Tories Win in West Aberdeenshire EU Vote

I hear the Tories have won in West Aberdeenshire in the EU vote. This is great news.

Statement from Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell:

“On the basis of tonight’s European results, Conservatives are winning again across Scotland, taking seats like Edinburgh South, East Renfrewshire and Dumfries & Galloway from Labour and Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk and West Aberdeenshire & Kincardine from the Liberal Democrats. This European election result is a disaster for Labour in Scotland. It only emphasises that the choice at the next Westminster election is between a tired and failing Labour Government or a rejuvenated Conservative Party. Only the Conservatives can remove Labour from Downing Street."

This is a good reflection of the hard work being put into Scotland. Here in West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine Alex Johnstone is putting in a huge amount of work and it is obviously paying off. Let us hope it is reflected in the coming (shortly?) General Election.

Rifkind: How the Irish No Vote may help the Tories

Malcolm Rifkind on the Irish No vote in a European Affairs discussion last week.

I have highlighted the most important point which is that the No Vote may delay the ratification of the treaty beyond the length of the current Labour Government. The Conservatives will then be free to put the Lisbon Treaty to a Referendum. We can only hope this is true and the public can have their promised vote.

The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) ended her speech with a quotation; perhaps I may begin with one from many years ago. G. K. Chesterton said:

"The golden age of the good European is...a place where people will love each other; not...a place where they will be each other."

Although he was clearly not envisaging the European Union, there is a resonance between his words and the debate here and throughout Europe on the kind of Europe that we are trying to create. Is it a Europe of close co-operation, close friendship and close amity with the wider world, or a Europe that is constantly seeking further integration with some distant aspiration and ideal? Debates in Britain and elsewhere in Europe increasingly show that the wider public simply do not give their consent to the more integrated type of Europe that many of its founding fathers assumed would be Europe's destiny, and to which many in Europe, particularly continental Europe, still aspire.

Let me comment on some of the conclusions and implications that we ought to draw from the referendum in Ireland. My first point is potentially of domestic significance. If the Irish Government were to propose holding a second referendum at some future date, it would, at the very least, mean a major delay before final implementation of the new treaty; that would be an unavoidable consequence of the Irish saying that they wished to hold a second referendum. It would be perhaps another year, a year and a half, or even two years before all countries could ratify. Before then, there will almost certainly be a United Kingdom general election. If that led to a change of Government, one consequence would be that even if the treaty had been ratified in the United Kingdom, if it had not come into effect because an Irish referendum had not yet taken place, an incoming Conservative Government could reopen the whole issue by calling a referendum. That was not true until last week. Even if we had ratified, we could de-ratify if the treaty had not yet come into effect.

I have made clear my view that it would be absurd for a future Conservative Government to hold a referendum if the treaty had already come into effect; that would be a pointless exercise, and would be wrought with great difficulties. If, however, the treaty had not come into effect because the Irish had not ratified, my Front-Bench colleagues would be perfectly entitled to say, "The United Kingdom made a commitment that the British would have a choice", and that the matter should not simply be up to the Government." That is a profound consequence of what happened last week.

You are Stupid and we Know it - Democracy

Via the Devil's Kitchen we get this sublime comment on us stupid proles from the Romanians.

Referenda and Democracy
The EU has now accumulated significant (bad) experiences with referenda. It was very delicately yet effectively communicated by the Romanian social-democrat MEPs: “The referendum in Ireland has demonstrated that direct democracy (by way of referendum) cannot ensure the progress of the European process. The security, liberty and prosperity of hundreds of millions of European citizens ask for complex leadership actions, which cannot be appreciated by heterogeneous populations, from the point of view of the information level and the education one.European integration is a process that must be conducted politically by the elected representatives of the European citizens.

It's good to see that our elected representative place such high value on the general public. I assume the non-PC version of this is

F***** thick Micks think they can hold us to ransom, well b***** them

The Devil's Kitchen: MEPs: You're Too Stupid To Vote

Why we should not ratify the Lisbon Treaty.

Read the following article in the Financial Times to see why we should never trust the Eurocrats to be in any way responsible for our country.

Some of the choice quotes are as follows

Why am I so confident that the Lisbon treaty is going to be implemented? Because, contrary to widespread protestations, Europe’s leaders actually have a plan B. It is not a pretty plan. Just listen to what senior French and German politicians had to say over the weekend. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, suggested on Saturday that one way to implement the treaty was for Ireland to withdraw temporarily from the process of European integration. This is a fairly exotic comment for an otherwise non-exotic minister. I had no idea that that you could temporarily withdraw from the EU and rejoin it later, as though you were buying a forward contract with an option attached. What he is saying in effect is that Ireland should quit the EU.

And another near the end

What if the Irish government refused to hold a second referendum? In that case I would suspect a frantic discussion about enforcing the Lisbon treaty without the Irish. I honestly have no idea of how this could work. I know this appears to be in contravention of European law. But then again, European law may not be quite as predictable as you may think. It is not enforced by pundits, but by an often unpredictable court. My hunch is that if the 26 member states really wanted to do this, they would find a legal way.

