| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:New European Directive | |
| Posted by: | Fraser Pearce | |
| Date/Time: | 12/03/08 12:04:00 |
| “Jonathan, do you seriously believe that all of our MPs, including those who have now been successful in imposing this constitution on us despite their manifesto promises, have bothered to read it or have the intelligence to understand all its implications?” - Spot on, Colin. To be fair though, the Lisbon Treaty has been designed to be unreadable anyway, as confirmed last July by the Italian PM, Giuliano Amato: “Any prime minister - imagine the UK prime minister - can go to the Commons and say 'Look, you see, it's absolutely unreadable, it's the typical Brussels treaty, nothing new, no need for a referendum’. Should you succeed in understanding it there might be some reason for a referendum, because it would mean that there is something new.” Still, we have a long tradition of our betters not reading the actual treaties they’re signing. Ken Clarke boasted he hadn’t read the Maastricht Treaty. Douglas Hurd (then Foreign Secretary) admitted, “Now we’ve signed it, we had better read it!” Come the parliamentary debate, MPs weren’t even provided a copy of Maastricht to read – in effect, expected to vote on something without giving it prior scrutiny. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, as they wouldn’t have been able to change a single word of the treaty. Thanks to the Tory majority in the Lords, the Salisbury Doctrine wasn’t applied either. According to the House of Lords Library, the Salisbury Doctrine: “…argued that the will of the people and the views expressed by the House of Commons did not necessarily coincide, and that in consequence, the House of Lords had an obligation to reject, and hence refer back to the electorate, particularly contentious Bills, usually involving a revision of the constitutional settlement, which had been passed by the Commons.” ------- Fast forward to January this year, the Commons passed the European Communities Finance Bill – i.e. the amount the UK will pay the EU until 2013. The government guillotined proceedings, limiting debate to a paltry 208 minutes and restricting how long individual MPs could speak and scrutinise. Britain’s net EU contributions will therefore be around £100 billion to 2013, £481 million for every minute the Commons was allowed to debate the issue. When debating the Lisbon Treaty, British MPs were again expected to ratify it without reading a consolidated copy of the text. As with Maastricht, they wouldn’t be able to change a single scintilla of the text-they-hadn’t-read anyway. This prompted Labour MP, Austin Mitchell, to opine: “… What is the use of discussing something that we cannot change? It is important to amend this constitution, because it will be our constitution if it is passed - it will say what we can and cannot do, and it will take powers away from this place. It is thus important that we are able to have our say on it. It will make us part of a larger entity - a larger state - and it will close the door on that. That is what it is about. If we cannot change that and if we cannot put it to the people, we are futile and useless.” ------- I can’t help thinking that Will’s right for the wrong reasons when talking of ‘representative democracy’. On matters of the EU at least, it seems successive governments are indeed representative due to the fact that, like the average punter, they don’t read the treaties either. How rigorous then is our ‘representative democracy’ when MPs and cabinet ministers don’t even read the stuff they’re signing in our name? As for Will’s ‘direct democracy’ being good for the X-Factor, try telling that to the people of Greenland when they voted to leave, the Swiss when twice rejecting EU membership, the Danes rejecting Maastricht or the French and Dutch voting ‘non’ and ‘nee’ to the original Constitution. Maybe they were all xenophobes too. |