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The EU constitution is one
of the biggest political gambles Mr Brown could make
CHRISTOPHER BOOKER
UK
Daily Mail
Thursday Aug 30, 2007
Something very odd has been going on in Britain this August.
Ever more people - including, we are told, more than 100 of his
own MPs - have been waking up to the realisation that our Prime
Minister Gordon Brown is attempting to get away with one of the
most shameless and fraudulent gambles in our political history.
It was bad enough that his fellow European leaders should have
conspired to smuggle the rejected EU constitution back onto their
political agenda simply by giving it a different name: the "Reform
Treaty".
At least most of them have been honest enough to admit that its
contents are essentially the same as those of the constitution
which was chucked out by the French and Dutch voters in 2005.
But in Mr Brown's case, he has been guilty of a double deception.
He has tried to pretend that the new treaty is completely different
from the old constitution - and he has done so because he hopes
it will let him off the hook of that manifesto promise on which
he and the Labour Government were elected in 2005: to hold a referendum.
Poll after poll in recent weeks has shown overwhelming majorities
in favour of a referendum. Most of our newspapers are demanding
a referendum. David Cameron and the Tory Party are demanding a
referendum.
(Article continues below)
Even many of his own MPs are now asking that he honours that
promise of a referendum on which they were elected - with the
support of trade unions that sponsor no fewer than 12 members
of his own Cabinet.
Yet Mr Brown is gambling that he can break that promise for one
simple reason - because he thinks he can get away with it.
He is gambling that, by the time MPs return from holiday in October,
the behind-the-scenes procedures needed to approve the new treaty
will be almost completed.
He is gambling that the British people will not kick up enough
of a fuss to make those demands for a referendum irresistible.
Privately he hopes that, although those polls keep showing more
than 80 per cent of the British people in favour of a referendum,
ultimately they do not care enough about it to stop him - and
that by the time the treaty is agreed in October, to be signed
in December, the fuss will be over.
Is Mr Brown going to be proved right? Unfortunately he has got
one enormous asset on his side and this has been the greatest
asset of those seeking to build the "European project"
for decades.
What is at stake with this new treaty is nothing less than the
putting of the all-but final touches to the setting up of a new
form of government to rule over us, with the power to decide almost
all the laws we have to obey.
But the harsh fact is that to most people this new form of government
taking shape in Brussels seems so remote, complicated and boring
that they have difficulty in seeing how it relates to their own
lives.
One of the most remarkable features of our politics in recent
years has been how many of the changes to our national life which
get us most angry have only come about because of decisions taken
in Brussels - and yet how cleverly our politicians have managed
to hide this from view, so that most people have no real idea
where these changes come from.
A glaring example has been the shambles engulfing the once-efficient
system whereby we dispose of our rubbish.
Everything about this mess, from the plethora of different coloured
bins into which we are expected to put our waste to the national
epidemic of flytipping, originated in laws handed down by Brussels.
Yet somehow our politicians have managed to shroud all this in
such obscurity, without explaining it, that most people are still
completely in the dark as to why our rubbish disposal has been
reduced to such chaos.
Last week, yet again, there were front-page headlines over the
ongoing farce of Home Improvement Packs. Almost every housing
expert in the land wants to see them scrapped.
But how often do ministers honestly admit to us that the reason
they cannot abolish HIPs is because we must comply with an EU
directive requiring all homes sold to have an "energy performance
certificate" (an edict issued by Brussels five years ago
to fight "global warming")?
When did ministers explain to us that the reason we recently
had to switch to the cumbersome new postal system of stamping
mail by weight and size was our need to comply with an EU postal
directive (which is also part of the reason we are losing so many
small post offices)?
There can be almost no one in the country who is not anguished
over the number of our soldiers being needlessly killed in Iraq
and Afghanistan because they are not supplied with the right equipment,
such as the properly mine-protected vehicles now being used by
almost every other front-line force in those countries.
The explanation, however, is not that the Ministry of Defence
hasn't had enough money to pay for new equipment. In recent years
the MoD has been pouring out tens of billions of pounds on grandiose
new projects, such as the Eurofighter and new giant carriers for
the Navy - all to equip us to fight imaginary wars in the future,
as part of the EU's planned "Rapid Reaction Force".
It is this more than anything which has left far too little cash
to equip our forces properly for the real wars they are actually
having to fight today.
In all directions we can already see how our national is life
being changed and distorted, as the result of decisions handed
down by this new level of government which mysteriously rules
over our lives from Brussels - and which our politicians are so
strangely reluctant to explain to us.
Yet it is these same politicians, led by Gordon Brown, who are
now so desperate to see a further huge tranche of our power to
govern ourselves handed over by this new treaty: the "EU
constitution which dare not speak its name".
And Mr Brown believes that his greatest asset in this slowmotion
coup d'etat is that people will not realise just what an intimate
connection there is between this new form of government and the
laws which are increasingly causing such unhappiness in our daily
lives.
If only the British people could recognise the extent to which
this mis- shapen new form of government already rules over us,
and how much more power we are being asked to hand over to it
by this treaty, the clamour for a referendum would become deafening.
But Mr Brown's gamble is that, so long as we remain in ignorance
as to what is really at stake, we will not care enough to stop
him getting his way. The fact is that he wants to give away powers
which do not belong to him or to Parliament but to all of us.
That he is prepared to do so without consulting us - and on the
basis of lies and broken promises - should make us all so angry
that he cannot get away with it.
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