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From the Times:

December 09, 2002
The ultimate betrayal, no questions asked
William Rees-Mogg

For the past year Tony Blair has been planning to take Britain into a United States of Europe without allowing British voters a referendum on the issue. That has been made clear in his Cardiff speech last month and in a little noticed parliamentary answer of 12 months ago. This is a very manipulative Government.

On November 28 the Prime Minister made a speech at Cardiff on “The Future of Europe, Strong, Effective and Democratic”. Most previous Prime Ministers, perhaps all, would have felt that this speech must be made to Parliament, since it advocated radical new proposals to transfer powers from Parliament to the European Union. The speech attracted only modest coverage in the press, though its significance was well understood on the continent and, indeed, by the Foreign Office. Nor did it receive much comment from opposition parties. If the Conservative Party is the watchdog of liberties, the dog has been doped.

There had been a similar example of under-reaction after November 21, 2001, when Andrew Rosindell, Conservative MP for Romford, asked the Minister for Europe whether there would be a referendum on the new constitution for Europe expected to emerge from Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s convention. Peter Hain replied: “Treaty change is a matter for member states to decide by unanimity in accordance with their own constitutional requirements. In the United Kingdom this involves a ratification procedure requiring legislation. It is right that Parliament should decide on the results the Government achieves at inter-governmental conferences.” That means no referendum.

The Government had, therefore, decided before the convention had produced any results at all that the new constitution, whatever it might be, should not be subject to direct popular approval. Like Maastricht, it will be whipped through. The British people may be robbed of their liberty and bundled into a United States of Europe without a vote, though it was felt necessary to hold a referendum even in order to establish a Mayor for London.

The press paid little attention to this reply, though it was of the highest constitutional significance. It could decide our nation’s future and freedom. Mr Rosindell can be thanked for his question, the most important question which has been asked in this Parliament, but the Tory front bench did not follow it up.

No one can yet be sure where the convention will take Europe, though it is certain to lead to a great extension of the powers of the EU. Ultimate sovereignty itself may pass from the nation states to the centre. One proposal is for “an obligation of loyal co-operation” which has been described in this newspaper as “a giant constitutional step”, which, indeed, it is.

Since Cardiff we do, however, know how the Prime Minister sees the future of Europe. He talks of national independence, but plans in terms of expanding European power. The theme of his speech, in his own words, is that “we need more Europe, not less”. He wants to give more power to all of the European institutions, to the Commission, to the Council, to the Parliament and to the Court. Obviously these additional powers must come from somewhere. They come from the governments, parliaments and courts of the individual European nations, including Britain.

In the Prime Minister’s terms, “more Europe” includes an extension of European powers in existing areas and into new areas. In the ugly jargon of Europe, he tells us: “I do believe it is right to communitise much of the justice and home affairs pillar.” Many of the Home Secretary’s functions are to go to Brussels, including crime, asylum and immigration.

“Europe,” the Prime Minister says, “must be able to speak more effectively on foreign policy and defence, co-ordinate more effectively and act more effectively.” So the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, as well as the Home Office and the Lord Chancellor, will see a substantial part of their functions transferred to Brussels. So will the British judges. “We need a strong Court of Justice,” he says. Four of our great departments of state lose powers to Brussels, but there will be no referendum.

The Prime Minister foresees other measures to increase the power of the European centre at the expense of the individual nations. He wants to reduce national vetoes to a minimum, though, implausibly, he hopes to keep Britain’s veto on taxation policies. He wants a large extension of qualified majority voting, even beyond what was agreed in the Nice Treaty. Tony Blair wants a “fixed chair of the European Council”, a new President of Europe. Perhaps he sees himself in this role.

If the new constitution for Europe follows the lines of the Cardiff speech, let alone the still more extravagant federalist proposals of Romano Prodi, Europe will have a more centralised and far less democratic constitution than the United States. The European nations will have lost their independence; they will, in effect, be colonies of a centralised European empire, ruled by the Franco-German political class.

Perhaps a Blair or a Jenkins will occasionally be allowed the temporary appearance of authority as the President of the Council or the Commission. The British electorate will have lost the core power of democracy, the ability to throw out a failing government. There will never again be a 1945, a 1979 or a 1997. Even if a British government is thrown out, that will have no more consequence than the electoral defeat of a county council. The real power, the European centre, will never be thrown out. It will be a self-perpetuating bureaucratic oligarchy.

Tony Blair has his own description of this new Europe. He says that it “can be a superpower, if not a super-state”. That is the kind of glib, false distinction that from time to time makes the Prime Minister’s rhetoric uniquely repulsive. The opening passage of his Cardiff speech makes it obvious that he has been taken over by the idea of a European empire, in which he himself hopes to be a leading figure.

He speaks of “the creation of a new Europe ... stretching from Lapland in the north to Malta in the south, from the coast of Co Kerry in the west to the Black Sea, and ultimately — yes — to Turkey’s borders in the east. It will contain over 500 million people, a political and economic entity bigger than the US and Japan put together. This achievement is truly historic — the more so because it is coming about peacefully and democratically (though not, of course, after a referendum) ... we will see few more significant events in our lifetime.”

He goes on to talk, in a lofty strain, of Churchill, the Iron Curtain, the Fulton speech, of “completing Churchill’s unfinished business”, and “a quantum leap of democratic governments on an international scale”. On the subject of Europe, Blair seems now to be suffering from what Carl Jung termed “psychic inflation”. He thinks he is Churchill, and that Churchill wanted Britain to become a province of the European empire, without our consent.

The project is clear enough. This week’s Copenhagen summit will approve European enlargement, without any reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, and on tough terms to the new entrants. In 2004, Giscard’s convention will report. In 2005 an inter-governmental conference will adopt a constitution for a United States of Europe. The Labour Party will then fight a general election. There will be no referendum on this constitution, though it is far more significant than the single currency. The euro referendum may be postponed until it can safely be held. If Gordon Brown causes any trouble, he will be sacked, probably soon after the general election.

The Liberal Democrats are enthusiastic accomplices in this project, despite its anti-democratic character. The Tories seem so stunned by their two big election defeats that they are not yet ready to fight.

I am not sure that this project can be stopped, though in the end it may well explode from its own exaggerations. I am sure that it is anti-parliamentary, anti-democratic, anti-British, and even ultimately anti-European. I suspect that Tony Blair’s attachment to it has become obsessive — his Cardiff language is hysterical.

The project involves a war of fundamental loyalties. Most of us are loyal to Britain. Blair, our Prime Minister, has transferred his ultimate loyalty to Europe, while still purporting to be the servant of his own nation. No man, no Prime Minister, can serve two masters. He is doomed to betray one or the other.