Labour has left Britain on the fringes of Europe

Major Plonquer

William Hague is nothing but a bully - a big boy picking on little Milliband. Just because he comes from a poor part of the political spectrum where his associates have to steal from the public purse to put food on their table and his political party can't even afford a general election is no reason to ridicule the lad. Just because he hasn't had an upper-class education, can't form coherent thoughts or string together sentences to formulate an argument is no reason to humiliate him in public like this.

Shame on you Hague. Pick on someone your own size.

Rhoda Klapp

..or we could leave, scrap all the regulations, set our businesses free and decide our own destiny, because we are all grown up and do not need to live at home with our parents.

Ray

Much as I admire William Hague - surely one of the most formidable political figures of our generation - sadly in this article he demonstrates that same well-meaning myopia that bedevils so many Conservative MEPs too: namely an inability to see the wood for the trees.

So whilst, like our Tory MEPs, Mr Hague battles diligently to win Britain opt-outs and derogations from this-or-that piece of irksome EU legislation, even so the ratchet just keeps on clicking in the direction of ever greater control from Brussels.

This is because the whole 'raison d'etre' of the EU is to create a federal superstate whereby national governments fade away to irrelevance.

After over forty years of being constantly outflanked by the federalists (and with the careers of two Conservative prime ministers having been wrecked in the process) surely by now the Conservative leadership must be able to see that the only way to arrest or reverse this tide is to grab back our ball and go play elsewhere. NATO and the WTO have proved that it is intergovernmental bodies that deliver lasting achievements in terms of peace, security and free trade, whereas the supranational unions like the EU and the USSR only ever end up delivering dictatorship, inertia and resentment.

Forget the warm words and wishful prose, William, just get us out of this monstruous construct. That is the only way to truly defend Britain's national interest.

Mr Green

William said " It is time to try the alternative:"

So by that do you mean pull out of the EUSSR and run our own affairs then?
Ahh...no, you mean continue as we are, but without capitulating quite as often.

Pah!

David Cameron, please note........

So are you going to offer a post ratification referendum on Lisbon or not ?. The British public want a referendum. This subject has not gone away.

William, don't make the Conservatives into the third party to deny a referendum on Lisbon or you will despised as much as Labour and the Lib Dems are...........

HJ

Leave little Milliband alone. With only a 'D' in A-level physics, no-one is going to employ him anywhere where they need someone intelligent useful.

Mike Dickins

Well William you have made out a pretty clear case for your party
to represent us in the Euro
Parliament. But its a bit late in
the day to voice your opinion !

Minnie Ovens

Of all politicians I have more time for Hague.
Yet the reneging of Labour on their campaign promise; the advance of unintelligable doublespeak by all politicians; the shallowness and deceit shown by Westminster from all quarters in the past few years makes me want to hear, quite clearly and straightforwardly, an agreement by the Tories for a simple in or out referendum if they acquire power.
I'm sorry Mr Hague that it has come to this but I don't trust any of you, especially as we now have to have a lawyer to translate what you might or might not mean.

Dwight Vandryver

Lisbon is but the first of many treaties that will follow. As the grip of the EU establishment tightens on the member states, each treaty will squeeze out another drop of sovereignty until a European superstate is born.
Mr Hague is under the illusion that by being more proactive, the EU could be changed to Britain's advantage. Put simply, this is humbug. Ever since Ted Heath took the UK into the EEC in 1973, the UK has always been at an overall disadvantage in terms of annual cost, unwanted legislation, and the unrestricted movement of people across borders.
Mr Hague and the Tories have to demonstrate that the benefits of continued membership outweigh the effects of gradual assimilation into "Uropia" (the antithesis of Utopia) before attempting to influence the EU from within.

Julio

No mention of the EU referendum promised by Cameroon. Hague has highlighted the waste in the EU, the undemocratic nature and resistance to change, but he wants to stay in it? We can do much better out of it.

Retrograde

Mr Hague, I like most British people want to get out of the EU not more involved or more controlled by this Federalist pretender to the United States of Europe. Had their been any genuine referendum in Britain then you would know this truth to be evident.

paul gilboy

But Mr hague we are on the edge of europe! Thats a consequence of continental shift many millions of years ago. I think its beyond the wit of the tories to alter or influence that fact! Why does mr miliband keep on saying lewis carrol like nonsense and expect us to accept the reality he goes on to describe when talking about the E.U.
Its a very strange place this european union Alice would exclaim. Almost a parrallel universe to reality as we know it.
maybe we should send Alice down the hole along with the money that already goes there to see what its all about.

carole chapman

There should undoubtedly be a referendum on the Lisbon treaty as promised in the Labour manifesto. It is , however, much less likely to be passed now than before as the prospect of Blair returning from the dead like a vampire, to become President of Europe will surely fill the majority with more horror than a Hammer film.

