eurealist.co.uk

Is this the government spin machine in action?

In the Telegraph Saturday 06/11/2004 Opinion

No mention at all of the real No campaign, no mention of all the hard work by Neil Herron (obviously a non person) and his team at North East No Campaign, a suggestion that this was about left and right politics and the no vote was Tory inspired plot, and an attempt to underplay the EU`s part in all in the devolution of England.

“The first thing that this shows is the conservative temper of contemporary Britain. The difference between Left and Right, at its most elemental, has to do with faith in the capacity of government to do good. Blairism is sustained by the belief that agencies, action zones, new deals and, indeed, politicians in general make society happier. Yet the plebiscite in the North-East suggests that, even in Labour’s own heartland, this belief has little resonance. By four to one, practical-minded Geordies rejected the idea that more tax and more politicians would ameliorate their condition. This is not to say, of course, that they are all secret Tories, but there is something intrinsically conservative about the rejection of bureaucratic schemes, the preference for the organic and traditional over the synthetic and rationalist.
It is significant that No campaigners should also have tapped into a deep suspicion that the dismemberment of England was somehow an EU plot - a belief that is not wholly unfounded: Brussels may have no direct power to demand the regionalisation of its member states but, by recognising regions in its structures, it has quietly encouraged the process”.

This is a very bad piece of journalistic spin it does not even begin to ask the real questions that should be asked, how on earth could this government spend over £10 million on trying to convince the people of the North east to go along with their plans for the break up of England. Where were the Electorial Commison when they should have been there on the ground ensuring that this was a fair referendum and not as the Telegraph admits

“Supporters of a devolved assembly in the North-East had everything going for them. They were supported by Labour and the Lib Dems, the trade unions, the regional press, the BBC, most local councils (whose members saw themselves enjoying larger salaries and expenses) and every prominent busybody who fancied himself as an assemblyman, including the Mayor of Middlesbrough, Ray Mallon”.

Given the scale of the defeat for the government’s plans for an elected assembly, the present unelected assembly now has no mandate from the people of the North East to even continue to exist. This is a massive slap in the face for English devolution yet the Telegraph thinks that this is only a slight hinderence because what the politioins really need to do is to rethink devolution.

“They should think imaginatively about US-style town hall democracy, with a proper link between taxation, representation and expenditure at municipal level, and local control over policing, schools and welfare. The Tories and Lib Dems are groping towards some of these ideas, but seem reluctant to go the whole hog”

Any devolution of England along EU boundary lines is going to be an EU project it is going to be playing into the hands of those who are working against the good of this country as a whole there is not and has never been a feeling amongst the people of England that we want to be divided.