Deal or No Deal

How bad can it get? 

Pretty bad, I fear.

In a week’s time the Commons will have voted on May’s Brexit ‘deal’ and either way it isn’t going to be good news for the good life and a peaceful existence for our children and theirs in England and associated territories.

On a bright note, the deal might be voted down in which case…What?

Will a revitalized Commons majority for Leave (and at best it will be a reluctant ‘we promised them Brexit so we’d better give them Brexit rather than this self-immolation shitstorm’) then force through the plan that the official Leavers have been waving and pointing at since they set out their 10-point Manifesto For Brexit? 

You remember: the detailed and well-argued plan that has haunted Theresa May every step of the way when she was concocting her nation-betraying ‘deal’ so Leavers of all stripes were able to show that hers was a disaster compared to the simple effectiveness of the Manifesto Leave Plan?

Wasn’t it 10 points? Or was it a series of lettered bullet points: B is for brief; R is for regulated; E is for effective?...

Oh, wait. There is no such plan, is there?

To be fair, the Referendum Party and Ukip and the Tory Leavers and the Labour Leavers and the DUP only had about 30 years to come up with some famous Little Blue Passport they could mass produce, post online and refer to in a disciplined fashion to assure and reassure the British people in the face of the inevitable Establishment avalanche of opposition and sabotage. That might have helped but… The Commons has been too busy banning zombie knives and Bombing Libya’s northern border so it became contiguous with southern Italy, Spain and Greece with hilarious demographic results to actually have a plan that could slip into a post-May parliamentary schedule. So, er, what parliamentary squabbles and last-minute deal making could generate something that’s better than the No Deal walk away, suck it and see anarchy that is sure to be punished as harshly as possible by a vengeful European Imperium and their freak show satraps in Ireland?

I cannot express how happy I am that my side’s half of the new ruling class has pinned its hopes for national independence on that lovely Disney melody  ‘When You Wish Upon A Star.’

I’m emotionally bang alongside Simon Heffer’s sentiment that he’s rather feed his children boiled grass than stay in the EU but in all this time I’d like to think my side had more to offer me and my daughter and any Remainder’s daughters something a little more positive than a lawn mower and some sporks. Britain used to have a space programme and everything. Only saying. So, um…

On a brighter note, Nigel Farage has resigned from Ukip in protest against Tommy Robinson’s participation in an anti-May deal protest on Sunday the 9^th December because, you know; anti-Islam stuff and stuff. And there probably aren’t enough different pro-Brexit groups to go around so another schism should just about fix it. He’s right on message and his timing’s impeccable. Sorted.

On the Dark Side, it gets worse. Always worse.

The rest of the ruling class and their lackeys-commuitaire have no idea that they’re playing with fire.

Case in point. A good pal of mine - we go at it Leave versus Remain on Facebook, but a grand chap otherwise - a couple of fast glasses of red in on Saturday tries to reassure me that he actually hates the EU as currently constituted but fears the Leavers’ plan for implementation (and reasonably so; see above) and wishes to remain and ‘reform the EU from within.’

Quite how an otherwise sentient being can actually believe such a thing possible is beyond me. His ignorance of the motivations for which the EU and its predecessors was created and the reasons for which its structures were established as they are astonishes me. The point is that nations don’t reform the EU: the EU reforms nations such as France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Ireland : most recently by importing new nations to revitalize the old ones, but more generally by re-doing referendums till the locals get it right. Look at all that voting and all that cancelled voting. Democratic as hell, yeah?

But it’s not just the details that scare me that we’re heading back towards Naseby and Marston Moor, but rather the whole mind-set of the ruling class.

Just think of the arrogance, the conscienceless pride of the Remainers and Project Fear as they seek at all times to overturn the successful Leave vote. They are so blind in their sense of entitlement to political power and success, and so lacking in empathy for the Leave majority that most of them seem incapable of ever identifying with our feelings and desires. Coming from the wing of politics that puts feelings above logic and facts in devising policy, this is ironic beyond belief.

Let me boil it down to the nitroglycerine.

If you’re going to say Leavers are stupid, emotional, easily swayed by smooth-talking con-men and that we should not be entitled to decide who shall govern us and under which national and international institutions, then the deal is off.

The common people (and aristocrats and gentry for that matter) put up with a lot for peace. There was a deal.

Our country’s history tends to be one of compromise with movement in the direction of reform following gradual persuasion of the powers that be - with some rioting if change is believed to be too slow - plus a couple of nasty civil wars.

