Dear Foreign Secretary,
Dear Foreign Secretary,
I write to explain why I shall be among thousands of angry and despairing British citizens attending the Referendum Rally in London on Saturday 27th October and why I and others now urge our fellow citizens to overturn hundreds of years of highly developed Parliamentary tradition and demand a national plebiscite on the Reform Treaty.
In refusing us our referendum, you repeatedly say that Britain is a Parliamentary democracy; that the British people have chosen to send representatives to Parliament and to allow themselves to be governed by their decisions; that it is not our national tradition to resort to referenda. (You wish us to overlook the fact that it is your political party which has repeatedly used referenda when you have found it convenient, and you cannot possibly imagine the contempt in which you and your associates are whenever you dishonestly pray in aid ‘tradition’. Your government has done more than any other in recent centuries to destroy our traditions, jeopardising coherent governance and the integrity of the nation itself.)
But you are right - we have not customarily used referenda. However, something so fundamental has changed because of your government’s actions that we have no choice but to use the referendum to preserve our democracy and our right to self-determination.
What has changed, Foreign Secretary, is our Parliament. Your government has rendered it incapable of representing the people and acting in the nation’s best interest. Your government, Foreign Secretary, is in the process of forcing Parliament itself to betray us. We no longer trust our Government, formed from the members of our Parliament, nor our ancient Parliamentary process, and for the very simplest of reasons.
You and the Prime Minister intend to castrate our Parliament by giving away to the European Union the power which was loaned to you by the British people in order that you could protect and defend us. You intend to pass this power, permanently and beyond recovery, to a foreign power while knowing exactly what you are doing and while lying about it to us even as you do it. You are doing this this not only without our consent but against what you know to be our wishes.
Your government has become a dictatorship. You are following the same pattern as dictators throughout history: you have accepted the acclaim of the people and then turned the power they have given you into the means to ignore and oppress them
Let me briefly specify the chief of the list of crimes against your country which you have committed, and about which you have brazenly lied to us:
You tell us that you have obtained an abiding ‘protocol’ (you call it a ‘red line’) to the Reform Treaty which, you say, prevents the future transfer of further ‘competences’ from Britain to the European Union. At the same time you have agreed to a formula by which — the British veto abolished with your approval — the Union may arrogate to itself additional ‘competences’ without any further treaties.
In other words, this Treaty, the founding document of a new legal entity is, in essence and effect, the final treaty. It enables the European Union to exert indefinitely extensible power over Britain regardless of the wishes of the British people.
There will never be another opportunity for Britain to loosen the chains placed upon us by the European Union.
Your contemptible ‘red line’ is worthless and you know it, and to offer it to us as though it were some kind of democratic assurance is a gesture of contempt. An insult. You insult us, Foreign Secretary, and we will have our revenge on you for this, too.
You have a peculiarly un-British vision of what one might call ‘the future history of Europe’ as a socialist analogue of the United States of America. You think its emergence historically inevitable, as a Marxist historian might. In the furtherance of your pan-European socialist vision, you have exceeded your authority. You have ignored the cry of the British people who disagree with you - as you are well aware - and who employ you - which you seem to forget - and you would now sign our nation away into an international organisation with quite awesome and unaccountable power over us. You are destroying the most precious element of Britain’s ancient and flexible constitution — our Parliament. You would reduce to a pathetic, muttering, impotent, regional assembly the people’s means of self-government and their ultimate recourse when they seek protection from oppression by native dictators or inimical foreign powers.
You would rob us of all hope of democracy and self determination. Our inherited rights, liberties and protections, gained with our forefathers’ blood over centuries, now fail us, because of your actions. You leave us no choice but to find and use whatever new, peaceful means we may, to express both our outrage at your crimes and our determination to prevent you from any further traitorous actions against us.
In previous centuries, Foreign Secretary, we would have hanged you. In these enlightened times, we will not do this, but you should be aware that this is only because we are determined to rescue our constitution, our institutions and our nation from yourself and your associates.
You do well to be very afraid of the outcome of any referendum on the Reform Treaty, and indeed of the general election when it comes. It is obvious, of course, from your refusal to conduct a referendum on the Reform Treaty that you are fully aware of the position as I describe it here, and therefore culpable of the crimes of which I accuse you and the Prime Minister.
If you had any honour in you, you would not have agreed to this Treaty without the approval of the British people by referendum, but no-one could accuse you and the Prime Minister of being honourable men. In view of your traitorous behaviour to date, though, might I ask you to at least have the grace to cease using the words tradition and British when you address us, lest you anger us to the point where we have to reconsider the proper way to deal with traitors?
I remain, sir, anything but your obedient servant,
I totally agree with all that you have written here with one exception,If this shower of filth that pretends to be a government denies the people a say on our own future then i truly believe that we have both the right and the duty to remove them by any means necessary and i include both peaceful, legal means and violent illegal ones,the country had to take up arms before to remove a would be dictator,I dont see why we should shy away from it this time round.though i very much doubt that Gordon Brown would face the axe with the courage that King Charles did.
Hi Andy I should point out for the record that this was a letter by Prodicus
You know, writing things bold and/or red makes it true!
No writing it in Bold or Red does not make any difference to the truth? But then neither does pointing out the fact.
On the other hand if you wish to ague with the points in bold and or red please feel free to do so
I am always fascinated by the passion of Eurosceptics. Let me just make some remarks:The "thousands of angry and despairing British citizens" did somehow not show up. Which might mean that in the end most people recognize that the new treaty is a rather unremarkable affair.What everybody should keep in mind about the Union (and most of your fellow citizens do) is that it has no way of enforcing it’s rules. Which means whatever decision is made in Brussels, their is no army of police force or anything to enforce it. It has happened again and again that European Governments did not comply with EU rules and…nobody cared. In the end the EU will always run on consent.The only thing which can be done is throwing a country out of the Union. That would be great, wouldn’t it?
