A View From Middle England - Conservative with a slight libertarian touch - For Christian charity and traditional belief - Free Enterprise NOT Covert Corporatism

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Man of Straw?

Jack Straw comes to the House of Commons today to declare that it is pointless having a referendum in the UK. After all, the French and the Dutch have well and truly scuppered the European Constitution. It would be silly to have the British vote No (which is what they all think in the New Labour hierachy) - No to something that is already a dead duck!

Well, is it? According to Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph, the wily weasels of the European Commission have something up their sleeves! He says -

"It is also true that, under the Vienna Convention, the treaty cannot come into force unless all 25 signatories ratify. But so long as the "No" countries are not more than five, the matter will simply be referred again to the European Council, under Declaration 30 attached to the treaty, to decide what happens next. If by chance more than five countries say "No", indeed we shall then be in uncharted waters. The treaty does not allow for such a ridiculous possibility. But we are not there yet."

So, Jack Straw, your reasoning may be defective. What if only four countries say No and the rest are in favour? The Council of Ministers go into a huddle, think awhile, and come up with a plan. Why not have more opt-outs and opt-ins? Sounds good! So the European Constitution ends up like the European Monetary Union. Some in, some out. Those out don't get all the goodies, but heck, they can sure flex their muscles!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/05/nbook05.xml

1 comments:

Very well put. I said exactly the same thing (different words obviously) when I heard about it. It's blatantly obvious that the cancelling of the referrendum (which was an election promise) was for the simple fact that it wouldn't count as a no vote so the constitution could be dragged back into the light again in a couple of years time.

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