But on most occasions when big changes to the political make-up of the country were allowed, the defeated put up with defeat not just because they lack the power, numbers or will to oppose the new dispensation but because they believed they’d have a chance to adapt or to ameliorate the worst or to delay or just to persuade the ever-wiser franchise to change back. And they could always hope to persuade sufficiently large numbers to give them a bigger slice of the pie later. So it was when various laws tying the common folk to the lord’s lands lapsed or were abolished, or the cities were granted MPs, or when Parliament (mostly) accepted the King was back, having previously insisted he couldn’t lead them to war and higher taxation without consulting them in good faith. After the Great Reform Act or the Suffrage acts and when the defeated conservative classes accepted the reform of the state in the 1945 General Election they did not fight or sabotage the everyday peace of the country in revenge. There was a deal implicit or explicit. Some windows have been smashed and one breakaway occurred over the price of tea, but mostly we stick together peacefully thanks to compromise and the promise of hope. The defeated in largish numbers (mostly) choose peace over fighting and the possibility of future concessions or counter-reforms and the victors (again mostly) accepted that the other side’s time may come (so maybe they should exercise a little moderation and humility in victory right now) so when turnabout does arrive they should keep their sword sheathed for peace and to await their go in turn.There was a deal.

But the May deal and the tin-eared Remainders aren’t saying they’ll put up with Brexit and await their turn. Together, they are saying we can’t: just can’t have what we voted for and what’s more we’ll never be allowed to have what we voted for and our constitution will basically be altered via the backstop to prevent any hope of meaningful national independence. Ever. And lots of other, interesting folk will still be allowed to become British and live interestingly among us.

We are women in 1917 and disenfranchised for the same reasons they were. We are emotional, ignorant and prone to persuasion by charming rogues. And all this is told to us by the folk who go from nought to Nazi in three seconds if we mention Rotherham as a place other than as a former mining town famous for its 2007 floods.

Most of the Leave / Project Fear is from the official Left of course and the phony Right. And those folk are used to techniques like point and shriek and wholly sure of their entitlement to whatever they want, in whatever quantities they want and as soon as they want and damn the budget and the economy or the peace of the citizens they govern. That’s how you get large hikes in fuel carbon tax in France out of the blue. They simply can’t imagine that others think differently from them and care very, very strongly about it. We just don’t matter: we can’t matter and so our votes and all that led to them are dispensable.

But they just spent 2 ½ years calling the majority Nazis and idiots and Parliament is likely to tell us we can’t vote on national independence again ever. Their squealing, smarmy lackeys-communautaires can have their fun about the old folks and a few football hooligans being the only objectors and it all calming down and then they can get on with it. The democratic deal’s off for us.

But if they do win and they do tell the 17,410,742 to shove it, you smelly peasants, you can never have your dream? What will that do to the soul of the nation? 
What if we decide the deal’s off for them?
What are peasants in this country notorious for?

Picture from here.

Brexiteers don’t want you to learn this simple trick

A guest post from #lighterfluidsnowflake

My dear fellow Remaindered,

It’s been a week now.

Are you ready to talk yet?

When Stalin died, Russians wept in the streets for their loss.

The lynchpin of their security; the very cornerstone of their shared prosperity and comfort had been removed; their very world had been lost. Most simple folk brought up in the socialist paradise feared that they would no longer be able to find food now that the great man had gone. Throughout his long and productive life of service to others, Comrade Stalin had done much to promote ever-increasing annual bumper crops, to increase longevity and to raise the material standards of living and personal freedoms of his countrymen. His lesser helpers had supported his genius in more modest ways: first by denouncing, then shunning, next disemploying and finally resettling out East the doubters, saboteurs and reactionaries whose lies about the results, methods and even the very logic of Scientific Socialism itself had done so much to harm the People’s Cause. And where are they now, those know-nothing backsliders and revanchists? Who knows? Not leading a bright new future for Russia and the world, I know that for sure.

How much worse do we suffer, now that the Little Englanders claim that Britain must leave the European Union because of a simple conjuring trick of arithmetic?

We have lost our home, and no-one in history can ever imagine our pain: they can literally have no idea how hard this feels for us.

The plucky David (he’s in a story from a book called the Bible; Google it) of Remain with nothing more going for him than all the main political parties, the BBC, Sky and ITV; all of academia; the trades unions and the leadership and creative folk of the subsidized arts; the education system; the National Church and all the nonconformists, the most thoughtful and talented of celebrities, Britain’s tiny and beleaguered Muslim population, J.K. bloody Rowling ffs!, all EU funded institutions, EU politicians and officials of the Commission and Parliament, the President of the United States and philanthropist George Soros, along with that helpful taxpayer funded leaflet from the UK Executive (the so-called ‘UK Government’);  the Times, the Guardian, the Independent and the Mirror somehow managed to defeat the Goliath of Leave by the sheer persuasive force of love. And now Goliath: that giant pillar of the entrenched establishment with four national newspapers; the immensely rich and influential UKIP with its huge network of paid agents and saboteurs controlling every institution in the land and 17,410,742 racists is trying to steal our moral victory from us by the petty lawyer’s trick of treating a simple head count as in some way binding.

