Don't you find it difficult to understand sometimes how the UK, which is overwhelmingly eurosceptic, has somehow over the years managed to elect so many europhile MEPs?
Obviously a large part of the problem is that the Conservative Party pretends to be eurosceptic; but at some stage on the flight or Eurostar journey to Brussels or Strasbourg Tory MEPs undergo a dramatic change in not only attitude but policy. Within the European Parliament they are on the whole keen Europeans, happy to support and promote harmonising legislation that takes the UK on another unwanted step towards political integration.
It is with interest that I read that a Eastern Region MEP, the Liberal Democrat Andrew Duff, has recently been made President of the Union of European Federalists (UEF). The UEF is a nongovernmental and supranational organisation “dedicated to the promotion of a…federal Europe”. In fairness to Mr Duff he is openly an avid europhile; although his party is starting to realise their pro-European stance is a big vote loser with the British public (as the Euro elections of 2004 so starkly showed) Mr Duff continues to try and swim against the tide of sense and reason and take our country in a federalist direction.
And so Mr Duff used his recent election as President to outline the key objectives of the UEF. Unsurprisingly the ambition of this organisation is to ensure that the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified in 2009. Why do I write this? Just in case you needed another reason to oppose this revamped European Constitution…
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Josh O'Nyons is a former UKIP member.
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2 comments:
At least, unlike the pre-Cameron Tories, the Lib Dems are consistent - no matter how much you / we disagree with their policies, as a party they are avowedly euro-federalist. How exactly this can be squared with their usual by-election mantra of 'localism is everything' is a different branch from the hypocrisy tree.
You could also argue that (and UKIP do, I believe) that the direction of Cameronian conservatism is distinctly more Europhile than has been historically evident, excepting such bad fringe examples as Ken Clarke.
The Lib Dems are a deeply fractured and schizophrenic party. They believe in localism but they believe in centralising power in a continent-wide federation whose lowest federal unit of government is a euroregion with a population of millions and geographically the size of a small country (ie. Wales Scotland). They are supposed to be liberals but they abstain on serious civil liberties issues (apart from ID cards which they oppose). They're supposed to be progressive and in favour of better accountability and transparency in parliament but they allowed the EU not-a-constitution to be ratified by abstaining on the final vote.
The membership of the Conswervatives is eurosceptic but the leadership is eurofederalist. Camoron makes some eurosceptic noises but it's a very careful smokescreen and he does go off-message. In response to a readers question he told the Shropshire Star, my local paper, that he didn't want the UK to leave the EU and that he believed we are better off in Europe but not ruled by Europe. He knows that one comes with the other, there is no way of being in the EU without being run by the EU (apart from the French of course).
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