, though personally I think he is (though rather irrascible and sometimes divisive) a huge asset, he is known worlwide and feared in Europe by the supporters of the project. He has been (as acknowledged) very influential in the rise of UKIP type parties throughout the EU, where none existed before.
I am not alone in making this point, one of the speakers at the recent UKIP conference was a bloke called Jon Gaunt (former BBC shock jock and Sun correspondent), who is leading another one of those associations that is calling for a referendum, acknowledged the importance of a political party as a rallying point, even if he was not prepared to join it, which he isn’t.
Then if you add the other stuff that UKIP stands for, like opposition to the global warming agenda, support for a return to an education system which supports the brightest child from all quarters, not just the middle classes, the support of full direct democracy at all levels nationally, locally and at party level, criticism of cuts in the armed forces and the endless wars… the list goes on…
Anyway, I could go on…
My repeated point is that there are a couple of widely read blogs that seem to defy logic and wilfully set out to ignore our best asset however (in your view) irrelevant, that would benefit from a little less negativity. A really good example of this is Dr. North’s new little hobby horse… Referism, which I think is a great idea, but is in reality just a watered down version of the UKIP direct democracy policy (who knows, it is a very long standing policy, and he might have been its instigator within UKIP, before he fell out with Farage), but one thing is for sure, it is a waste of virtual ink and paper.
It is with this in mind, that as long as I am allowed to, I will continue to point these things out, and I hope that you will not find this approach offensive.
@Cassandra King…
Excellent… It cannot be re-iterated enough that it is the bureaucracies that are supposed to work for the politicians (your “the dreams and fantasies of an insular supremacist elite”), that have built the EU in their own image. A dictatorship by committee, which has its public face presented by the idiot sales-boys that purport to be politicians. The politicians follow, they follow simply because it is (in their tiny minds) good for THEM, not the people that they claim to lead.
Which is yet another reason why I (in my own small way) push the UKIP, it is not comprised of politicians, rather it is made by concerned individuals (maybe why there is so much infighting). It might not be ideal, but it is the best chance we have for a rallying point against this anti-democratic agenda.
It is no accident that most professional politicians that join UKIP end up, either disgraced or rejoining their old professional parties.