It’s easy to see how this has come about. The evil and ignorant dross of these islands (the British working classes that have gone from the salt to the scum of the earth during two generations of New Left ascendancy) have been herded into the polling booths by fear and bigotry. Do you see what happens when people don’t eat enough sun-dried tomatoes and capers and instead gorge on chicken nuggets, pizza and cake? They should definitely stop eating cake.

What kind of person actually fears the importation of a million people per year from the most messed-up region of the world?

What can you call the folk who actually fear an ideology that preaches world conquest, the slaughter of the Jews and the utter subjection of women but ‘Nazi’? And they just don’t seem to pay care any more when you call them that.

How in Gaia’s name did that happen?

Progressive ideas have only achieved the smallest toehold in the reactionary world of education for little more than 50 years, so it is little wonder that so many products of 11 (and now 13) years of compulsory state education ignored all the wisdom and moral goodness of their betters and voted instead with fear. Perhaps after another 50 years working in university education departments and dominating the teacher training colleges, we shall produce a majority of citizens who can’t even.

But do not fear for too long, my brothers, sisters, siblings and other-kin because you cannot stop Progress.

It looks possible that the wiser heads in the Tory party will prevail and Britain will achieve a composite relationship with the EU through a variety of amended arrangements with the EEA, the EFTA and their connected codicils, sub-codicils and layered competences. After all, what is the Acquis Communautaire if not crystal clear? Won’t that be nice?

But best of all for the Progressive community in general and the European Movement in particular is just how out of touch the Brexiteers are. They remain so utterly ignorant of the social and economic changes that have swept through these beloved European islands of ours that they don’t know what is about to hit them.

Soon, so very soon, the long-suffering masses will arise.

They will rise from all the coal mines and climb into the sunlight. They will down tools in the huge, grim factories  in which they toil across the length and breadth of Britain, step away from the clattering loom and alight from the train's footplate and join with their Muslim neighbours (may their tribe increase) and alongside the trans-fatty-fluid and other allies will tear down the soot-blackened palaces of the mighty and insist that their children be sent to schools where they will receive educations every bit as good as those provided at Eton and Harrow.

Who knows, comrades; next year in Caracas perhaps?

Because you can’t. Stop. Progress.

You just can’t.

Nemesis Draco

Our loyal subjects.

This week we have slain the dragon that has of late threatened the realm with destruction. We have become the very first of all the kings of Albion to do so when we slew the recently-feared and invisible dragon in mortal combat and have now returned to you to rule you all amid the peace and security that our personal valour has won.

Though we can never know the name of that awful creature; nor display its hide and broken bones to our relieved and grateful subjects; we stand before you in the warmth of your praise and love. Let the doubters be silent, let the soldiers of our Guard sheathe their rattling sabres once more in faith that their liege lord has done his duty and that all is now well.

We can only pray now that our reign can henceforth be peaceful and righteous; undisturbed at last by the bickering and suspicions that have racked it for so long. We hope that the money-lenders will still their cowardly murmurings of alarm at imaginary monsters - rather than this very real dragon and that they will return to their honest tasks of lending modest sums to our treasury and helping our very humblest subjects and supporters place a tiled roof above their heads, (though never an old-fashioned thatched one.)  We hope also that our poorer subjects will return to their honest toil undisturbed by the deeds of their betters here at court, obey our wise judges, and continue to give generously from their harvests to support our Royal almshouses and for modest poor relief and to house and clothe the strangers now settling in our lands to the benefit of all.

We hope also that Papal legates may once more move freely amongst our subjects about their godly tasks undisturbed by dissent and disrespect, and that our own alliances with foreign princes and our marriage to a foreign Queen will be thought of warmly as the great good that they are, and that our over-mighty subjects shall learn to know their place and cease their prideful calls of fear and alarm that there be greater (and visible) dragons off our shores, for they are surely in the wrong.

Cnut Rex :

Lord of the Isles, dragon slayer and Prince of Anagrams.

  

 Picture from here.

To Infinity and Beyond

Amongst supporters of Britain’s continued membership of, and subjection to, the European Union a common (you should excuse the expression) argument (trans. bald, unsupported statement contrary to known fact and bereft of logic) is that the EU is somehow governed along rational and even scientific lines compared with the national governments.

Rather than being dependent on all those silly old ad hoc forms of governance left over from millennia of human settlement in Europe’s cluster of peninsulas and attendant archipelago, if only we put the right technocrats in charge then the entire muddle would be sorted out and Europe would become a peaceful and prosperous superpower.

