In September 2010 this blog explained to readers how plans for a Royal Navy aircraft carrier share with French Navy is nothing more than an element of a much bigger Tory idea dating back 14 years. We posed a question:
But what will be Cameron’s excuse when the deeply unpopular plan for the Royal Navy and French Navy to share aircraft carriers and integrate operations is confirmed? After all, as EU Referendum reminds us, this is nothing more than the realisation of a long standing European military cooperation agreement signed by the Conservatives under John Major in 1996.
The Barclay Brother Beano, for reasons passing understanding, is still the Tories’ rag of choice. And it is there that the latest instalment in the drip feed of confirmation has been positioned…
(Note the date of the piece – 6 June – a typo error, or carefully timed release to fit with an announcement that has gone pear shaped?)
It has long been the EU’s plan for the UK and France to share military hardware in this way. The article is a measure of the contempt in which the political class treats us, and an underlining of the ignorance/complicity of a fawning media that props up this worthless parasites.
What we are seeing is the end game, the execution of a long standing plan to bring about interdependence between the UK and French armed forces, which means Britain’s capability to undertake unilateral military operations will no longer exist. We can only act militarily with the permission and active cooperation of others. The next stage will be the gradual assimilation of other elements of armed forces from other EU member states, operating under the blue banner and gold stars of the EU, giving Brussels its dream of a military capability under a unified command structure taking orders from the unelected and unaccountable mandarins who rule over us.
All this has been planned and delivered, hidden in plain sight of the electorate and the media, yet even now many in the media are still unable or unwilling to connect the dots and explain to our population what our political class has done. They are sickening quislings to a man and a woman.
Autonomous Mind 
This is a very dangerous game our political elite are playing.
Just suppose things get a bit lairy in Europe again and one country decides it wants to do like the Germans did and take over.
With such a hamstrung armed forces structure, who would be able to stop them?
Without the ability to act unilaterally, how would be be able to reprise our 20th century role as the bastions against armed aggression?
Its less likely that Germany would kick off again, but just think what would happen if Russia decided it would like to conquer Europe? Several countries are already dependent on Russian gas supplies and could so easily be blackmailed into acquiescence. The rest wouldn’t be able to mount much of a military defence.
The fact that a bunch of lapsed Marxist ideologues have dreamed up and are pushing this agenda tells you all you need. They are the enemy within.
That this treason has taken place under three PMs (Major, Blair and now Cameron) tells us all we need to know. The political class has reached a decision and it will be implemented regardless of how we vote.
Clearly, voting is now a complete waste of time in this country.
D-Day déjà-vu peut-être?
@Delphius
You never can tell.
But I doubt that anyone would necessarily want to physically take over.
The political “elite” just get on the EU gravy train and suck out the goodness of the nation states from within.
@Delphius and @Martin Brumby…
I reckon that if one of the “member states” were to attempt to assert itself in the way that Delphius suggests, it would most likely be Germany again… (third time lucky… ha ha!)…
And the people to stop it would be “the people”… real people…
Not a navy, or some section of the nomenklatura… no, their response would be to muscle in, in support of the aggressor.
It has always been my contention that empires crumble from the bottom up, not from the top down.
wrong_raps;
The Third Reich did not “crumble”, from within or otherwise. It was smashed by opponents. Get real.
Since we are being personal, brain-dead…
Did I suggest that the “Third Reich” had crumbled, I would contend that it was never smashed from inside or outside… I actually wrote “third time lucky”…
The regime was not crushed, indeed if anything, I reckon the “Hitler” period was a digression from the real German agenda, which goes back to the days of Bismarck and his concept of a unified Europe, and let us not forget Jean Monnet and his post WW1 plan for a supranational Europe.
Now if you want to have a civil discourse…
Britain and France are already working together in Libya to advance the Mediterranean Union.
Gerard Batten points out that the Mediterranean Union is being set up to be absorbed as part of the EU.
The whole thing is insane!
“European Union and Mediterranean Union, The Future”
@EFTA NOT EU…
Good stuff… It’s all going one way as far as the elites are concerned isn’t it!
The Libyan chap was broadly speaking, correct about the real agenda of the EU… Though I think that he was wrong about the original concept being a trading bloc…
The opening statement of the Treaty of Rome )after all the bolleaux about the various kings and presidents), explicitly refers to “ever and closer union”…
Fortunately the peoples of the world will NEVER be homogenised, I see no benefit in the human race becoming “amœba” like.
Europe is awash with political treachery and lies yet the last bastion of truth isn’t the MSM, it’s political blogs like this one. The MSM is incapable of holding the government accountable, preferring to abet the crimes against our sovereign freedoms. It’s why I returned to blogging after a 6 year break. Whenever I try and view the road our politicians and news media are leading us down I see it strewn with bodies. I’m hoping the bodies are theirs rather than ours. I can’t see a political solution, only a physical one. I hope I’m wrong.
Lynne: I think it’s the lack of any apparent political solution that is so frightening. I’m not one of those armchair revolutionaries who enjoys fantasising about the barricades and lamp posts (well, maybe the lamp posts, now and again) and the prospect of violent change appals me. Inevitably it would fail to achieve its ends, anyway, because all revolutions do.
