2008 March 26 | eurealist.co.uk

Challenge to Eurosceptics

Possibly foolhardy but you cannot dispute the chupaz of one Europhile, a certain J D Bovington, Horsforth has issued a challenge to EUsceptics.

He wrote in the Yorkshire Evening Standard apparently for the umpteenth time I challenge eurosceptics to state which new sovereign power is being transferred exclusively to the EU. There is no such transfer! (the Lisbon Treaty)

However J D Bovington, also quoted a House of Lords report (not defined)

A House of Lords committee found that the Constitution didn’t “transfer” any “essential” sovereignty to the competence of the EU, much less the Reform Treaty,

There are two words in that statement that need to be clarified - of course it`s that word “essential” which stands out like a sore thumb - exactly what is essential power to a sovereign nation state - to whom is it essential and who will decide what is essential? And of course transfer also need definition – after all Lord Justice Laws is on record as saying a transfer of power is different from delegated power. The State which delegates power can recall it; the legal claim of power remains in its hands.

Does the Lisbon treaty undermine Justice Laws definition, one would have to assume that up to this point we have only delegated power to the EU as it remains within the authority of the British parliament to repeal the 1972 act of accession.

However the Lisbon treaty does begin the process of curtailing the sovereign right of our parliament. The Lisbon Treaty proposes that our parliament contributes actively to the good functioning of the Union. And of course there is the withdrawal clause which sets out the method by which a member state my leave the union, but by doing so it is also curtailing the power of the British Parliament to exercise its sovereignty. We may leave the union if we follow the procedures set down in the treaty.

The EU scrutiny committee said that our parliament is not a creation of the treaties and its rights are not dependant on the treaties. In other words the treaty cannot presume to control the British Parliament or place legal obstacles in the way of our parliament’s sovereignty because to do so would be taking a step on the road of transferring rights.

Filed under : The British Constitution
By Ken
On March 26, 2008
At 5:38 pm
Comments : 0

Local community strongly Eurosceptic?

The letters page of my local newspaper the Shropshire Star has developed into a reasonable significant online community platform for debate on matters related to our government global warming and the EU.

The original letters slowly drop down the list over a period of a week or two as new letters are added, so eventually any debate falls of the bottom of the page, the Star also limits to comments to around 25 at which point the section is closed.

I noticed a few weeks ago that the Start printed a letter from someone from a local UKIP office, but the letter was printed without a comments section, thus making it impossible for anyone to offer an alternative view. As it happens the letter was reasonably non confrontational anyway, but it struck me that by denying the opportunity to debate with UKIP the Star was leaving itself open to charges of bias.

This week the Star did it again with a letter from R Knight, Telford & Wrekin UKIP

I do not remember any other letter being posted from any other source without the attached comment form, so this Corbett like policy seems to be reserved solely for UKIP.

UKIP would not be scared of comments nor are they incapable of defending their position, so I wrote to the Star editor to ask for an explanation of their policy. I also sent a copy to the Electronic Editor who replied with a standard letter telling me they do not enter into correspondence over their comments section! fair enough, I can see the reason for that, but it did not get me very far.

I also receive a letter from the editor, who was a little more forthcoming although she got the wrong end of the stick and thought I was complaining about the Star printing the letter from UKIP in the first place, and replied accordingly, thus entirely missing my point.

Apparently there is no policy in place and the only limits are those of space and legal considerations.

I have written again but given the policy of not entering into correspondence over the comment section I do not expect to progress this further.

I was however very interested to learn that;

the overwhelming majority of “political” letters happen to be from UKIP supporters, very few opposing the Party, or in fact those in favour of membership of the EU, are received.

Many of those which are submitted are, for some reason, usually highly libelous and too personal in content to print.

From this information I conclude that either UKIP is bombarding the letters page, or the local community are strongly anti – EU. I would have thought if it were the first, then there would still be a reasonable amount of Pro-EU letters dropping through the Stars inbox, but there are very few letters expressing opposition to UKIP or supportive of the EU. So I will take heart that my local community is anti EU whether that transfers into UKIP votes is entirely another matter.

Edit: just to prove me wrong the Star has just published one other letter without comments?