MikeRN

The loss of sovereignty to the EU (remember British jobs for British workers?) is another reason that people choose to vote for the BNP. When politicians re-engage with reality and realise that the people of this country want to be governed by a competent local parliament which will respect democracy then the BNP will start to lose momentum.

David Lindsay

Still banging on about 1970s politics, eh? Imagine! The government now owns the car factories even in America, never mind in Britain, where Peter Mandelson has dropped more than enough hints that he has promised Unite that he will nationalise Vauxhall if the Germans cannot come up with anything better.

Old Labour support for nationalisation has always been strictly pragmatic, whereas of course New Labour was totally opposed no matter what, a position far more extreme than that of, say, Margaret Thatcher. And an old CPGB hand Mandy may be. But he is still Herbert Morrison’s grandson.

Will the Tories object? Just think of those two marginal seats in Luton, especially now that Margaret Moran is standing down.

Anyway, to the matter in hand.

The Tories have not left the European People’s Party. They are not going to. Other than Dan Hannan, who is already out of it, every Tory elected on 4th June will retain membership and at least implicitly tell David Cameron where to go.

Not that he will be going anywhere, because the whole thing was always a lie. David Cameron is Michael Heseltine’s Vicar on Earth, his mini-me. Of course he has never had the slightest intention of leaving the EPP. Don’t be silly.

Perhaps in order to remind us all that he did not in fact die a year or so ago, although he might as well have done, David Miliband has been popping up (recenty in front of trade union banners – I haven’t laughed so much for ages, and I am certain that he hadn’t the faintest idea what they were) to wring his hands over the sorts of people with whom the Tories are planning to associate.

But I would like to know what either he or David Cameron has in common with the EPP’s Gaullists (not Sarkozy, but Gaullists properly so called) or Christian Democrats (not Merkel, but Christian Democrats properly so called). Nothing.

More is the pity both economically and in terms of sheer patriotism in the Gaullist case. And more is the pity both economically and socially in the Christian Democratic case.

Like much of the French Socialist Party these days, plenty of Gaullists are Eurosceptical. Deep down, plenty of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats alike probably are, although they may not yet realise it. That trend will become more and more important as the need endlessly to be apologising for the War finally and necessarily ceases to be felt, just when the full negative consequences both of the Euro and of effectively unrestricted immigration become the really big issues in Germany.

Furthermore, the EU has always been an eventual threat to the power of the Länder. And politicians do not like threats to their powerbases. They do not like such threats at all.

By contrast, the likes of Latvian SS nostalgists (we approve of SS nostalgists in Bosnia and Kosovo, yet strangely not in Latvia) have no hope of influencing anything except through the EU but every guarantee of doing so under the that aegis, just as Sinn Féin has no hope of influencing anything except pursuant to the Good Friday Agreement or through the EU but every guarantee of doing so under that dual aegis.

Sinn Féin can really imagine nothing worse than a United Ireland, except perhaps the implementation of its own officially Eurosceptical position. And the likes of Latvian SS nostalgists can really imagine nothing worse than the restored “Freedom” of their “Fatherland”.

Making them the perfect partners for the Tories. Or for New Labour, come to that. They can really imagine nothing worse than the restored freedom of our Fatherland, either. Deep down, and indeed not so very deep down, they know that they have no hope of influencing anything, at least in any profound way or for any length of time, except through the EU.

The EU stops Gaullists and French Socialists from being proper Gaullists or proper French Socialists. It stops Christian Democrats and Social Democrats from being proper Christian Democrats or proper Social Democrats. And thus, it stops the people of Britain from asking why we, too, cannot have proper parties like those.

Instead, we have the interchangeable “Centre Left” and “Centre Right”, both of them the same rancid brew of Sixties-to-Eighties poisons: campus Trotskyism at the middle-aged peak of its powers, but with no sign of going away because the Baby Boom is just so enormous.

