eurealist.co.uk

Telegraph opinion “A No vote is a vote for repatriation of power” I saved this last week intending a comment but got to busy at the time, I still think it is worth considering the argument, although basically wrong it does put into context the idea that Blair and co advance, that a No vote in the referendum, if we ever get one, is a vote to leave the EU. This is an attempt to frighten the children, by offering only the vision of a Britain sidelined in Europe with no say in the direction of the EU and no alternative on the table, the Pro-Constitutionites hope that we will vote to accept their vision of a United Europe because we have nowhere else to go.
The real case is that if we vote “No”, we will still be in the EU, and the present treaties will still stand, the only problems created by a no vote would be problems for the EU elites, who have failed to communicate their desire for an integrated United States of Europe to the people, and would then have no alternative other than to ratify the constitution anyway over the heads of the people, or to go back to the drawing board.
The Telegraph makes the point that the constitution is not simply the latest in a series of treaties: it alters the legal basis of the EU. On the day it enters into force, all existing treaties will be dissolved. The EU will cease to be an association of states, deriving its authority from its constituent members, and instead draw its legitimacy directly from its own founding charter. It will acquire almost every attribute recognised by international law as a feature of statehood: legal personality, treaty-making powers, a head of state, external frontiers, accredited diplomats.
So we are not simply being asked to vote yes to a new treaty, but the change of our own constitution the basic way in which we will be governed in the future.
Anyone who thinks that we exaggerate should read the text (available online at www.euabc.com). You need only look at the first dozen or so clauses to get a sense of what the constitution is about: “The Constitution shall have primacy over the law of the Member States” (Article I-6); “The Member States shall exercise their competence to the extent that the Union has not exercised, or has decided to cease exercising, its competence” (Article I-12). Then comes the list of areas where Brussels is to have jurisdiction: transport, energy, agriculture, fisheries, trade competition, asylum, immigration, social policy, employment law, foreign affairs, defence, space exploration, justice and home affairs. No wonder Tony Blair spent the election blathering about schools and hospitals: they’re pretty much all he’ll have left.
This point is not made flippantly. European integration was a malign if unremarked presence throughout the recent campaign. There it sat like Banquo’s ghost, invisible to most voters, but shaking its gory locks at the party leaders, who knew that they had to draw up their manifestos within the parameters allowed by EU law. There was a spectacular illustration of this when Michael Howard pledged that a future Conservative government would set an upper limit for immigrants and a separate quota for refugees, only to be told that such a policy was not compatible with the EU’s “Area of Freedom, Security and Justice” (1984-style nomenclature is very much a feature of Brussels life).
Equally, no party could promise to revive our countryside (because of the CAP), rescue our fishing communities (because of the CFP) or deregulate our labour markets (because of the social chapter). No party could take up this newspaper’s proposal to replace VAT with a local sales tax.
Ah yes, say the supporters of the constitution, but these are not new grievances: they mainly derive from past treaties. Perhaps so. But the fact that the constitution entrenches a number of things that we already disliked is hardly an argument for voting “yes”. When Mr Blair says that this is a referendum on the wider question of Britain’s relationship with Brussels, he is right. Since this is the first time that we have been asked our opinion in 30 years, it is only natural that we should wish to express a view on the various transfers of power to the EU that have happened over that period. But having thus defined the contest, Mr Blair must accept the logic of his own position. A “no” vote would not simply be a vote for the status quo: it would be a vote for the wholesale repatriation of power from Brussels and the restoration of parliamentary sovereignty. If he cannot bring himself to accept this, Mr Blair will surely have to make way for someone who can.

Absolutely stunning article by Larry Elliott in The Guardian

Back in the mid-1980s a mighty war raged between Pepsi and Coke. Fearful that its supremacy in the global fizzy drink market was under threat, the Coca-Cola company changed its formula and came up with New Coke.

Coke was sure that this was precisely what the punters wanted. It was wrong. New Coke was a disaster. It bombed, and within three months had been withdrawn. Coca-Cola listened to its customers and acted fast, putting the old brand back on the shelves.
What it didn’t do was sit around pretending that the real problem was that customers simply did not understand just how much better New Coke was than Old Coke. This story is retold by Paul Ormerod in his new book, Why Most Things Fail*, and is especially pertinent in the light of the referendums being conducted in France and the Netherlands next week on the new European constitution.

Imagine for a moment that those masterminding the future of Europe had been running Coca-Cola in the 1980s. How would they have responded to the crisis caused by the public’s obvious lack of appetite for New Coke? Would they have picked up the glaringly obvious signals coming up from the marketplace or would they have carried on producing New Coke regardless, assuming that consumers would eventually get the message? The answer is pretty clear. As far as Europe’s elite is concerned, the customer is never right or at least not unless the customer wants what the producer is willing to provide. And that’s why Europe has a huge political as well as economic problem on its hands.
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Ormerod says, there is no iron law of success but there is an iron law of failure, and that law is pretty simple - adapt or die. Supporters of the new constitution say that this imperative is well understood and is the reason why there should be a ringing endorsement from two of the founder members of the European Union in a few days.

A Europe of 25 countries facing tough and growing competition from Asia cannot operate in the way it did when there were six countries operating in the more confined economic environment of the 1950s and 1960s. Europe, it is said, cannot stand still; it either has to go forwards or go backwards. Europe has been a bulwark against fascism, is a beacon of social democracy and a counter-balance to the hegemony of the US. All this success will be put at risk if the constitution is rejected.

One sign of success, certainly, is that more countries want to join. Nevertheless, it is considered bad form to state the blindingly obvious; that Europe exhibits more signs of failure than of success.
First, there is the constitution itself. Nobody is quite sure whether the new blueprint is an Anglo-Saxon Trojan horse or a device to enshrine high taxes and inflexibility across the continent. The lack of clarity suggests a dearth of vision and a surfeit of fudge.

