eurealist.co.uk

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle:

“Like you, I am just an indignant citizen, fed up of being used and abused. However, I think your best action (in the first instance) would be to cite the Human Rights Act 1998, as most public authorities have been briefed on this Act (they seem to be comfortable with it, because it is ‘modern’). The HRA1998 has provision, under section 11 where you can cite the Bill of Rights 1689.

Also, under section 7 of the HRA ‘you’ can force an action. 7- (1) A person who claims that a public authority has acted (or proposes to act) in a way which is made unlawful by section 6(1) can take them to court.”

EU Referendum
Richard North argues that Eusceptics and Euphiles read the Constituion the same way “That we should agree with such an arch-Europhile is not surprising. As my colleague argued in late January on this Blog between the committed Eurosceptics and Eurphiles, there are no differences between us in that we both accept that the EU agenda is one of further and ever deeper integration. It is the rather woolly-minded individuals in between that annoys us both”

The Sun Newspaper Online - UK’s biggest selling newspaper

With apologies to those who hate this paper The Sun has picked up on the comments of the Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, mentioned here yesterday.

“BRITAIN’S days as an independent country will soon be over, Spain’s foreign minister boasted yesterday.
Miguel Angel Moratinos said it is only a matter of time before we are swallowed up by a new European superstate.

Mr Moratinos said the constitution would lead to “a surrender of member states’ sovereignty”.

However Still not addressing the basic problem and still attempting to claim that the Brirtish Government will remain in charge in Westminster yesterday Denis MacShane described the EU Constitution as “short but powerfully written”. He said, “No sensible British citizen, business or voluntary organisation that reads this short but powerfully written treaty will want to do anything other than endorse it wholeheartedly.”

But he is contradiced by

Tony Blair’s former Europe advisor Roger Liddle - now a special adviser to Peter Mandelson - who writes in the Independent that, “the Constitutional treaty enshrines the transformation of Europe from a single market to a political Union”.

He argues that the Government must make a distinctive left wing case for the EU Constitution, because, “While it is possible to be pro-European in the modern world without being on the left, it is impossible to be on the progressive left without being a pro-European.” He argues that the Government “cannot continue to peddle what first became the establishment consensus under Macmillan, that there was ‘no alternative’, with each step in European integration presented as both ‘inevitable’ and constitutionally insignificant. The significance of building a new potential for political action ‘beyond the nation state’ has to be justified, not underplayed”. He concludes that ratification of the Constitution would “achieve an irreversible shift towards a more social-democratic Britain”. He predicts, “General Election night will fire the gun for the start of the European referendum campaign.”

Sir Christopher Meyer, former ambassador to the US, who seems to back the Continental version has a letter in the Times in which he argues that, “A really candid British Government would say: Our vision of the European constitutional treaty is that it marks the high tide of integration. But that is not a view shared by all other member states. It is unlikely either to be the view of the European Court, which will have a host of ambiguities in the treaty to clarify. Earlier treaties have always served as the springboard for further integration. This one may be no different. We do not know whether the British view will prevail. A ‘yes’ vote will therefore be risky.

An interesting exchange of letters relevant to the Bill of Rights and parking fines illustrates some of the arguments we will be faced with should we decide to pursue our basic rights, this is defiantly one to watch!

Neil Herron:

“Letter from Neil Herron to Ged Fitzgerald”

Tim Worstall: European Divorce and Inheritance Laws?It`s not so much the proposal for them that worries me, not even the problem of whose very different laws that would get to be the harmonised code, no,  the failure in the reporting on this idea of pan-European divorce and inheritance laws:

A letter in the Times from a certain Jonathan Dawid takes William Rees-Mogg to task for discussing the EU Constitution
Are we fools led by liars? February 28, 2005

“WHO’S GOT it right? The German Minister for Europe, Hans Martin Bury, or the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, Jack Straw? Last week Herr Bury told the Bundestag that the constitution of the European Union is more than a “milestone”, it is “the birth certificate of the United States of Europe”. Last month Mr Straw said that the constitution treaty signalled “thus far and no further on European integration”. Is the treaty a boundary marker for European integration or is it a birth certificate for “a single European state bound by one European constitution”, to use the language of the German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer?”

Neatly side stepping the arguments posed in the article, Dawid employs the old Europhile trick of clouding the waters with nonsense and lies.

Sir, William Rees-Mogg has read the proposed EU constitutional treaty, but he must also examine the mass of treaties it is designed to replace.
The supremacy of European law over national law? This is part of the founding Treaty of Rome in 1957.

No it was not, the concept of EU Law supremacy is the result of the ECJ own decision and was established by the Court of Justice in 1963, when in the notorious Van Gend en Loos judgment, ECJ judges magically found that European law had direct effect on its citizens, ECJ judges magically found that European law had direct effect on its citizens, and the Treaty of Rome constituted a new legal order.

This concept has never been part of any EU treaty and is subject to several challenges in national constitution courts, Germany for instance has refused to accept the principal. So the constitution is codifying the concept for the first time, however even then it cannot affect ultimate supremacy in Britain because the British Parliament retained its ultimate supremacy in that it could repeal or supersede the 1972 Accession Act.

Co-ordination of economic and employment policy? Rome again. Establishment of the European Union? It’s in the Maastricht treaty of 1992. Maastricht also gave us citizenship of the Union and the common defence and foreign policy.

We are being asked to accept what is in the Constitution we were not asked for our vote on the other treaties, which had the effect of changing the trading union we accepted in 1972. Also the Constitution has the effect of removing all the current treaties replacing them, so if we do not want EU Citizenship and all that entails, or a common defence and foreign policy, we should vote No. It is no argument to claim that these moves towards integration are from an earlier treaty, which we did not have the opportunity to either accept or to reject.

When Lord Rees-Mogg says “Whenever one dips into the constitution one is liable to sink into a bog of unexamined propositions. I cannot think of any document of comparable historic importance which raises so many questions or answers so few. As an American scholar has observed, the European constitution, if it were American, would raise numerous Supreme Court cases in every paragraph”.

Making it clear that so many things in the Constitution are not defined in any meaningful way and will require judgments by the ECJ, it is then stupid to claim the exact opposite without evidence to back up that claim.

We should be grateful for its detail, for the shorter a constitution, the more power is concentrated in the hands of judges rather than elected politicians. And we should be perfectly clear that whether or not the constitution is accepted, the great majority of its proposals will remain in force, as they have been for many years.

Jonathan Dawid has written to the Times before making the ridiculous claim that “Any person who believes that Britain would be better off outside the Union must therefore vote in favour of the constitution, as this would allow a future British parliament to leave the Union” and falsely claiming that for “Britian to leave the present Union would require a new treaty drafted for that purpose — a treaty which would have to be ratified by all 25 member states.” this is turning the argument on its head, why on earth would a country that already has the ability to leave wish to change its own constitution for the EU constitution, which puts conditions on that power and will require the other 25 states to ratify that agreement.

Rees-Mogg says there is a debate to be had about the EU “We could have a useful debate on these issues. Is it Europe’s destiny to become a superstate? Is the age of British independence at an end? Can we protect democracy and the rule of law in a fully united Europe? That would be an honest and historic debate. But it cannot be an honest debate so long as the Government pretends that the European constitution is anything other than a constitution for the United States of Europe. The Germans are telling the truth. So long as our Government takes us for fools, we have every reason to take them for liars”.

Dawid obviously falls in with those who take the British public for fools, we would be well advised to follow Rees-Mogg`s suggestion and take them as liars.