I would not conclude that from the lack of support for the rally, polls show that over 80% of the people want a referendum, if they actually though the Constitution was unremarkable that would not be the case.
It is always a mistake and naive to view the EU as an entirely external influence. You are of course quite right the EU does not at present have the military power to force its will, which is why it uses soft power, it also of course also uses the force of law.
The obvious extension of your point is however worth exploring, the EU does not have the military or police power at present.
Referring only of the military aspect, if the argument is that we can only retain independence from EU military intervention for as long as the EU does not have a military force then it becomes extremely important to ensure that the EU never does gain military power, and equally important that we retain an independent military force, both of these are under threat at the moment.
The police are a slightly different matter, although the EU is in the process of building its own police force which will be armed and will be above control by the individual member state and will have immunity from prosecution. That is not the real picture; because the EU works through law, our own police and our own courts are being taken over, when a British policeman applies EU law he is effectively an EU Policeman when a British judge applies EU law he is an EU judge.
But you do make a very good point and it is one that the term EUsceptic tends to miss and that is the real danger of the EU is that it hollows out our own systems, they are all left in place but they are no longer applying British law, our Parliament is no longer working under a British Constitution based on English Common Law in fact it is our parliament that is working full time on undermining our constitution, as many of the new laws being introduced fail the English Common Law tests by undermining the basic tenets of the constitution and ECL.
So we who deem ourselves anti-EU should redirect our aim away from Brussels and towards Westminster, because it is there that the main battles to re-introduce democracy and accountability will take place, and that will have to happen whether we are in the EU or out of it. Stopping any further steps towards integration is only the first step on a very long road.
One further point on re-reading your comment, I believe there is no mechanism within the EU treaties at present to allow for the "throwing out " of any member state. There is also no mechanism to force a member state to agree to treaty change, the rather odd thing is if the others decided to go ahead without the odd man they would in effect be breaking the existing treaty, which would remain in force until all members had ratified. Nothing in the treaty being negotiated can have any legal power until it is ratified by all memebrs.
Where do you get your information about the treaty? I was looking in the web, to make some more informed comments on your post, but the available information is not understandable. Grahnlaw (a blog by a finish lawyer) noted that no consolidated version of the treaty exists, something which clearly is a scandal in itself.
Sorry rz I might have deleted your last comment by mistake if I have I will post it again
The Treaty was written specifically to be not understandable!
“Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not
present to them directly.” 34 “All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be
hidden and disguised in some way.” 35 "What was [already] difficult to understand will
become utterly incomprehensible, but the substance has been retained… Why not
have a single text? The only reason is that this would look too much like the
constitutional treaty. Making cosmetic changes would make the text more easy to
swallow." 36
– Giscard d’Estaing, Author of the European Constitution
“They decided that the document should be unreadable. If it is unreadable, it is not
constitutional, that was the sort of perception… Because if this is the kind of
document that the IGC will produce, 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 typicalBrussels treaty, nothing new, no need for a referendum.’ Should you
succeed in understanding it at first sight there might be some reason for a
referendum, because it would mean that there is something new.”
– Giuliano Amato 37
“The aim of the Constitutional treaty was to be more readable; the aim of this treaty is
to be unreadable… The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this treaty had to be
unclear. It is a success.”
– Karel de Gucht, Belgian Foreign Minister 38
“Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be
intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?”
– – Jean Claude Juncker, Prime Minister ofLuxembourg 39
Basically the Treaty is the same text as the Constitution, this has been confirmed by Giscard and practically all other EU member state leaders. All the Institutional Changes remain the same.
“The substance of the constitution is preserved. That is a fact.”
– Angela Merkel, German Chancellor 2
“A great part of the content of the European Constitution is captured in the new
treaties… We have not let a single substantial point of the constitutional treaty go… It
is, without a doubt, much more than a treaty. This is a project of foundational
character, a treaty for a newEurope ”
– Jose Zapatero, Spanish Prime Minister 3
“The good thing is…that all the symbolic elements are gone, and that which really
matters – the core – is left”
– Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Danish Prime Minister 4
“They haven’t changed the substance - 90 per cent of it is still there”.
– Bertie Ahern, Irish Taoiseach 5
“It’s essentially the same proposal as the old Constitution.”
– Margot Wallstrom, European Commissioner 6
“Only cosmetic changes have been made and the basic document remains the
same.”
– Vaclav Klaus, Czech President 7
“There’s nothing from the original institutional package that has been changed.”
– Astrid Thors, FinnishEurope Minister 8
It “takes up the most important elements of the constitutional treaty project.”
– Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian Prime Minister 9
It “is not essentially different from the constitutional treaty… All the key institutional
solutions remain… Some symbolic elements will be cleared up and some
formulations toned down.”
– Janez Jansa, Slovenian Prime Minister 10
“In terms of content, the proposals remain largely unchanged, they are simply
presented in a different way… This text is, in fact, a rerun of a great part of the
substance of the Constitutional Treaty.”
– Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Author of the European Constitution 11“
Then there is the Council of the EU, IGC negotiating mandate and the proviso that the IGC must work only within that mandate, as they are the same people wearing different hats with the obvious exception of Brown it seems logical to assume they stuck to mandate, this has in any case been confirmed.
Then there are the working documents
Then there is the FO site which has a copy of the reform treaty Here
http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1139992024177
So we know what the present treaties are and we know the changes so it is not beyond the capabilities to combine the two which is what the official consolidated treaty will do in any case.
Then we need to look at the strength of our so called red lines. On inspection it would seem very pale pink would be a better description.