Tuesday, 19 January 2010

The Lisbon Treaty – anyone get the feeling like they are living on Animal Farm?

Is it just me or did the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty last month occur without so much as a whimper? On the day it became law I awoke to check the papers and I was shocked to find that no national newspapers made any significant mention of it. Surely it would make it on to one of the television news bulletins I thought? No, nothing. Ok there was a nice little blog article on the Daily Telegraph website by the ever reliable Daniel Hanan lamenting UK seising to be a nation, but was that it? Was that the sum total of marking such a significant constitutional event in the mainstream media? Surely the enactment of such a disgraceful treaty should have been met with more protest?

It is worth reminding us of where we have come from in relation to this subject. I say this because I fear that in relation to the great European project we are in danger of becoming like the inhabitants of George Orwell’s, Animal Farm. We are sleep walking into an irrevocable and unprecedented change of the state we live in and we seem even unable to recall the rules as they once were or what indeed had been promised to us. The current government promised us that we would get a vote on the European Constitution. Given that the European Community that existed in 1972 has morphed beyond recognition into a supra-national being now known as the European Union, this was the very least a patient public deserved. At last the British people that had helplessly witnessed the sovereignty of our nation be chipped away at over 30 years would finally have a say on an unprecedented constitutional question. Due to the very existence of the referendum that took place in 1972, what is not unprecedented is that when there are questions of such magnitude the people have a right to a referendum. And yet when our European brothers and sisters voted in 2005 in France and the Netherlands that they had had enough of the European project of an ‘ever closer Union’ and gave a resounding ‘no’ to the European Constitution our dear politicians thought it wise to retract their promise of a referendum. Instead they made a few minor edits, changed the name and said that because they had done so we no longer needed to be consulted and within just 4 years it has become law. Animal Farm has become Manor Farm, two legs used to be worse than four legs but two legs are now better and eventually although we all believed that ‘all animals are equal’ we now have found out that ‘some animals are more equal than others’.

Surely such a turn of events not so long ago or even in most parts of the world today would have been met with riots on the street? The poll tax got people rioting and that wasn’t so long ago. Why are people not angered about this? Sure, a G8 meeting, a meaningless over-expensive climate change conference or if you a Muslim of particular sensitivity then perhaps the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed is cause for a good old protest complete with controversial chanting, placards and skirmishes with the police. But the enactment of a law that has changed the status of this country’s sovereignty irretrievably and that the government promised us a referendum on and then back tracked when it knew we would say no, we get no protest at all, not even a mention in the newspapers. Just tacit acceptance of the inevitable march towards a federal European state. Are people really happy to let our politicians sign away our sovereignty and say nothing about it? I cannot believe that.

Please I beseech you, protest and complain! Riot if need be! Keep doing so until the great European project is halted and reversed like the people wanted in the first place! It is not an easy battle to be won, the Dutch and French referendums prove that they are determined to achieve their goal of the United States of Europe even in the face of overwhelming support against it. But please let us not be like the passive victims on Animal Farm staring at the corrupted rule book thinking to ourselves that ‘I am sure it was different once’ but cannot recall what it was that has cheated us.

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