Monday, November 10, 2014

An EU conspiracy?

THE LAST TIME I believed in a conspiracy theory was following the death of President Kennedy, and I clung to it right up to the time I watched the film JFK; Oliver Stone's long winded attempt at trying to prove Lee Harvey Oswald to have been a patsy working for either the CIA or Cuba[1], and concluding that it was not Harvey's rifle that fired the fatal shot, but whoever was lurking on the 'grassy mound' as the president's cavalcade passed.
            
            American conspiracy theorists are, like Oliver Stone, of a usually Left-wing liberal bent[2] who think the US government are up to all kinds of schemes to eliminate those who get in their way – especially liberals like himself, and JFK.
           
            From time to time governments of whatever ideological bent, try to keep information they do not wish the public to be made aware of, secret. In the UK, under the thirty-year rule (said to have been put in place for reason's of national security) documents are kept hidden until the rule has, like an insurance policy, matured and the actors in the proceedings are probably dead.

WHEN I HEARD THIS MORNING on Sky News that the UK has been asked to contribute a further £1.7 billion to the EU, while Germany and France get a rebate; I smelt a conspiratorial rat at work.
            
            I thought to myself, it must be a stitch-up. A conspiracy had been concocted between Downing Street and Brussels to spike Nigel Farage's' guns in the forthcoming Rochdale by-election where the latest poll puts his party 13 points clear of the Tories.
            
            It would go like this. Brussels would insist that the UK should have to pay this extra contribution because of the UK's economic success; and at the same time Germany and France should be given a rebate for the failure of their economies, adding further to Ukip's popularity. Well…I ask you. What better foil could Cameron have, than to have himself and his party made even more unpopular - but then, there would follow a sudden victory over Brussels; a victory brought about by  'negotiations' which gave Cameron his victory over the £1.7 billion taxpayer robbery? Well, we will all have to wait and see.
            
            But a fellow conspiracy theorist on this issue, insists that indeed a conspiracy is afoot; but it is not one of Cameron's making. My brother came up with the following. He suggested that Brussels wanted Cameron out, come the next election and a more pliable Miliband put in his place. Milliband would never allow, for instance, an In/Out referendum; and therefore represented the EU's best hope for keeping the UK safely within the federalist concoction.
            
            Think about it. Cameron has offered an In/Out referendum if he wins next May after negotiating EU reforms – a process the EU is fearful of, if only because whatever reforms they agree to with the UK; other member states will demand the same changes, thus causing such a volcanic eruption within the EU that its very existence may be left in doubt - better therefore Milliband governing the UK than Cameron – or at the very least, anyone but Cameron.
            
            As a conspiracy theory this makes far more sense than my own. Perhaps, instead of Cameron, the idea behind this demand for more funds is meant to help Milliband. After all, on Sky News this morning when Ed Balls was asked what he would do about this budget increase; Balls wittered on about Cameron alienating himself from the negotiating process with our European partners. He never once said that he stood full square behind challenging such an unfairness.

SO THERE ARE convincing and unconvincing conspiracy theories surrounding the  £1.7 billion demand from the UK. Between the two, I favour my brothers. In doing so I do not insinuate or even infer that Ed Milliband is part of the conspiracy, but a mere willing associate of anything pro-European. Brussels are the political puppet masters in all of this, which Cameron is finding to his cost, and Milliband, if elected will surely find to his own.
            
             Both Cameron and Milliband are being, in one way or another, used by Brussels to the EU's advantage. They are both instinctive supporters of the European Union and our membership of it; but are both trying to either hold on to or gain power within the UK, and Brussels is trying to manipulate it to their own advantage, and in doing so they have come out in Miliband's favour. Milliband is an innocent in all of this, for his natural EU impulses will willingly serve the interests of the social democratic European Union in any event, just as they do the Unite trade union in the UK.
             
            The EU wants Milliband. He has proven himself a creature of the trade unions; so perhaps he has strings that can be pulled by Brussels. Well I would not be surprised if Ed did Europe's bidding. After all, he disdains an In/Out referendum, even on Cameron's spurious grounds.
           
             So Ed is the perfect servant of Brussels, one who can be guaranteed to turn the UK under the much longed for tutelage of a Federal Union into a mere province of the greater European Union, where the nation state becomes a thing of the past; where it becomes a province, divided into regions instead of counties and in thrall to the Brussels' Commission.
            
            This is the supposed nightmare scenario of European federalism. A dystopian vision concocted by Europhiles throughout the Union beginning after the Second World War in order to restrain further military conflict of the type that brought forth two World Wars on European soil within 20 years causing the deaths of countless millions.
            
            So in order to avoid further such future conflicts… so the theory goes: we have to, according to the EU, abandon our national sovereignty and nationhood, and become immersed into a federal union within Europe where nationhood, sovereignty, and even democracy has no place in the scheme of things. Is this the future the British people wish to be part of? A future bereft of nationhood, national sovereignty, and the abandonment of ancient counties and traditions - I very much doubt it. But if they do then let them have a referendum before they gift their children and grandchildren such a future.

THIS IS THE only option on offer for the people of the UK if we remain part of the journey to a federal Europe while remaining a member of the EU. European federalism is being presented in almost prosaic terms, if at all. A federal Europe means the ending of the nation state within the continent of Europe. Yet the LibLabCon triumphret are between them seeking to steer their parties toward such an eventuality without losing as much electoral support as they can manage.
           
           The leadership of all the three main parties have long since bought into a federal Europe, but they know the British people are more sceptical. Until Ukip appeared as a genuine threat to the Tories… Cameron then effectively saw them as fools and idiots. But now, since the rise in their popularity, which has been maintained by the events of last May and in Clacton; he has promised an IN/OUT referendum if he cannot bring about reform of the EU before 2017, if he wins the next election.
            
           Cameron believes in the EU. He is intelligent enough to understand what a federal union means to the nation state; and yet, as a Conservative, he still remains supportive of its aims; and if it had not been for Ukip, he would have no doubt continued to follow the same map route of every other of the main parties within the UK, as well as the rest of Europe.
           
             



[1] Preferably, for Stones purpose, the CIA.
[2] As was I when I clung to this theory.

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