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Saturday, 26 January 2008

Democracy Gordon Brown style

Gordon Brown is as fundamentally dishonest as Tony Blair was and his behaviour over the EU Treaty is nothing short of disgusting. Gordon Brown was part of the team that wrote the last Labour manifesto, you remember the one that promised a referendum on the EU Constitution. Yes I do realise that that was only promised to draw any advantage that might accrue to the Conservatives if they promised a referendum. Then Gordon Brown reneged on this promise by claiming that the Treaty was not the same as the Constitution. He and other Labour politicians love to quote Angela Merkel when she said that the Constitutional process had been abandoned. It has, but that does not matter a bean as all that was abandoned was the process of rep;lacing all the existing European Treaties with a new Constitution. This process has been replaced with a new amending treaty that moves us to the same place as we would have been with the Constitution but by amending the existing treaties instead. As Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the architect of the abandoned European Constitution, admitted
"Looking at the content, the result is that the institutional proposals of the constitutional treaty….are found complete in the Lisbon Treaty, only in a different order and inserted in former treaties.." He made clear that the purpose of the rewritten Treaty was to make people think the new version did not merit being put to the people in referendums. "Above all, it is to avoid having referendums thanks to the fact that the articles are spread out and constitutional vocabulary has been removed," he added. An Angela Merkel quote that the Labour liars refer to less often comes from her speech in June 2007 to the European Parliament and runs "The substance of the Constitution is preserved, that is a fact".


I previously blogged that I found myself in agreement with Tony Benn over the matter of Parliament having no right to relinquish the powers of the country to an external unelected and unaccountable power. Now I find myself in agreement with Tony Benn as he expresses them in this video...




What I find interesting in this video is quite how smug and self-assured Ed Miliband is, he makes David Miliabnd look almost human. It is also quite clear that Ed Miliband has not read the Lisbon Treaty. Hilary Benn states that "... it was very different in character... it was, that's my view and we live in a democracy. OK" Sunday lunch at the Benn family house must be fun.


Having reneged on his promise of a referendum, Gordon Brown then promised us that Parliament would have ample time to debate the Treaty so making a referendum unnecessary; 20-25 days was the period that was being promised by the Government. Then we discover that although MPs will be able to debate the Treaty they will be unable to amend even one word of it, not that they were given the Treaty to read before the debate started. Then we learned that the Labour MPs would be under a three line whip to support the Government postiion, so only the very brave would vote against the Government. Now we learn that "Gordon Brown has caused anger among MPs by trying to cut in half the amount of time Parliament will have to debate the EU Reform Treaty...they have caused more dissent by telling MPs to expect just 12 days of Commons time for detailed discussion. Equally controversial is a decision to give a specific theme to each day's debate, with the topics chosen by ministers. Labour MPs said this was an attempt to "swerve" round sensitive issues....The Bill to ratify the treaty was granted a second reading on Monday after Speaker Michael Martin refused to call a rebel Labour amendment demanding a referendum. Despite this, 19 Labour MPs still voted against. To vote against a Bill at second reading is described by the whips as a "hanging offence". An official close to talks on the Bill said ministers had at no time promised any set number of days for debate. He said ministers were being "very generous".

Ed Miliband's promise of a "vigorous debate" looks like bullshit to me.


Is the word "traitor" too strong to be applied to Gordon Brown, David Miliband et al?

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