What does all this say. It basically means that we have a bunch of Eurocrats in France and Germany who will never take "no" as an answer,. To them no is just something to be worked around. They maintain this is the will of the people, but only one country has so far had the right to vote on the Lisbon Treaty and they have said NO.

Other countries are also possibly either going to say no or are having trouble ratifying the Treaty.

Meanwhile in the deep, dark bunker that is Gordon Brown's abode thoughts of how to extract himself from this mess will be ongoing. Does he hope the Irish have done him a favour and made the Lisbon treaty disappear or will it wake up the call for us not to ratify the Treaty without a referendum, you remember the one Gordon promised us.

H/T to Seant on Political Betting

Europe’s hardball plan B for the Lisbon treaty

Large Snouts, Large troughs

Over at the EU I see there is a secret report of how deep some MEP's have managed to get their snouts into the ever-increasing trough of OUR money.

Apparently the MEP Mr Davies was allowed confidential access to the secret internal audit report and immediately reported it to the EU's anti-fraud squad for immediate action.
According to Mr Davies

"This report is dynamite - and makes the Derek Conway affair at Westminster look like small change,"

"When I looked at this report my first reaction was to laugh at the outrageous extent of the abuses.

"Then that feeling turned to anger and the realisation that the police or the anti-fraud people should be looking at this."

Every MEP is eligible for about £130,000 a year to pay for staff. One case has the whole allowance being used but no staff being employed. One MEP who has seen the report said that direct payments had been made to political parties by MEPs. There are apparently many cases of MEPs failing to make social security payments for alleged employees.

Franz Bruner, director general of Olaf, the EU's internal anti-fraud squad, said he was launching an inquiry and had demanded to see the audit report by the end of this week.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Call for MEPs' cash fraud probe

EU Constitution "Lite"

Angela Merkel is trying to push through a "lite" version of the trashed EU Constitution by weasel-wording the original version. She says in the letter leaked to the Times:

“Every effort will have to be made to restrict change to what is absolutely necessary to reach an overall agreement and to ensure ratification by all member states.”

She then posed a dozen key questions, including: “How do you assess the proposal made by some member states to use different terminology without changing the legal substance — for example with regard to the title of the treaty, the denomination of legal acts, and the union’s minister of foreign affairs.”

In the same way, she asks whether to “replace the full text of the Charter of Fundamental Rights by a short cross reference having the same legal value”. As proposed by Mr Blair, the replacement for the Constitution could be presented as a treaty that amends the Nice Treaty of 2001, she said, “with the necessary presentational changes resulting from the return to the classical method of treaty changes”.

Mr Blair was trumpeting on about this the day before here. He says in the interview with European newspapers and the Financial Times,

that the plan proposed by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, will not be a “constitutional treaty” that alters the relationship between Europe and member states, thus avoiding a referendum. But he steers clear of saying how far the treaty will go in extending qualified majority voting and installing a permanent Council president.

So here we go again having failed to get this through the normal methods of democracy and having been thrown out in both France and Netherlands, a few changes will make it all right and nobody has to approve it let alone put it to a referendum

Let me quote from the inimitable SeanT on PoliticalBetting

Unbelievable. They are nakedly - brazenly - trying to bring back a Treaty already voted down in two states, and this time trying to avoid a referendum by minor cosmetic changes. Utterly disgraceful. If you believe in Europe - and many good, honest people do - you cannot want your project to proceed in this fashion: by deception of the people, by treachery, evasion and sleight of hand.

Just give us a vote. That’s all we want. Whoever wins, wins. But let us vote.

Blair is the most disgusting man in the history of modern British politics. May he rot in Hell, if Hell will have him.

I'd agree with SeanT all the way on this.


Merkel revives a slimline constitution

Deny the Holocaust at your peril

The Devils Kitchen is highlighting a new EEC Diktat that will soon probably be a new European Law. He quotes from the Times:

Laws that make denying or trivialising the Holocaust a criminal offence punishable by jail sentences will be introduced across the European Union, according to a proposal expecting to win backing from ministers Thursday.

Offenders will face up to three years in jail under the proposed legislation, which will also apply to inciting violence against ethnic, religious or national groups.

One further point worthy of special mention is the following:

Diplomats in Brussels voiced confidence on Tuesday that the controversial plan, which has been the subject of heated debate for six years, will be endorsed by member states. However, the Baltic countries and Poland are still holding out for an inclusion of “Stalinist crimes” alongside the Holocaust in the text – a move that is being resisted by the majority of other EU countries.

So the killing of 20 million people is obviously OK. What's next? Will we also have the denial that there is a Civil War in Iraq (650,00 dead and counting by the day) written into the law as well.

Have a read of what he has to say and a variety of other bloggers including Iain Dale

The Devil's Kitchen: Deny the Holocaust at your peril