[42] News from Absurdistan - British death wish(es)

While Britain is violating the sovereignty of countries all over the world, it is incapable of defending its own.

While Britain is waging wars to spread democracy all over the world, it is about to surrender domestic democracy to the bureaucracies of a superstate.

In Britain, the public seems to show at least some concern over the matter - in Germany, it is a non-issue, because people here, unaware of the meaning of liberty, do not understand the concept of a constitution (the "Grundgesetz" - Germany's fig leaf substitute of a constitution - being a meaningless piece of paper to be amended at will) and always sheepishly hope for more efficient government; a constitution is regarded as some sort of an outline of the legal(alistic) etc. arrangements by which paternalistic government ought to improve our lot.

Writes Tom Clougherty from the Adam Smith Institute:

...it is beginning to look like the government are the only ones who don't want a referendum.

This is a basic issue of trust. The government promised a referendum in their manifesto, and they should deliver. The fact that it's now called a 'treaty' not a 'referendum' is irrelevant – as Open Europe have pointed out only 10 of the 250 proposals contained in the treaty are different from the ones in the rejected constitution. The 'red lines' the prime minister keeps banging on about also applied to the original constitution – they offer no excuse for not holding a referendum.

It's also an issue of principle. If national powers are to be surrendered to the EU then the British people must have the final say. And whatever the government argues, national powers are being surrendered. The new treaty will effectively turn the EU into a superstate, fundamentally altering the UK's relationship with it. The EU will get full legal personality, an elected president, and a foreign minister and diplomatic service. There will be a significant shift away from unanimous voting to qualified majority voting. That means that the EU will be able to take more powers from the UK in future, without us agreeing to it.

The government's red lines do not protect the national interest. Even the Labour chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee has said the red lines would "leak like a sieve". The justice and home affairs opt-out is undermined by giving the activist European courts jurisdiction over it. The foreign policy opt-out is subject to so many exceptions that it's virtually meaningless. And the opt-out from the charter of fundamental rights is not legally an opt-out at all, and will likely be ignored by the EU judiciary.

We must have a referendum, and we should take the opportunity to vote "no".

Do not expect much in the way of successful resistance. The fundamental problem is too little understood: democracy - as accepted by the vast majority of Westerners - is a magnificently effective excuse for runaway government. The super-bureaucratic superstate is a natural result of our most fervently held political convictions; it has thrived within domestic borders for decades and is ready to consolidate national statism on a higher level.

The instincts of the political caste are well honed and always alert to take advantage of the implicit and inevitable subservience of "the people" built into our concept of democratic government.

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