DAVID CAMERON returns home isolated from his European colleagues; most of his coalition partners, and of course her majesty’s wretched opposition. He will however, not find such opposition among the British public. For the first time since Margaret Thatcher’s reign, this country has witnessed an act of leadership from its prime minister.
In the coming days, as the hostility toward him grows by the column inch from those sections of the liberal media both here and in Europe, Mr Cameron will be able to ignore such critics in the full knowledge that the vast majority of the British people support what he had to do. I emphasise the had, because even if he wanted to, he could not see the most important wealth earner this country has, be undermined by taxes on transaction costs. The City and its much maligned practices pass over to treasury one pound in every six collected. As an economist has said today, this buys a whole lot of hospitals and schools.
But the Tobin Tax apart, what Merkozy is planning for a future euro zone amounts to a cessation of national sovereignty. Their proposal is that all national budgets must be inspected and ruled upon before being presented to national parliaments.
If this is not selling ones national soul to the devil, then what is? Each country in Europe are about to passively hand over, in the interests of the Greater Germ…sorry, I mean Europe, their very nationhood. That they have allowed this to happen so casually - as if tipping a waiter, I find shocking. The Irish for instance, have been at daggers drawn with the British for over 300 years…and what for? Why, an independent nation of course. Now they are about to betray those who sacrificed themselves to try and bring it about. From now on Ireland will become a mere canton within a Greater Europe, with no national identity left – and it was not the British that took it from them: they gave it away themselves.
In Scotland the nationalists are in power and soon hope to hold a referendum on Scottish independence. It would be interesting to know whether, if the SNP won such a referendum, they would join Ireland as a mere political unit subsumed into the Greater Europe.
AT THE MOMENT there are 17 members of the euro, and it will soon be joined by nine more if their leaders have their way - which I hope they do not.
There will be a slow lane and a fast lane within Europe. The euro has taught us that life in fast lane often leads to crashes. Of the 27 nations, we alone will have a whole motorway to ourselves. For we are now alone in fighting our corner.
Our corner comprises the retention of our nationhood and the single market. Our people cannot hope to tolerate a situation whereby they elect a government to pass our laws and manage our economy; only to see these basic democratic functions taken away from them. For what is the point in voting at all, if our franchise becomes a mere gravy train for our politicians to win a ticket on.
In Brussels yesterday we won a great victory. We did so by defending our sovereign independence. We put the continuance of individual nationhood above what our European leaders would term European solidarity. Solidarity, the word slips easily off the tongues of X-Marxists like Barroso. It is a collectivist nomenclature that the European Left prides itself upon using. What it displays is the collectivist ideal that many in Europe would readily understand.
Nations are not sub-divisions of one country. In America, the word state carries a different connotation. The USA (the exemplar for which the Greater Europe wishes to model itself) comprises different states within a nation. In Europe, they wish the nation state to become a state within the American meaning of the word; and the Obama administration seems sympathetic to such an approach- if only to bring an end to the sovereign debt crises in Europe that threatens, not only his country; but also his chances of re-election in 2012.
WE MUST NOW WAIT and see what happens when those leaders from the 10 nations not signed up to the euro return home to seek the support from their people after joining up with Merkozy. If their people are as patriotic of the nation state as are the majority of the British people, then I hope, but do not expect, they will refuse to abandon their nationhood to the collective.
Fear drives those now outside the euro, but soon hope to become part of it. They fear being left behind by history, even if they still have the same doubts that kept them from joining the euro in the first place. They have been panicked into complying with the Merkozy plan for a Greater Europe.
We have been criticised for our demands, such as they were. But did I not hear Angela Merkle refuse to allow the production of euro bonds because they would not be in the German people’s interest; and did I not also hear President Sarkozy complain of his nation’s loss of too much sovereignty.
David Cameron is, like Merkozy, looking after his nations interest. He did not deserve Sarkozy’s blanking in Brussels after their meeting. For the French are as protective of their sovereignty, as are the British, and Sarkozy knows this. But he is fighting for his own survival in the up and coming French elections and an image of him by-passing a hand shake from ‘perfidious Albion’ will only, he hope, help confirm his re- election.
THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY
NOW IT IS SUNDAY THE 11th December, and the Coalition is under pressure. Nick Clegg, who was briefly supportive after Cameron’s return, is now castigating his coalition partner after apparently agreeing to Cameron’s negotiating position before he set off to Brussels. Now Clegg is describing the prime minister as ‘spectacularly misguided’ and his diplomatic foray as ‘potentially damaging for Britain as a whole’
The Labour party, it now appears, would also have done things differently. What this amounts to however is a somewhat feeble attempt at aquiring a position; which suggests that Labour was seeking to create any minor discrepancy they could conjure-up between their policy and David Cameron’s in order to oppose the Coalition.
Labour's foreign affairs spokesman, Douglas Alexander, told Andrew Marr that he would have sought a seat around the euro zone table now occupied by the 26 nations. To do what exactly? Sit there like a ventriloquist’s dummy with Ed Milliband’s hand up his arse.
The truth is, that Labour would have had to do exactly what Cameron did. The City is one of the largest financial markets in the world, and European policies such as the Tobin tax on financial transactions would have put us at a significant disadvantage. Last year the City handed £50 billion over to the revenue; and as Mr Alexander knows, this builds a lot of schools and hospitals. We are no longer the manufacturing giant we once were, and our financial sector, for all of its inflated bonuses, helps keep this country among the top six economies in the world.
If Nick Clegg seeks to cause major problems for the coalition, which, being a Europhile, he may see it as his duty to do; then the prime minister must bring all these decades of arguing over Europe to an end. He should call an election and prepare the country for a referendum on our continuing relationship with Europe if elected. Polls in today’s Mail on Sunday suggest the public are behind him over his stand on Europe. The British have always been a Eurosceptic people; whether they voted Labour or Tory.
The British are not xenophobes as our Metropolitan elite of London like to portray them. All they want is to remain a nation whose own parliament, which they of course elect, should be the sole authority making the laws by which they live. Is this an extreme position to take? A people must have full control over both their own as well as their nation’s destiny.
Alliances with other nations are one thing, but handing over our national sovereignty is another. If those other nations in Europe think so little of their sovereignty that they are prepared to give it up, then they invite thraldom.
The buzz word among the French and Germans is shared sovereignty. What this means in reality is that the Germans and the French will take much and give little. For the real power in Europe, is not the new collective, but the strongest economy among them.
We saw in the cases of Italy and Greece, a warning of what this power can do to a democratic state. The leaders of both countries were effectively dismissed and replaced by what were unelected ‘technocrats’. In Papandreou’s case, because he dared offer his people a referendum.
As we know, referendums are like garlic to a vampire as far as our leaders are concerned and so it proved with the Greek prime minister – but could any democrat imagine such coup as happened in Italy and Greece? Instead of causing shock and alarm, the casual treatment it received from the media and the liberal establishment would have caused an outcry among them if such an act had been perpetrated within a colonial Empire (preferably British).
WE ARE NOW, THANKFULLY, reaching the end of this long drawn out argument about the UK’s involvement with Europe. The euro crises has been like a stone thrown into a pond; it has caused the ripples that have brought about a speeding up of decisions. The British people can no longer be delicately and patronisingly cajoled toward European Federalism via treaties like that of Lisbon; which we were told, did not need a referendum because it was a mere ‘technical adjustment’.
David Cameron had to do what he eventually did. He did so because his so-called European partners knew much beforehand what the British position would be; yet, in Sarkozy’s case he sought to embarrass Cameron by ignoring his handshake, which was meant as a gesture by Cameron of no hard feelings
The French elections are not far off and Sarkozy wants to continue with the power in Europe that Angela Merkle has given him. So he deliberately chose to embarrass the British prime minister at a time when he faced the French electorate.
Cameron must continue to distance himself and his country from a blue print that only envisages the functions of a canton for a once proud nation which made its own laws, and sought its own destiny. For this is what European federalism means. It means the ending of our nation states’ history, which the British Left were never to enamoured with in the first place; which is why all of those serving the Left are not too concerned about the disappearance of the British nation state.
Cameron has done well up to now; but only the unfolding days and weeks will determine whether he has done enough. He must not backtrack on anything he has done. For to do so will bring only grief to the vast majority of his nation who have supported him. He must not let his people down – and we as a people must not go quietly into our last goodnight as a nation.
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