Just ditch all those messy leftovers from a (diverse!) disorderly past: from the settlemnts of Indo-European speakers to Christendom; from Classical Civilization and the heritage of the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment, and working through local and national institutions, and Law, Reason, and efficiency will reign from County Kerry to, um, somewhere on the Danube. Or the Upper Euphrates. Or hopefully one fine day the Dneiper . Or the Don. The Yangtze. Who knows?

Get shut of all that nonsense of inheriting and anointing and nominating and canvassing and polling which really represent little more than centuries of superstition and inherited prejudice, and the good life will be assured from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. As the European Project builds up speed, and you can junk all the Celtic mythology and Germanic romanticism along with the meaningless borders and decidedly unmodern local customs and shires and States cantons and Provinces and Departements and oo la-la all that inefficiency and competition and parochialism will disappear to wherever the dryads and trolls and Magna Carta went to.

So you’d expect that choosing the President would be an ultra-modern, streamlined, silver-chrome rocketship of a process; a gleaming Dan Dare symbol of European hyper-modernity in contrast to all those complex national elections with several rounds of voting and the Royal Assent and hereditary monarchies and white smoke from burning ballot papers and ballot papers at all and indeed fussing about by asking anyone at all outside the EU institutions, such as, say, the citizens formerly known as the electorate, formerly known as free people...

Utter tosh: a Europhile writes.

Vanessa Mock: Shadowy race, but with the right result

It is nothing new for the EU to be blasted for being an opaque and shadowy bureaucratic behemoth, but the search for an EU President…

Actually, President of the EU is a fictitious and potential post, but somehow I can’t help feeling that our author really wants it to come true. What’s really on offer is the post of President of the European Council, which in turn is not to be confused with the quite different President of the EU Parliament. ‘Opaque and shadowy?’ Why, it’s child’s play.

Complete with scissor-wielding rubber dummies.

Note that the President of the EU is a theoretical post ; theoretical as in ‘We have no plans at the moment to bulldoze the nursery to make all the little children go away.’

… has triggered some of the most strident criticism yet of the way Brussels operates.

Objecting to the willful dissolutions of centuries-old political institutions isn’t modern or scientific, you see: it’s ‘strident.’ Hey guys, why not remove the ‘s’ from strident and run a real European policy?

Only joking.

Many of the candidates have not publicly declared themselves in a race that has taken place behind closed doors.

Well, the Tory party leader was chosen much like that until the 1960s, and of course almost all of Eastern Europe had its governments decided that way until the promise of EU membership with generous derogations and the hope of subsidiary principles made flesh brought the Iron Curtain down. Many of the East European parties and their leaders are probably so accustomed to governing from behind closed doors that this process probably feels quite traditional – a tradition that goes all the way back to 1945, I might add.

It’s tempting to imagine a dark, cavernous room illuminated by a single flickering candle (made of genuine vertebrate tallow) in the middle of a black, circular table here, with 27 hooded figures in midnight-coloured robes; faceless but for the steely glitter on an eye and colourless but for the occasional Thule Gesellschaft signet ring, the Grand Master’s pentagram brand, a Bank of Carthage fob watch or the knock-off Rolex on the skinny wrist of the British initiate.

And then I start to pour the unleaded down the stairs towards them…

One of the few openly campaigning for the job, former Latvian president Vaira Vike-Freiberga, has accused the EU of operating "Soviet-style" in "darkness". Last week, Poland led a group of nations demanding presentations from the frontrunners to make the process more transparent and democratic.

You’d think that such people would know what life under the Soviets was like, and their diverse experience would bring a bit of variety to institutions founded in Western Europe under the watchful care of the US Army, Navy, and Air Force. But it appears that their objections have the worst possible quality to the Eurosquish fascist commentator.

Yet these calls are unhelpful in this fraught and complex diplomatic game.

Unhelpful! Oh Noes! That’s worse than racist! Who will save us from this awful tide of unhelpfulness?

The Swedish Prime Minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, whose nation holds the rotating presidency, has been negotiating for weeks with the 27 capitals.

That’s the EU’s regional governors’ headquarters, with such familiar names and Rome, London, Paris and Berlin, rather than some hitherto unknown but recently discovered futhark. The Really Very Younger Non-Specific 27 Stave Common European Rune Row, perhaps.

The President and High Representative

‘High Representative!’ how grandiose can you get? He’s probably got facial tattoos descending to his knees and is known to his pals as Darth.

…have to strike a balance between small and large,

So there’s the Leprechauns and the Ice Giants appeased, and any tacky post-1970’s British comedy duo,

…east and west…,

Anybody round here’s grandmother raped by an Ottoman, or anybody round here’s grandmother raped on an Ottoman?

