eurealist.co.uk

The Practice of Triangulation

I much prefer my politicians to be open and honest, if that is not an oxymoron, I do not like the new career politicians who have never worked in industry or held any job that did not automatically put them in a safe environment divorced from the real life problems of ordinary people.

This tendency of political parties to take on new young blood and teach them the way of the world through one set of principals, is leading to a political elite who have no hands on experience of real life, they are loosing the contact with the people who vote for them, and instead of a variety of different life experiences forming their view they rely on what they are told to think, and do not question anything their own leadership tells them, how could they, poor darlings have been spoon feed since they left school.

I have lived long enough to see foreign militant activists, who would tear up rugby pitches, in an attempt to make our elected government bend to their wishes, put on suits and raise to the highest level in the British politics. Once in power however they then suddenly become very clear that no one is going to get away with the things they did, because that would trespass on their right to govern, if they really felt this way they should have never torn up rugby pitches in the first place.

This brings me round to Robin Cook who said in The Guardian on Friday “It is time someone put in a good word for Peter Hain. He has taken a lot of stick for asserting that the priority given to security in the Queen’s speech proved life was safer under Labour”. Peter Hain is due a lot of stick for lying to the British people about the EU Constitution, but protected as he is by the party system we cannot try to explain to him the deference between tiding up and helping to build a super state.

However I digress Robin Cook then goes on to explain the problems with some of the thought processes going into the government’s electoral calculation to stand on fear of terrorism and law and order.

“If we are going to claim that Labour makes Britain safer, we need to offer policies to convincingly prove it. Promising an effective system of ID cards by 2012 does not suggest the threat is that urgent. Nor has the government ever explained why ID cards would be any more successful in preventing terrorism in London than in Madrid, where ID cards had long been compulsory. Now we understand the public will not be required to produce an ID card on demand, but will be given the option of bringing it down to the police station for inspection just like a driving licence. It is difficult to see the determined terrorists, about whom we are warned, turning up at the police station, where they can be conveniently arrested.

But the most perplexing aspect of a campaign anchored on a threat to security is that it puts law and order at the centre of the election, although that is the one remaining issue on which the Conservative party is ahead in the polls. To New Labour strategists, that is not a puzzle but the reason for choosing security as a central front. They are devotees of the practice of triangulation, and believe that elections are only won by stealing your opponents’ clothing, rhetoric, issues - and, hopefully, their votes. If the Conservatives pose as tough on law and order, then Labour must pose as even tougher.

Whatever the tactical gains in the short run from triangulation, in the long term it threatens to poison our political system. The greatest challenge to our democratic process is the growing number in the electorate who find it hard to identify with any party, or to accept the conviction with which political figures hold their views. The most frequently articulated complaint is that “you are all the same”. Yet, perversely, the objective of triangulation is to minimise the difference between a party and its rival, and to deny the electorate a real choice between competing value systems. The real enemy for Labour at the next election will be neither Tory nor Lib Dem but apathy. But we will not motivate our supporters to turn out and vote for us by pretending that we share our opponents’ priorities”.

Of course the practice of triangulation can be clearly seen in the parties position on the EU, where I am sure Mr Cook is quite happy, that this practice has denied the electorate a real choice between competing value systems for the past thirty years, so much so, that there is never any real discussions about alternatives to EU Membership, and anyone who tries to offer a different value system is treated as if from a different planet.

If the Political parties do continue the strangulation of democratic choice by the practice triangulation then perhaps we will have to start looking to the rugby pitch answer, to a political system that will not listen to the people. But of course nowadays thanks to the BBC militant activist, has a totally different meaning, and the government’s new “militant activist” laws will enable them to imprison us without trial and throw away the keys, because we will of course be trespassing on their right to govern.

