I think I've just found possibly the very first noble act by a politician anywhere on the face of the planet within my lifetime, excuse me while I have a lie down now.
The UK's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says there is "no point" in pursuing plans for a referendum on the EU constitution after France and the Netherlands voted "No". The plans for a referendum in Britain have been more or less put on hold until further notice.
Now apart from my obvious leanings towards "the sceptered isle" I shall now tell you why I think that this act of public sloth from the Foreign Secretary is perhaps one of the best things that could possibly happen in the immediate future (which by all accounts happens to show a touch of irony considering we usually hate it when pollies do diddly-squat).
Yesterday being the 6th of June marked the 61st anniversary of D-Day. During the 20th Century, Europe saw the vile shadow of not one but two World Wars. Now while it's fair to say that England was never sucessfully invaded in either sets of conflict, it still paid a hurrendous price with the loss of many of its sons and fathers - if that's just England and Her Maj's UK then what of the rest of Europe?
It's been estimated that directly and indirect loss of life during the two World Wars was something in the order of 250,000,000. It therefore makes perfect sense to unify the nations of Europe somehow to ensure that this terrible bloody mess never happens again. Intertwined with the promise of a united and peaceful Europe also lie the seeds for the destruction of that union. Europe as an entity is an economic unit that could take on the United States sure, but instead of 50 states which are all part of one country, there lie about that many countries and possibly double the number of ethnic groups speaking some 29 languages.
The Constitution of Europe requires at its essence an acquiescence on the part of the member countries to let European Law have priority over their own laws. Now while this works for the 6 states in Australia and the 50 in the US, in Europe there seems to be a lot of resentment if say a country like Poland was railroaded by the other member countries into imposing a law which it neither agreed to nor ratified.
There are of course other implications for Britain which are unique. One is the problem of the Scottish banks. Currently they issue their own currency against the debts of the bank, but under EU rules, this power would be removed and consequently I think it's fair to say that the buy-back of hard currency would probably bankrupt Scotland and thus drag down the UK with it.Also there is the problem of state monopolies like the BBC and the NHS, both of which are paid via subscription and not via taxes.
When Britain becomes president over the EU come July 1 it would want to show yet again a united front, and as such if Britons also voted "no" on the constitution, then they'd be accused of being the baddies who killed Europe. Europe will die eventually, it's just that no-one really wants the blame yet - doing nothing is the best policy and hence Jack Straw is the first noble politician I've seen in my lifetime.
2 comments:
I have heard this theory myself and I'm not entirely sure that the devil operates like this.
I've got my own theory that as governments slowly become irrelevant and companies merge, that the treaty will more like a directive in a board room. Companies ignore borders and direct politicians through power and vote chasing.
Such an act would not be answerable to the people at all. Remember, the Prince of Light often moves by stealth and the concept of a company would have been totally foreign to a person living in c.70AD
All this lies on the assumption that the EU will actually be around in 10 years.
We've just been through 60 years of relative peace in Europe and that has to be a record.
When the current generation of fuddy-duddies who remember the war die, then Europe will descend into war again. Hopefully there won't be nukes.
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