Yeah? Cool.

You’re both in then.

…north and south…

So, that’s a double helping of pickled herring with extra tangy lemming sauce and an equally valid side order of olives with nougat.

But wait! What kind of Alpine idiot crossbowed this carefully balanced apple cart and asked for fondue?

…member states. Ideally, one should be a woman and they should come from the EU's two biggest political families.

Auf Wiedersehen Order of Merit. Bonjour, Order of Proportionate and Balanced Representativitynessitude or whatever. So we’ve got to have a girl – good idea for when the DVD record timer need to be set and so on, and of course someone from each of The European Peoples’ Party and The Socialist Party so there’ll always be someone to make fudge even if he (or she!) can’t cut the mustard.

Notice that national groupings means nothing here, or language groups. There’s a reason for that.

It is a near-impossible task that has already dragged on.

Just up the EU’s alley, of course, and a problem purely of its own creation. A bunch of kids could pick sides for a kickabout football game easier and more sensibly than this farrago.

Suggestions of a US-style presidential campaign ignore the fact that whoever gets these un-elected posts will always be accountable to the 27 member states and will wield no power without them.

But since the whole EU project is intended to blur party and ideological lines and to dissolve national loyalties, the winner is sure to be with the programme from the start.

Infuriating and shadowy it may be, but in the end a consensus will be found. And that is what matters in a union of 27 very different countries.

Consensus is what matters. Not good government, or honesty, or recognition of the long and marvelously complicated histories of our many nations: certainly not freedom or democracy or any idea that the State is supposed to serve and protect its people, just a decision, however bad, mediocre, aimless or foolish, as long as it is made.

And as for an institution that can’t even pick its head bureaucrat (whose role might one day magically transmute into Supreme Leader of Europe) without doing it in secret and making a big girly fuss about it…

I have nothing against compromise. I’m a conservative and I value the principle. It’s how nations and families and companies work. I have few qualms about old and tested institutions that aren’t democratic being used to make important decisions – especially when they derive from and in tune with, established and familiar polities such as nation-states. But what this shows about the EU’s central philosophy about decision-making and the writer’s appreciation of it is the giveaway.

They plan to run our defence policy whilst up against nuclear-armed lunatics. Their compromise over Iranian missiles coming their way any time soon wasn’t to station European anti-missiles defences in Poland or better yet anywhere near the Mediterranean when Obama decided to pull the plug, but to make a bit nice with the Russians whose Putinist Commietzarist philosophy is Cold War With Added Oil Revenues, and to secretly hope the Israelis will do something soon, and bite their nails. I have a niece and a nephew who visit Central Europe a lot. Compromise isn’t going to keep them alive - not one that contains Greens, and Socialists and Soviet-Era Communist thugs in charge, at any rate.

They already run our workplace conditions, half of our policing across borders and they dictate the means of our waste disposal, our tax system, our agriculture and they have replaced our fisheries. They want to govern all aspects of Europeans’ lives, for which they need leaders for the whole heartless, pointless, aimless and amoral project.

And they’re choosing them by some Paleolithic-seeming magical process called ‘consensus’ where the process, and not the result, is apparently what makes the sorcery work.

They want power over all of the rest of it, and they still can’t appoint the top clerk with anything like consulting the people.

Not very modern. Not very rational at all.

Oh, and the front-runner’s a Belgian.

I feel safer already.

Stand Firm President Klaus

Apologies - I've been like an MP lately.

Instead of doing my blogging job properly, pressures of work, family and travels have led me to rant, post, and disappear for days this last week; without taking the time to reply to comments which some of my readers have been interested enough and kind enough to make.

Okay, I'm not asking for help with my moat or my duck house or a mortgage I long since paid off, but still, I'm sorry.

And in similar vein today, I'll just point you where the job is being done and done well: at Old Holborn, The Devil's Kitchen, and Voice of the Resistance: all pointing out that, irony or ironies, the Czech President is the last active and wiling defender of Britain's freedom and independence in his resistance to signing the Lisbon Treaty, and thus sending us all into a much more centrally controlled European Union - a state in all but name.

That Britain threw Czechoslovakia to the Nazi wolves to buy time (in the most charitable interpretation of our then-imperial government's motives) to rearm, and that we now have to rely on Czechoslovakia's smaller successor state to preserve the freedom of a nation that once shaped the world and policed its oceans, is a bitter and shameful irony.

We need this one man in a small country of which we still know nothing much, but to whom we might owe our continued existence as a nation, to hold out against the pressures placed on him to betray his own people.

Here's the link to a petition that can send him our weak voices of support.

