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Joyce McMillan: Voting down of EU treaty represents an opportunity missed



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Published Date: 21 June 2008
By Joyce McMillan
ON WEDNESDAY evening, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, stood up in the Mansion House to deliver his first annual speech to the City of London.
By all accounts, he gave a decent performance, defending the government's position with some dignity. But, in truth, behind the mask of the glittering occasion, he was the very picture of impotence: a middle-ranking and not-much-trusted priest of the...



The full article contains 975 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 21 June 2008 12:32 AM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: Joyce McMillan
 
1

Sierra Foothills Scot,

Diamond Springs 21/06/2008 04:18:13
Until the last paragraph, this is an excellent article. However, relatively few oppose the Scandinavian social model. The "colossal political ineptitude among Europe's pro-EU elites" is the major cause of the purported "ill-will" and "instinctive xenophobia on the part of millions of Europeans." It is this colossal political ineptitude among Europe's pro-EU elites" that has "robbed us of the chance of that more civilised and open-hearted future."
2

Isonomia,

Lenzie 21/06/2008 08:37:35
When will the romatic Urophiles learn that the people of the Western end of the Eurasian continent simply don't want to be in one country.

The Romans tried it and failed.

Napoleon tried it and failed.

Hitler tried it and failed.

Now the EU is trying it and ...
3

Dr. James Wilkie,

Vienna 21/06/2008 23:47:27
The principle of European cooperation and - to a limited degree - integration is not in doubt. The question is what kind of cooperation and integration, and it is already certain that the European Union in its present form has gone right off the rails. It is ruled by a caste of politicians and bureaucrats who know no will but their own, and are running it for the benefit of multinational concerns, and not for the benefit of the European peoples (plural). The course they are taking will. inevitably lead to the creation of a European superstate that will be centralised to a degree that even the Soviet Union never approached.

The original European idea - far-seeing in its day - is well out of date, having been overtaken by the globalisation of so many functions of government that render the organisation of these same functions at European level superfluous. Many other functions of the EU will become redundant in time as the transitional situations they were established to deal with are finally resolved.

When politicians demand the unfettered authority to modify the very statutes from which their own exercise of power is derived, when they deliberately and systematically exclude the people, whose servants they are, from the merest expression of opinion on the subject, then the red light goes on in my mind, and the sirens howl. Good riddance to the Lisbon Treaty. The Irish have done us a great service, and the best thing that could happen to the EU would be to scrap it and start afresh from first principles with a clean sheet of paper.


 

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