Further to my post about the “Vote No” campaign slogan “no to the constitution, yes to Europe”. Helen Szamuely of EU Referendum clearly also sees the problems and details some of them and the objections. Richard North did point out the problems with the proposed slogan to the Vote No organisers well before they decided to publish it. All of us who oppose the EU Constitution have a common cause nobody, is being asked to state if they want to be in the EU so there is no need to confuse the issue.
EU Referendum:

“Would Wellington have called this a strategy?”

Let me get this straight.

The strategy of the self-appointed Vote-No campaign is to think of a divisive slogan and demand that everyone line up behind them; assume that the government will not win a referendum because it has lost the support of middle England because of Iraq (only people who spend their days and nights in political organizations can think Iraq is more important than taxation, education, law and order, you name it); ignore the core supporters in favour of the waverers whom they will entice with the confused message of vote no in order to stay in the EU and reform it; win the referendum; get Blair to resign and assume that whoever takes over will march in there and negotiate reforms to make “Europe” (I assume they mean the EU) more democratic.

Alternatives to EU Membership

The British Government is the servant of the British people, which means that our system, places the sovereignty of the people at the very centre of our democracy, for this system to survive our government cannot pass power to a supranational body to make our laws, otherwise they have effectively removed the sovereignty of the people to elect and dismiss our lawmakers

Denis Mac Shane in the Telegraph is trying to argue that we cannot cherry pick which EU laws to obey and which to ignore, he is trying to equate an international treaty between sovereign states that retain all their own powers, but agree to cooperate when and where they wish for as long or as short time as they wish, on the clear understanding that no government can bind any successive government the people elec. With passing powers to make new laws to the EU which is a supranational body and with the acquis communautaire attached to any powers passed to the Union.

Mac Shane`s argument is a total nonsense, the two things are completely different, in the first instance the sovereign states can at any time change any agreements they may have made, or they can annul those agreements and the agreement no longer then has any power. In the second, once a power has been passed to the EU we can do nothing about any subsequent laws the EU may enact, we are bound to put those laws into our own law, without having any opportunity to agree, disagree or change those laws.

Mac Shane says;
“International law, whether contained in EU treaties or in any other treaty, is a constraint, at times irritating, and is sometimes ignored by nations that do not have the same respect for the rule of law as centuries of obedience to law have dunned into every British citizen.
Yet British citizens cannot pick and choose which bits of the law they will obey. Similarly, Britain cannot pass legislation that conflicts with international treaties, such as the EU treaties, without being in breach of its solemn treaty obligations. Those who call for national legislation to put Britain in breach of EU treaties are within their rights to make their case.
But a nation cannot stay in the EU, or any other treaty organisation, on the basis of obeying - and expecting other nations to obey - clauses it likes, but then pass national legislation unilaterally to exempt Britain from parts of the treaties all other treaty members abide by”.

For the British people the point is not international law, but our own law, in other words our government may not make a law or an international agreement that undermines our law, and membership of the EU does exactly that. We now come to the fact that as we cannot maintain the British system within the EU, there are two alternatives; one, we change our system and remove our sovereignty or two we leave the EU, Denis Mac Shane and his likes of course would not consider the second option, but his argument that we must obey all EU laws ignores the British system, so he is quite happy to destroy a thousand years of history on the alter of an EU super state, and will not look at any alternatives.

However for us to say we must leave this undemocratic Union to its own devices, is not enough, we must then look at other alternatives, and which ever way you look at it if the EU does survive we in Britain will have to deal with it in some manner.

As Europhiles are so fond of telling us a certain amount of our trade is with the EU states, and to trade with them we are going to have to comply with their rules on standards, but the same argument also holds good for trade with any other country, and ever since sovereign states began to make laws on the standards of produce allowed to be sold to their populations this has been the case. Ignoring the fact that Britain is quite capable of standing on her own feet and making any trade agreement with any other country there is bound to be some interaction at a deeper level with the EU.

Ian Milne of Global Britian has looked at some of the alternatives to full membership of the EU which would allow Britian to decide its own destiny and allow the return of power to the people we elect, but still have some links to the EU. Of course to trade with the EU we do not need to have any formal links other than those freely entered into by all the other countries in the world.