In an age when our elected representatives, our supposedly most patriotic press and our national broadcaster stand four-square against our entire history as a county; betraying their duties and any pretence of honesty as the do so, it is pathetic that the voices of a nation that has liberated more peoples than any other, that abolished much of the four thousand year old slave trade and (eventually) brought the idea of representative democracy to continents that had never known anything like the blessed state of liberty, can be heard only so quietly and so sparsely.

Please vote and send President Klaus your support t for his country's continuing freedom and ours.

Delenda est?

I don't know exactly what Irish people feel about their nationhood, but I'd guess it's something like the way I feel about mine.
What I do know is that for centuries Irish people have chafed under the bit of what they saw as English and then British rule. From time to time they did something about it, and often that something was bloody. I despise the terrorist tactics that eventually achieved an Irish-only state in the island early in the last century, and of course I have no time at all for the Provisional IRA with its pub bombings and its doorstep murders and its kneecappings.

But the Irish won their homeland's independence as their American predecessors had and for decades their political problems were their own : to tackle or exacerbate as the voters and their elected representatives chose. They lived under Irish laws made by an Irish legislature which was elected by Irishmen seeking Irish goals.

Today's crop of Irish politicians doesn't seem to think that the many sacrifices that were made (and the costs still felt in some places) to achieve Irish independence are worth honouring, or that independence itself is more important than whatever it is they think they've been promised in place of that independence.
The sheer dishonesty and persistence that the European Union has shown in ignoring every popular vote against ever closer union disgusts me: 'No' votes are always illegitimate and further integration follows immediately and then more bribes are offered to native chieftains and then a 'Yes' campaign is held amid monsoons of bribery, hordes of visiting celebrity colonists from Britain and the continent, and accompanied with threats and barely plausible promises.

The Romans took a century fighting Carthage and eventually destroyed it. Despite their many defeats and backward steps, their many armies kept coming and coming at the Carthaginians until the city was burnt and the fields salted. In the last days of the city's freedom (and existence), the Carthaginians used women's hair for catapult strings.
The new atheist and collectivist Roman Empire has the same relentless urge to dominate and occupy, and perhaps tomorrow its lawyers and senators will rule over a land where the eagles never stood.

Better writers than me discuss the whole issue of the referendum and what life will be like in an integrated and recolonised Irish European province. It is just an irony that our best big hope for national independence here in Britain rests solely on Irish shoulders once again. I wonder what those voters who care about all that long and bloody history think of this - that they hold Britain's freedom in their hands.

Will they hold Ireland's freedom to be worth keeping - or will their feelings about the hated former occupier lead them to sacrifice forever that freedom in exchange for revenge?

Tory genius 3: special takeaway edition

Spare me if you will for a moment the accusations of racism that might rightfully derive from this post’s title.

There’s method in my madness and it’s not to rile my non-anti-immigration readers; nor to win undeserved praise from some of my fellow anti-immigration readers.

Both 13^th Spitfire and Calling England have pointed out this piece from Conservative Home from the Conservative MEP Nirj Deva, concerning who rules Europe.

Read this interesting and truthful article, and look at the Lisbon breakdown graph that the gentleman has provided.

Much of what Mr Deva says is true, and even sounds a bit like Euro-skeptics such as I might make. In the main body of the argument, with a squint and a quick read and a full bladder that makes you finish it fast and move on, you might think that I had penned many of the criticisms, or Trixy, or EU Referendum. (How’s that name-dropping and egotism for you! I’m on holiday, so I’m treating myself.)

I’m just going to take exception to one or two things in the early, descriptive part of his post, just for fun and context, and then I’m going to do what I guess most of my readers will have done when reading the speculative part of his post.

The European Union, first established as the EEC in Jan 1958 comprises of three separate but interdependent institutions.

What’s in a name? An alleged collection of economic groupings which developed from European Economic Communities to the European Community to the European Union. What’s next, we wonder?

Unless you think that that old thing in the Treaty of Rome about ‘ever-closer union’ actually means something, but that would be crazy, right?

Remember this history so when we get onto the Tory-bashing it’ll be fresh..

Oh, and:

In legislating for these 500 million people my primary duty is to first determine what is best for my own constituents in the South East of England, what next is best for my party the Conservative Party and third what is best for all the peoples of Europe whose interest are represented by the European Parliament.
This is no more different than a Member of the Indian Parliament from Mumbai going to Delhi every week and representing first his electorate and then the interest of the whole of India or a United States Senator from California going to Washington every week and voting to protect the interest of California and then that of the United States according to his party interest be they Democrat or Republican.

Did you see what he did there? He said that a national of one country legislating for his constituency first and then for all the members of a collective polity of many nations is the same as, say, an Indian legislating for his home constituency first and then the nation of India, or an American legislating for his home state and then for all of the United states of America.

