LISBON REVISITED?

THE LISBON TREATY MAY once more climb the domestic political agenda following France and Germany’s request to reopen the treaty in order to change various elements following the Greek financial crises earlier this year, when Europe’s strongest economies (notably Germany)  picked up the tab for Greece’s economic incompetence.

            Any amendments to the Lisbon Treaty will give an opportunity to those of us who thought the British people should have had a say in its imposition on them in the form of a referendum, to once more advance their arguments.

            First of all, both Angela Merkle and Nicolay Sarkozy are right to seek a revision to the treaty. Why, after all, should a successful wealth creating nation bolster the failings of an unsuccessful one? The German people, and the German people only, deserve the rewards of their efforts in creating a vibrant economy. They should not be obliged to bail out a still mainly agrarian economy by keeping it afloat with public subsidy. The Greek economy had a large imbalance in favour of the public sector with a retirement age of 53: and considering the economic demographics, such a system can only be kept going by handouts in the form of subsidies from richer nations.

            This wastefulness has to stop and this is what both Merkle and Sarkozy are seeking to do with their review of the Lisbon Treaty. At the moment in Europe, both Spain and Portugal threaten the same fate for Germany as did Greece. The richer nations of Europe (usually in the North) are becoming the milch cows for those in the south. Billions of Euros have poured from the north into the south over the decades since the founding of the Common Market in 1953.

            This siphoning of wealth can no longer continue, especially with so little return either to the investor or to its recipient. Money, in the form of investment, must incur profit for either partner if it is to succeed. In other words investment must provide a productive benefit.          Public spending is never an investment only a safety net; it however becomes a drain on a nation’s economy once the public sector becomes so bloated that it challenges the wealth creating private sector; and this is what has happened with Greece and threatens the same fate for the rest of Europe, unless we produce the pruning shears.

WHAT IS NOW UNFOLDING is the concept of a United States of Europe instead of a Common Market where free trade was the only component. The concept was, in the first place, created as a “solution” to Europe’s historical tribal wars that culminated in the Second World War.

            However, after the ending of the Second World War, the United States newly found world hegemony became the unspoken reason for the existence of a European Union. Even though the European continent was effectively liberated by America, the continent itself felt like the people of the colonies they once ruled. They resented American hegemony and sought to overcome it. They authorized American airbases on their territory to help defend them from Soviet power, while in so doing allowing themselves to spend the money they would have had to on national defence, or on welfare and health.

            The concept of a United States of Europe was and still is, frighteningly, a dystopian vision of an end to nationhood and its replacement by unelected overseers of what they perceive as the continent’s interests.

WE BRITISH PEOPLE HAVE BEEN given the opportunity to once more demand from our leaders the same privilege as both Germany and France are demanding. Both nations seek, rightly, to challenge the Lisbon Treaty. We British also seek such a challenge, but to the treaty’s very existence; and if Germany and France succeed with their own challenge, then David Cameron must do what the British people have always been in favour of. He must give the British people the chance of a vote on the Lisbon Treaty itself.

            In opposition he made the right noises in order to regain election for the Tories - be it, as it turned out, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. However when the polls told him that he would be left in control of a majority in government for the Tories, David Cameron dangled above his supporters heads (the majority of whom were Euro-sceptics) the possibility of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

            To Cameron such a possibility would, in the event of gaining power, be finessed into a retreat, which is what happened: and it happened because Cameron himself was as much a Europhile as that old instigator of the whole project in Britain, one Ted Heath.

            David Cameron has bought into Euro-federalism. He has been drawn toward what he believes is its inevitability; as if it were a law of nature inseparable from the will of man. It is in other words our nation’s destiny, outside of which there is no other. This is the nature of our modern politician’s thinking in all parties towards Europe.

            I hope in the coming weeks Cameron’s Eurosceptics will assert themselves and do the British people a favour by challenging their leader on the issue of a referendum. Both Sarkozy and Merkle have reopened this issue in the interests of their own people, and Cameron should do the same on behalf of his people.