The alternatives are
The European Free Trade Association
The European Economic Area
The Swiss-EU Trading Relationship

The European Free Trade Association
EFTA, founded in 1960, is now 40 years old. It comprises four non-EU European states, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, with a combined population of 12.2 million. Its combined GDP of $ 544 billion (at 2003 current prices and exchange rates) is bigger than that of Australia, or South Korea, or the Netherlands, and slightly smaller than that of Mexico. Approximately 70 per cent of its exports and imports of goods are with EU-25. Switzerland, Norway and Iceland have their own currencies; Liechtenstein uses the Swiss Franc. Switzerland and Norway have higher per capita GDPs than all EU-25 member states except Luxembourg. Norway’s per
capita GDP (at 2003 current prices and exchange rates) is 64% higher, and Switzerland’s 46% higher, than that of the UK. Norway’s per capita GDP is 82% higher than that of the Eurozone.2 The current updated EFTA free trade agreement (known as the Vaduz Convention) came into force in 2002 and provides for the free movement amongst the four member states of goods (except for agricultural and fishing products), services, capital and people.
None of the four member states has transferred any legislative competence to EFTA or EEA institutions, so that decisions in EFTA (or on the EFTA side in the EEA) are taken by unanimity. Thus (in contrast to the supra-national nature of EU institutions), sovereignty remains unequivocally with each of the four EFTA member states.
EFTAis a free trade association whose members undertake to trade freely with each other. It is not (as is the EU) a customs union, so each of its members retains full control of its trade relations with other countries (including with fellow-EFTA members). Unlike individual EU members, which do not negotiate or vote in World Trade Organisation (WTO) councils, having transferred such competence to the Commission, each EFTA member sits and votes at the WTO in its own right. EFTA members have free trade agreements (FTAs) with EU-25, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein through the EEA,
Switzerland through seven sectoral bilateral FTAs with the EU (see over). Beyond the EU, EFTA had FTAs in force in June 2004 with 13 countries, and is in various stages of negotiation with a further 35 countries, making a total, if they all come off, of 48.

The European Economic Area
The EEA unites the twenty-five EU member states and three EFTA states, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein (but NOT Switzerland) in a 28-member Internal Market governed by the same basic rules, which are set out in the EEA Agreement. This is an international treaty which came into force in 1994. Its signatories are on the one hand the EU and its member states, and on the other hand Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
Excluded from the EEA Agreement are the following policy areas, sovereignty over which (in contrast to the position of the EU-25 member states) remains with each of the
three EEA-EFTA states:-
􀁑 Common Agricultural Policy
􀁑 Common Fisheries Policy
􀁑 Foreign & Security (Defence) Policies
􀁑 Justice & Home Affairs Policies
􀁑 Customs Union
􀁑 Monetary Union
EFTA-EEA states make a financial contribution to EEA and EU programmes. For 2004, the total amount will be €363 million, equivalent to a per capita contribution of €74
(approximately four times smaller than the present annual UK per capita gross contribution to EU institutions and that is set to rise to double the present amount in the near future).

The Swiss-EU Trading Relationship
Switzerland is an EFTA member but remains outside the EEA. In 1972 Switzerland and the then EC signed an FTA (Free Trade Agreement) for industrial goods, and in 1986 a scientific cooperation framework agreement. In addition, in 2002, seven sector-specific (or sectoral) bilateral Swiss-EU FTAs came into force, The agreements can be cancelled at any time, and none requires the transfer of legislative authority to a supranational body. Thus, Switzerland retains full sovereign control over the areas covered in the sector-specific FTAs. The agreements are linked, so that cancelling one would also cancel the others. The seven agreements are managed by joint Swiss-EU committees whose decision-making powers are prescribed in the agreements. Decisions are taken by unanimity: each side retains a veto. With the partial exception of the civil aviation agreement, none of the FTAs obliges Switzerland to adopt the relevant part of the acquis communautaire.