It might do some good explaining to someone involved the difference between regional representatives from all over a single nation (albeit some very diverse nations) legislating for the whole nation, so that Indians only make India’s laws and Americans only making America’s laws, and Englishmen making Ireland’s laws (without bayonets being involved,) or Germans making France’s laws (ditto) or Austrians making Italy’s laws (but with nicer pastries.)

Now for that table.

Wow.

I’d love to know where those percentages come from. I imagine they’re true in some way though as with all things ‘European’ we’re in a number of halls of mirrors as well as smoke-filled back rooms when trying to quantify anything at all; except possibly the number of ‘member states’ involved.

Now it’s time for the boot of sarcasm to meet the buttocks of Cameronian ‘Euro-skepticism.’

So how do we fight back?

Firstly, like all British Conservatives, I am working tirelessly to demand that Prime Minister Brown deliver upon his party’s manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on the European Constitution.

So, trying to persuade Gordon Brown to fulfil a promise is your first line of attack?

What’s number two: build this big horse and then run away from Brussels, but when the Belgians come out to drag it inside, and you what…?

It is a travesty of political and common law justice to deny the British people and (peoples of other nations) a say in how they should be governed.

So restoring legislative sovereignty to the nation-states would be a minimal first step, I’d guess, unless you have a sophisticated new version of ‘pooling sovereignty’ which has always made the same sense as ‘pooling virginity,’ and for similar reasons. Let’s see if restoring legislative sovereignty is on your menu, shall we?

Secondly, the importance of the party’s new European Conservative and Reformists Group in the European Parliament – the body’s first ‘official opposition’ - should not be underestimated.

Oh, I’m sure that we don’t underestimate it, exactly.

As British Conservatives, we are an outward looking, free-market oriented and in favour of greater individual freedom and less regulation.

Anybody out there not either glumly nostalgic now or weeping tears of laughter again?

For the first time, the European Parliament has a group which shares our credo – and a genuine commitment to reform.

In the early days of the group, we should now be asking the following questions:

How do we reform the EU to bring about smaller government and more powerful citizens?

Who knows? Nobody’s ever tried it, though I did read in a libertarian science fiction book once that there’s no political situation anywhere that can’t be improved by the importation of a couple of million Saturday Night Specials.

Of course, I’m not a libertarian and would prefer some solution based around an actual collection of elected and genuine representatives of the people such as, you know; big place built by Pugin, in London – no foreign citizens allowed voting for representatives except for certain Irishmen by long agreement, big fuss about some receipts a few weeks ago.

How should Europe do less… –

Mate, just exactly who in the Commission, the powerless ‘parliament,’ or the Council of Ministers actually wants ‘less’ and is prepared to make sacrifices (such as facing up to critical editorials in Le Monde, the Guardian, or on the BBC) to achieve ‘less?’ When did anyone in the Court ever pass a verdict that enforced ‘less?’

Ever?

…and how should they do it better?

‘Better’ implies well. What does the EU do well that anyone ‘outward looking, free-market oriented and in favour of greater individual freedom and less regulation’ would sincerely want it to do, and which couldn’t be done easily enough by mutual consent and goodwill without the ’help’ of the Commission, parliament, Council, and Court? Customs union? Nothing easier for nations that really wanted to co-operate, I’d have thought.

It’s not like, say, building armed forces and then getting them to agree to enthusiastically and effectively fight a common enemy which would be a good idea if you could do it, but I wonder if you managed that you’d also need a powerful and intrusive continental bureaucracy to enforce more intimate things like weights and measures, plug design, banana curvature…

Recognizing that an average birth rate of 1.5 will leave a deficit of skills talents and a depopulated internal market,

… or who shags whom and with what result.

Though effective border controls that doesn’t allow floods of modernity-hating barbarians to head for European welfare entitlements might help, plus lower taxation that allows working couples to have a decent standard of living and to afford modest but slightly larger families. But if even we can’t manage that in Britain - and we’re an island for crying out loud! – then it’s unlikely (to say the least), that ‘Europe’ will be able to do it.

… how do we deregulate the EU?

Without latter-day Lancasters and Wellingtons, you’ve got me beat.

Any ideas yourself given the permanent institutional and legislative bias for centralization explicit in the Treaty of Rome’s ‘ever closer union; you being the elected and publicly financed professional politician and all?

How do we develop new safeguards for the rights of member states?

Tricky...

Might have something to do with the fundamental nature and internal processes of the European Communities…EEC…EC…EU…

Nope. Nothing springs to mind.

How should subsidiarity be strengthened: by a subsidiarity panel, new treaty provisions on interpretation or a ‘states' rights' clause?