Second, there is a reality gap between what people want, hope and expect Europe to deliver and what it is actually delivering. The acid test of social democracy is unemployment, because if you are out of work you are far more likely to be poor and marginalised. In the 1960s, unemployment in France and Germany was around 2% - half the US’s.

Today in the eurozone’s two biggest economies it is above 10%, while America’s unemployment rate is little changed. High and persistent levels of joblessness have proved fertile breeding grounds for the extreme right: fascism is now more evident in Europe than at any time since the second world war.

As for the argument that Europe will be a cuddlier, gentler superpower, that doesn’t appear to be the message from the one area where Brussels does punch at the same weight as Washington - trade. Despite all the pro-development rhetoric, Europe has the same self-interested, mercantilist view of the world as does the US.

Third, there’s the hard evidence of Europe’s recent past. The sequence goes something like this. Originally, there was a free-trade area, but that was not exciting enough a project. So, the idea for a single market was born. Once this was up and running (after a fashion because it is still not actually completed), it was decided that
Europe needed a single currency to make the single market work.

Now that Europe has a single currency, it needs greater political integration to make the euro work. This is very much the Gosplan approach to life; a group of central planners get together and decide what should happen. The comparison with the Soviet Union is not idle; at each stage of this process, the European Union has grown more slowly. The US has shown it a clean pair of heels in every year bar one since 1991.
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The single currency is Europe’s New Coke; it’s a failing brand. Unlike the Coca-Cola corporation, however, the pretence is that all is well and that no policy response is needed. Does this mean that the collapse of the European Union is inevitable? Not at all: nothing is inevitable. What is clear, however, is that the danger signs are flashing red. Some pro-Europeans have seen this coming for some time. Caroline Lucas, one of the UK’s green MPs has constantly warned of the dangers of building from the top down rather than from the bottom up.

Many people in Europe are voting with their feet. They are walking out of the store. If those running the joint conclude that the people are stupid and need to be re-educated they will be making a serious mistake. Perhaps even a fatal one.

Scoop Independent News says the EU is jumping on the Eurovision bandwagon
THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION’S DELEGATION TO AUSTRALIA is offering party packs so that Aussie fans of Europes kitsch night of nights cracking out the champers (French of course) and crowding around the TV come this Sunday night, the European Union’s representation to Australia is giving away a pile of Eurovision Party Packs via a competition on SBS official Eurovision website.
Chock full of all sorts of kitschaphrenalia, from soccer balls, fake tattoos, plastic watches and blue and yellow balloons, the packs even have a set of swanky EU beer coasters, perfect for that mid-screening glass of $5 Lambrusco.
The party packs, donated by the Delegation of the European Commission to Australia and New Zealand, will also be given out as prizes at public Eurovision parties in Brisbane, Melbourne and Canberra.

No comment!

I have posted on this before but it deserves repeating. Today George Trefgarne in the Telegraph suggests the real reason why we are to be blessed with a constitution is the same reason for the USA constitution “it was the need to underpin the currency that led to the development of the constitution of the United States in the first place. Several of the individual states that now make up America defaulted on their debts after the revolutionary war against the British in the 1780s. Alexander Hamilton, the first Treasury secretary, was among those who successfully argued that the states needed a common financial system and central government to avert a crisis, and so the United States was born.” So although we are told that the constitution is to make the EU work better, prevent the return to Nazi style concentration camps, return power to the nation states, and all the rest of the spin, the real reason is to prop up the Euro, which itself was a step towards a United States of Europe, those who promoted the Euro knew that without a state or at least a constitution to back up the currency, the Euro has no solid backing and could collapse, so we have a classical EU situation as envisioned by Monnet, where cooperation in one sphere will require the cooperation in anther field and so on until eventually a united Europe will be formed. Trefgarne thinks that unlike the USA 300 years ago “Such a disaster as the collapse of the currency in Europe is remote, but not that remote. Growth throughout the euro zone has been slow to non-existent since the mid-1990s. Alarming political strains are developing, notably in Italy and Portugal. Italy’s exports are depressed thanks to the high level of the euro, and it is in the midst of its second recession in two years. Its budget deficit is ballooning. And Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, cannot balance the books and is clinging on to power by his fingertips. In Portugal, matters are even worse. The country is running a massive fiscal deficit of nearly seven per cent of GDP and the socialist government is embarking on another round of unpopular spending cuts.” “Without the constitution, the legal framework behind the euro will depend on existing treaties. But the Stability and Growth Pact, which once provided the rules, was torn up in March and the few remaining strips mean euro member states can effectively behave as they like. There could soon be little to stop Italy and Portugal bailing themselves out by borrowing more, which could push the euro lower, set off turmoil in the bond markets and drive up interest rates for everybody else.” “The woes of Italy and Portugal illustrate the dangers that will confront the EU should the constitution fail. It could respond by finding a cunning way of ratifying a replacement. But that would be to act in defiance of the wishes of not just millions of citizens, but perhaps entire nations. Or it could abandon the constitution altogether, and leave the euro adrift, without a nation or a government behind it.” If Trefgarne is right and we find that the constitution is rejected by either France or Holland in the next week then the Euro will be the only currency ever not to have a state to back it up. This situation is not sustainable in the long term, so the real plan “B” as suggested by Delores, will be to force through plan “A” by putting pressure on the dissenting states to reform their ways and vote again, after some cosmetic changes to the text, the alternatives are simply to problematic for the internationalists to consider. We have almost reached the point where there can be no turning back, which is the whole point of the step by step approach to integration in the first place.