Ldg Seaman David Kayes, 34, A New Zealander is leaving the Royal Navy after 17 years because he is not prepared to become a British citizen in order to continue working on submarines.

Telegraph

The Ministry of Defence is now demanding that all those 8000 Commonwealth servicemen and women who have served loyally in the British forces, take British citizenship as a test of their loyalty.

We have a historic bond with peoples in far flung parts of this world, a closeness, a feeling of oneness that is not extended to the peoples of Europe, not that there is anything wrong with those peoples it is simply that to the British people a Frenchman is foreign and a New Zealander or Australian are just another type of Englishman. These are the people who have historically left their homes in their thousands to travel halfway across the world to protect Britain, these are the people who have always answered the call in times of Britain’s greatest need.

We allowed a totally disreputable Prime Minister to turn Britain’s back on these people when we joined the European Union in 1972 and now another totally discredited Prime Minister is overseeing the last vestiges of loyalty we owe to these other countries. Just so that we can conform to new laws made by the unelected and unaccountably Eurocrats because European law dictates whom the MoD may hire and that European law forbids us to discriminate in favour of “third country nationals”.

It really makes me ashamed to be British when our world wide brotherhood is being tossed away for the benefit of the dream of a united Europe by some ex-Communists back in the early part of the last century.

The words of one of those brave men an Australian that we shot for political reasons in the Boer War. encompass what is happening in Britain today,

If you encounter any Boers
You really must not loot ‘em!
And if you wish to leave these shores,
For pity’s sake, DON’T SHOOT ‘EM!!

Telegraph | News | Christopher Booker’s Notebook:

Christopher Booker in the Telegraph asks the question who will arrest the “Who arrests the Prime Minister for this crime? A rather outrageous suggestion one may think, but one that is very much in the thoughts of many of us, as we see our politicians continually breaking, not only the British Constitution but even the laws they themselves made.

If we simply allow our rulers to rule with no respect for the law, then we are well on the way to tyranny. Someone, I forget who said that it is the electorate that keeps an MP honest, and the knowledge that they can be voted out of office at the next election, but I would disagree with that. In these days the top ones in the club all stick together and look after themselves, just look at the last two EU commissioners both now safely ensconced in the House of Lords, with their big fat pensions paid for by the tax payer, both of them were soundly rejected by the British electorate. Their rejection can only be view as a step in their career advancement certainly not something to be afraid of and certainly not something to keep them honest. The only way to keep politicians honest is to make them obey the law it is the law which must be upheld at all times by all members of parliament and every person who is in a position of power in this country.

The crime in particular that Christopher Booker is referring is the “extraordinary anomaly which arose during the referendum on a regional assembly for the North-East.

It may seem ridiculous, but if politicians are allowed openly to break their own laws, does it not become a rather serious matter?

Daniel Hannan is a Tory MEP If only the Tories would take on board his views, but until they do then there is a place for UKIP.

Telegraph | News | At the heart of Europe:
Snip
Forget the rhetoric about the parliament “coming of age” and “standing up to the executive”. It is back to business as usual, with legislature and executive backing each other against a sceptical public.

I have not met a single Euro-MP who thinks that this was the best available team. Of the 25 commissioners, six are former Communists and four have recently lost elections - again demonstrating that the Commission is not so much undemocratic as anti-democratic, attracting politicians who have been expressly rejected by voters.

We have an agriculture commissioner who makes money from the CAP, a competition commissioner who, after only two days, has already run into conflicts of interest, and an anti-fraud commissioner who was recently involved in a fraud case (although he was acquitted).
snip
“There you have it. As far as MEPs are concerned, it is all right to have supported a totalitarian regime, to have been convicted in a corruption case or, indeed, to be an evident dullard with no knowledge of your portfolio. What is not all right is to support the supremacy of national parliaments. Dolts, shysters, reds and retreads are welcome. But someone who believes that nations should set their own taxes? That would be going too far.”