Increasingly, though, the deaf ears of the elite and the growing sense of anger and betrayal mean that this is precisely where we’re heading.
It all feels very seventeenth century to me.
When I saw this I was reminded of an opinion piece in the press some years ago about France lack of engagement with NATO. The long and the short of it was that France wanted to be in charge and couldn’t achieve that with NATO because they couldn’t hold the top positions as dominated by the US. I am therefore somewhat sceptical about the “joint” role. I am starting to see a carve up in which France has the lead role in military matters especially given Germany’s constitutional limits on military action
Will France cooperate with the UK in defense of the Falkland’s when Argentina again makes an attempt at conquest? With the discovery of oil it seems a pretty rich prize.
France is unlikely to cooperate with us on anything that doesn’t suit its interests better than ours.
The British elite are reluctant to admit this, so great is their cultural cringe to all things Gallic: “So sophisticated, darling!”
We all start to see the skeleton through the thinning flesh; The intent to destroy Britain and Europe and wipe out the European race through immigration.
Is it not about time we squeezed out the real long-term ‘One European State’ ambition of all our three main parties?
We should be using this hidden long-term objective as the only debating point today, and not at some future date at their convenience. Thus extracting their real intentions for current-day discussion.
The media seem to accept, without challenge, the weak statements from Party leaders, such as Cameron stating: “We have no intention of joining the Euro during the term of this Government”. By this interpretation it is implied we do have this intention eventually. The current article is another prime example of the Conservative party plans to have one European army, controlled by main land Europe
By accepting the Lisbon Treaty all three main parties are indirectly agreeing with an eventual one state Europe, and at the same time claiming they do not agree with that principle. The recent so called referendum lock legislation is our government confirming their approval of the Treaty’s main objective, but seemed only questioned on those parts of the treaty they hope to change, knowing full well they will not be able to succeed. It keeps the public quiet for the time being.
Our media seem hell bent on talking about day-to-day topics as a creep towards EU integration, fervently denied by the politicians. Leaving the matter of political party long-term objectives on Europe somewhere in the background.
Please remember any party stating they do not agree with Britain joining the EU one state project, can offer no defence for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty since its inception and content are exactly designed towards that very objective.
Since we have inherited these otherwise useless carriers from Labour and cannot cancel them then we might as well put them to some use.
The defence chiefs and Labour committed us to a plane that has yet to seriously fly – that is more of a worry in my book.
The version that can fly is so expensive we can hardly afford any of them.
We are in NATO and so are France now. Its nothing to do with the EU.
Pathetic hysteria.
(for the record it would not bother me if the EU did not exist)
In reply to Trevors Den.
You say pathetic hysteria.
I say, you obviously are not aware of the fact that Labour ordered two aircraft carriers specifically to share one with the French. You really don’t get it, all the three major parties are working together towards a European defence force.
Let me reassure our British colleagues that we, in France, have absolutely no intention on being dependent on the UK for making our strategic decisions, so we have no intention on doing it to the UK.
The issue is that, when compared with any other country in Europe, the UK and France are the only countries with the willingness and the capacity to project power at the service of our strategic goals. Sadly, accountants in both the UK and France are damaging operational readiness, the industrial basis and long term R&D. Cooperation between our two countries is about reducing costs, in order to maintain our comprehensive military capabilities. Otherwise, we will be losing one capability after another (reconnaissance assets, as a recent example) as the accountants continue to demand yet another budget cut.
Of course, there will continue to be misunderstandings, based on history, culture, domestic politics, egoes, our specific brand of difficulties in managing our ministries of defence …, but in terms of defence capabilities, there’s no other country like the UK or France in Europe. We are far closer to the US than to other European countries.
Again, we are not interested in telling the UK what to do. We just want to protect a full range of military capabilities that our accountants would like to scrap.
The problems our defence industries face is nothing to do with accountants – its to do with inept economic policies pursued by socialists (ie inept banking regulation etc).
The real problem is the enormous costs associated with defence contracts and the fanciful demands set by the military themselves.
Neither the UK nor France need enormous aircraft carriers. Where NATO is concerned the whole point is co-operation. The likely scenario that requires either the UK or France to field a 65000 tonne aircraft carrier IN ITS OWN SOLO DOMESTIC INTEREST is thunderously remote.
We already have an airfield and planes in the Falklands
These aircraft carriers are pretty much by a factor of 2 bigger than any other ship built for the RN. They are massively bigger than we need and the rest of the RN is being sacrificed to provide them.
Mr Payne – you talk rubbish. At one time there was talk of 3 ships being built – one for France. Seems unlikely now. Thats nothing like saying that our two were being built to share.
The problem is labour did not order these ships when they should; the costs have skyrocketed as has the cost of the planes which were meant to fly off them. The likely plane may now not be built and costs have again gone up to provide a catapult.
We now face the situation that the ships will be built but the planes will not available until later – hence the idea that re NATO (and the fact that France’s carrier is useless) we fly off French planes for 5 years to fulfil NATO obligations.
We have a sharing treaty obligation – its NATO and through it we defend ourselves.
right write – Bismark never had a plan for a unified Europe. His policy was to have rapprochement with all his neighbours.
He unified Germany and when he was happy to stop there – the kaiser sacked him.
being dumb arsed never helped anybody.