How has ‘subsidiarity’ ever returned delegated powers back to ‘sovereign’ nations without larger powers being internationalized up to the EU by treaty or just plain cheating? Has it ever been done? Is it possible given, blah, blah, blah…

What legislative areas should we repatriate and how?

See above. I mean it. Seriously. Check the history.

How can – and how far should – National Parliaments otherwise be more closely involved in EU decision-making (by pre-Council meeting mandates for ministers, for example) or by sitting as the revising Upper Chamber of the European Parliament to review subsidiarity and intergovernmental pillars or through a permanent "Congress of National Parliaments" to review subsidiarity and pass treaty amendments (except those of "constitutional" nature)?

Putting national parliaments on top of continent-wide European institutions to check that continent-wide European institutions pass internationalized powers back to national parliaments, huh? It’s so simple, it’s brilliant!

Oh.

B) Does this mean we get to play the boy for once, and even so how does it prevent us still being screwed? or

A) Is this on offer?

I mean, seriously; are they just humming in Paris and Berlin and Madrid and Rome to let their 65 year-old parliaments (along with our 745 year-old parliament) climb on top the 55 year-old European institutions and ask them to Stop! Wait a minute! What do you think you’re doing? That’s no way to treat an expensive constitutional instrument.

Is there anyone singing that song who isn’t a British Tory speaking in Britain to other British Tories?

How do we open up the Council of Ministers?

I’d use surgical knives myself but hey, that’s just me.

Should its legislative work be held in public?

That worked so well in Britain these last few years, yeah? We were right on top of that old expenses thing – we hardly let it get anywhere these last 12 years…

Maybe if you did it like the US Congress does it, and also broadcast all the committee proceedings…

Maybe then, and only then, would the BBC inform us it’s all so beautiful and sign off with a humourous piece about the Yoghurt Wars, or Alfonso, the Commission cat…

How should we increase the reporting requirements to national parliaments of ministers before and after they attend the Council of Ministers?

You know, if ministers only governed their own countries according to the traditions, moralities and the shared myths, histories and legal systems of those particular countries, then they’d only have to report to their own parliaments, and you’d get to cut out the middle man, and even the ubermensch…

How do we make enterprise, employment growth and wealth creation central to the EU's instincts and philosophy?

I think we may well be back in Lancasters and Wellingtons territory here.

Look, the continentals vary a lot, from state-worshippers to liberty-lovers, but I doubt that continued membership of the EU or its looming successor is going to achieve anything of the sort. Why not let the French do their own thing and farm weekday mornings and drive to Paris in the evening for income top-ups? Let the Germans make cars to go fast on their autobahns only to slow down when they hit everyone else’s wiggly roads anyway, and let the Czechs, poor buggers, be free for once.

A career open to the talents was a French aspiration: let us all dream of such a thing by not telling us how many hours we can work, and for whom, and for how much.

Should we make even greater use of "mutual recognition and cooperation" rather than "harmonisation", in completing the single market?

How about free trade or separate intra-national agreements? Look how well suppressing landfill to meet Dutch and Danish drainage needs is working for UK refuse disposal and see how well continent-wide legislation about work and trade function.

Is there much further scope for self-regulation by sectors on the basis of EU-wide guidelines and codes of conduct?

Try non-regulation of sectors, or the law of the land, buster – they just might work.

This particular land, by the way.

Which European social legislation poses the biggest burden on the labour market and needs to be repealed?

Nobody help him, folks. He’s got to work this one out by himself.

Is further action needed to tackle the continuing problem of anti-competitive price differentials across Europe, as Conservative manifestos have proposed?

Protectionism, tariff-unions, or free trade. Take your pick, and stick to it, why don’t you?

How much co-financing or re-nationalization of the CAP should there be?

This isn’t a trick question. I think he really means it. Oh dear.

How far should the CAP provide financial incentives for environmental protection?

Or anti-virus software? Or better munitions? Or nicer-shaped tomatoes? Or better footballers?

Should the CFP be abolished?

!

If so, what should replace it?

Er...Fishing?

How do we allow two-way flexibility, with opt-outs available to member states in policy areas other than internal market, competition policy and trade?

How indeed? How also do we allow two-tone flip-flops with bake-outs to member states in hay fever areas other than internal junket, quizzes and fade?

Keep it simple, if you can.

These are but some of the challenges facing my political generation. If we do not address them, future generations will not thank us for leaving behind a Europe of turmoil, chaos, failing birth rates, debt, low employment and even conflict - the very thing the founding fathers of the EU set out to eliminate forever …

(Failing birth rates? Really?)

… when they created the current unstable, undemocratic, unrepresentative edifice.

That was simple but somehow I don’t believe he’s got it, do you children?

Someone seems to have taken the clue away, and I don’t think it’s coming back via the Conservative Party any time soon.