Mark Adrian Solomon

It is truly sad to see that the Eurosceptic nutters who destroyed Major's government and condemned the Tories to the political wilderness for 10 years and all the damage to our country that ensued still have not learned anything or acquired the simple humility to keep quiet. They are the true Luddites, fightin the political battles of 35 years ago ('in' or 'out'?) while William Hague and the rest of us are trying to look to the future. Why is the UK being hit harder than any other European country by the recession? Could it be because it is outside much of the big tent that offers protection ie the euro? Why in the UK is the EU seen as a nasty centralising dictatorship when the criticism of it in almost all other countries is that it is moving in a free-market liberal direction? If you think Britain is ignored in the EU, just imagine what would happen outside! Second homes, booze cruises, reciprocal health care when travelling, Japanese/US inward investment and a huge amount of jobs would be at risk if we left the EU and all serious politicians know that. People talk about envying Norway and Switzerland - are you really saying that that's the level the UK should be compared to?

A referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is long overdue; but our membership of the EU is a settled question where Parliament and People have spoken (including a decisive referendum). Move on and waste no more time on this fringe issue.

John Lashing

Mark Adrian Solomon. What wisdom! What a pity the King in his mine doesn't realise that Sterling will be our saviour out of this mess. Back to the E in PPE and keep reading, or back to P with The Road to Serfdom by Hayek.

The Dutch, the Irish, the Danes,the French obviously think you're right too.

What a relief that we're not allowed to vote again because we apparently got the "right" answer 35 years ago to the wrong question. A common market yes, but a political centralised union which is undemocratic and we can't touch which favours the French? Most definitely no, and that would have been the answer, if we'd been asked the right question (with the small print clearly understood), 35 years ago too.

This is the central issue of our time. NOT a side issue.

So which serious politicians know the matter is settled? - Hannan, Helmer, Carswell, Redwood, Farage, Hague himself - had he the guts to come clean and change Tory policy away from fear of the "big cats" Hesletine and Clark. Time they brought in the lion tamers of a new generation which is sick of the old guard.

Back to central party office my incredibly wise friend and stop trying to stifle the debate on these pages for those freethinkers who haven't and won't buy into the EU claptrap we never voted for or can ever justify.

Back to the swill trough with the rest of them my old porker. Hush puppies and Bilderburg invitation can be picked up as you leave.

John Wilkinson

So why can't the Tories say we should have a referendum on Lisbon without any 'strings'. Let's face it their current position is not clear. And stop telling lies about UKIP.

TDK

This Econmoist article

http://tinyurl.com/m3elpv

shows how the PES (to which Labour belong) has attacked Romanian minister Monica Macovei (lumping her in with Nick Griffin). In fact she is a person who has fought for human rights and attacked corruption. For that the Romanian Socialists (ex CP members in the main) hate her.

Interesting that Labour align themselves with the PES.

David Short

Addding to my comments about the lamentable state of the Spectator website, this article is less than 1,200 words long, but one has to click through 4 pages to read it.

You can read at 300 words a minute, so it only takes four minutes to read, but Speccie readers have to click four times to get to the end. And not everyone has hi-speed broadband.

Try this and you'll see what I mean.

Go to 'print this article' to get the full script, free of ads and leads to vulgar innovations such as 'Scoff!' (ye Gods...), then cut and paste it into the speed reading site www.spreeder.com.

euSSR GO HOME

Give us a Referendum - if not now, as soon as the erstwhile Tories are in power. And omit small print - the issue is simple - Stay in europe? Or get out?

Despite the hubris that leads politicians to think they can convince anybody of anything - I think the reason why you won't put this issue to the people is that YOU KNOW the results will show that we don't care what you think, say, or do - THE BRITISH PEOPLE WANT TO GET OUT OF europe.

Separate from europe has been the rightful place of the land itself - at the very least since the Younger Dryas, 10,000 or so years ago. Our forebears wouldn't have come here in the first place if they'd thought europe was better; and that continent sure hasn't improved over time.

Furthermore, although I agree with Rhoda in essence, I believe europe is not really our 'parent.' We share pre-historic Indo-european origins with them - but nothing so immediate as parentage; and most of our stock is not french, german, or italian - not even culturally.

Although previously - as now - those entities have forced themselves on us for periods of time, we have not accepted them. Rather we have fought against them and gradually developed our own [improved] systems to suit our own needs. And if you say that Christianity lies at the heart of the culture we have developed, then I point out that Christ was not a euro.