Curly’s Corner Shop, the blog!

What are the Lib-Dem’s intentions?

After the first full day of parliamentary debate on the EU Reform Treaty it is difficult to see where the battle lines are being drawn. We know that David Cameron’s Conservative Party favour a referendum either before or after Parliament has ratified the Treaty, we know that there is a growing band of rebel Labour members who oppose the ratification and also call for a referendum (which was promised in Labour’s last manifesto), the Lib-Dems, who also supported a referendum at the last general election have adopted a stranger strategy under Nick Clegg’s leadership.

The government comfortably won the first major division yesterday evening, but a rebel Labour amendment signed by 18 MPs was not accorded a vote by the Speaker. Perhaps if the Conservative benches had signed up to the amendment there could have been a division, perhaps they are keeping their powder dry for further amendments later in the battle. Foreign Secretary and South Shields MP David Miliband had been subjected to much derision earlier in the day by declaring that;

The treaty will improve the way the EU works, it will adapt the EU’s institutions to a union of 27, it will ensure the voice of Europe’s nations is heard more loudly in foreign policy. It brings national parliaments into day-to-day decision making to strengthen subsidiarity, and it focuses the EU on the big external challenges from climate change to migration.

Without, of course, spelling out the consequences of a single European foreign and defence policy, or moves to create a European seat at the UN Security Council, nor the planned superiority of EU Law and EU institutions. Labour MP Frank Field reminded the Foreign Secretary that;

A number of committees of this house have reported that there is no substantial difference between what was a constitution and is now a treaty. Apart from those other governments who also don’t want to face their electorates and test their views, what other bodies of equivalent standing has the government got on its side?

And Austin Mitchell the Labour MP for Great Grimsby said;

If it looks like a constitution, if it smells like a constitution, if it reads like a constitution, so far as I’m concerned it’s a constitution.

However it is the position of the Lib-Dems which has become the most curious, former Leader Charles Kennedy added;

I have always taken the view there would have to be at some point in British politics a further redefining referendum on the European issue. Whatever the issue, a referendum to lance the European boil one way or another in British politics cannot, it seems to me, be indefinitely diverted. I am surprised it has not happened already.

To which Nick Clegg informs us today that the Lib-Dem party will vote against the holding of a referendum on the Treaty and that they are more interested in a referendum which will revisit the issue of whether or not the British people wish to remain in the EU or withdraw altogether! Their position is still unclear, but by rewriting at a stroke his party’s election manifesto, he has joined with Gordon Brown in a deceitful scheme to remove that one hope for us all to gather our thoughts and align our trust either with the government’s position or against it.

Meanwhile John Gouriet writing in the Daily Telegraph outlines a new battle plan against the European federalist expansion to take place in the courts, arguing that Brown’s Labour government dose not have the power or authority to surrender, or lend, sovereignty to another power, especially one that is unelected, unaccountable, irremovable and owes no allegiance to the British Crown.

They have no power to assume Royal prerogative or the right to break their oaths of allegiance and office, or cause the Sovereign to break his or her contract (Coronation Oath) with the people to govern according to their laws and customs.

The legal battle is being prepared by Stuart Wheeler, who founded the spread-betting group, IG Index, who is ready to challenge the constitutional issue head-on through the courts.

So what does this debate mean for ordinary people in South Shields?

The issues are fairly simple – we elect a Member of Parliament to represent our interests in the House of Commons, to challenge and question the government of the day as it legislates and creates new laws that affect our daily lives. The supremacy of our Parliament will be annulled by the EU Reform Treaty and our Parliament will become increasingly subservient to the wishes and edicts of bureaucrats in Brussels, our laws will increasingly be “rationalised” and “harmonised” to match European Law, and The House of Lords, once our supreme court, will become even more marginalised as the European Court becomes the supreme legal arbiter. Our elected domestic parliament must remain free to demonstrate the will of the people unhindered by external powers, otherwise there would very little point in it being there, under a federalist European state the House of Commons would be little more than a regional office, capable of taking the sort of decisions that you might expect to be devolved to your local council.

Many aspects of our daily lives are already decided in Europe, from the shape and size of bananas to whether or not we can fish and eat cod, who may have the right to work here, who may settle and have legal citizen status and who may be regarded as justifiable asylum seekers, as well as the allocation of social funding and the swiping of huge taxes to pay for inefficient continental farming. The big question is – do we wish to allow a bigger European body to interfere and organise our business any more than we really wish?

That is why I support a referendum before we ratify!