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Get with the programme or bu**er off

Tuesday, 26th June 2007

I'm just back from a fascinating but all too predictable meeting in Brussels with a senior - a very senior - EU official.

The feeling is, he told me, that Britain has now 'crossed the line' and 'will not be allowed to block further progress'. The view is, he said (and he was talking about other Member States rather than just Eurocrats) that the UK has 'blackmailed the rest of us for too long, and we have lost patience.' If we don't agree to the development of a deeper, full on political entity then 'they can go away and link up with the Faroe Islands'.

Here was the really chilling aspect of it: 'Look at what nearly happened on Friday to Poland. Who the hell do they think they are, threatening to disrupt everything. They should be grateful we let them in in the first place. Well, we taught them a lesson on Friday. If you don't sign up, we'll go ahead anyway and build a new structure without you. And guess what - they signed up.' That, I was told, was how the UK would be treated from now on, not least because while there was room for doubt over Tony Blair, who was felt to be 'a good European', there was no doubt about Gordon Brown, 'who makes clear what he thinks of the EU every time he comes to ECOFIN - he issues a press release and does his paperwork for two hours then goes home'. So he won't be allowed to impede further deepening.

As for the idea that this is just a few amendments rather than the old treaty in new guise: my interlocutor simply grinned. Really, never underestimate the force of the drive behind the project to take the EU ever deeper. The elites behind it will brook no opposition to their plans.

The remarks I report here are not in the least unusual in Brussels. We have to put every bit of pressure we can on Gordon Brown to call a referendum. But even if he relents, and we win - as the French and Dutch voters will tell you, don't think for a moment that's the end of it.

I'm on my way to Paris now to talk to some Sarkozy people about UK politics. I'll report back.

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Toby Belch

June 26th, 2007 2:31pm

The sheer arrogance of this lot is incredible.

Effing and Blinding

June 26th, 2007 9:02pm

The incredible thing is: the British really believe their only option is to hook up with the Faroese. And so they get easily bullied into signing up to anything. Aren’t there a couple of good sized English speaking countries to the west that could offer the same economic benefits of a free trade zone? Add a couple of English speaking countries south of the equator, Singapore and a couple of others and hey presto – a big new trading bloc with around the same population, a common language and legal system. And I reckon a few other northern European countries will be lining up to join (e.g. Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden).

James

June 27th, 2007 12:36pm

If everyone stopped going to work until Brown agreed to a referendum then I reckon we could get somewhere.

Chris Goodman

June 27th, 2007 1:33pm

A shameful failure of nerve by a generation of British politicians who have handed over our hard fought freedom to direct our own affairs to a European political establishment which not only have a well deserved reputation (accumulated over the centuries) for incompetence and corruption, but who from envy of Britain (again accumulated over centuries) desire our destruction. I recall my sister telling me that when she lived in France during the Falklands War that she got the impression that some members of the French political establishment were longing for us to be defeated. That British politicians should seek to give up our powers of self-determination against the express wishes of those they claim to represent, must surely entitle them to be described as the most shameful generation of politicians in our history. To be fair to Blair he is too much of an airhead to know what he is doing, but with regard to the rest, may God piss on their graves.