Euro in meltdown: Let's break free sooner rather than later

by Marc Glendening

The new Democracy Movement campaign, Out of the EU and into the World, gives 5 positive reasons why we need to free ourselves from the Little Europeanist vision that has so dominated the thinking of the political class for the past 50 years or so.

There is a huge opportunity now for those of us who have a more modern, international future for our country. A growing number of people are open to the idea Britain should liberate itself from centralised EU control.

The current crisis in the eurozone is completely undermining the once commonly held belief that a politically united Europe is 'inevitable'. The task we now face is to make the British people aware that unless our country leaves the EU we risk being sucked into the ideologically fanatical attempt to prop up the single currency. This will have terrible repercussions for ourselves, as well as the peoples of the other member states.

UK taxpayers have already been forced under Article 122 of the Lisbon treaty (a measure supposedly concerned with showing solidarity to countries experiencing 'natural disasters') to risk £12.5 billion as part of the bail-outs for Greece, Ireland and Portugal, even though we, together with Denmark and Sweden, have chosen to stay outside the euro.

ECB exposed

According to Brussels, we are obligated until 2013 to continue handing over money to sustain the euro, in addition to our £17.5bn annual budget contribution. With many German and Finnish voters defying their EU-obsessed rulers on this issue, the Brussels based elite will probably attempt to make us stump up even more cash to finance further bailouts. Greece is in need of a second massive injection following the initial £110 billion it received last year.

In recent days, German officials have been reiterating to their British counterparts in the EU that we will be obliged under the terms of Article 122 to contribute more cash to the next Greek bailout. The Guardian (June 17) claims that Britain will have to find a further €15 billion should the second intervention reach €100 billion.

According to a recent Open Europe study (pdf), the European Central Bank is currently exposed to the tune of a staggering €444 billion worth of debt having provided cheap credit - in violation of the EU's own stated treaty obligations - to struggling banks and Eurozone governments. The ECB is holding €190 billion worth of Greek debt alone.

There is every possibility now that the increasingly toxic ECB will itself go bust within the next two years. Who will ultimately have to pick up the bill should this happen? Ostensibly, the national central banks and taxpayers of those countries within the eurozone.

Given the huge likely cost of recapitalising the ECB it is far from certain that the European political elite will be able to deliver the sums required from within the Eurozone alone. Just as Brussels forced taxpayers from the non-euro countries to contribute to the bailouts that have already taken place through a highly perverse interpretation of Article 122, there is absolutely nothing to stop them trying to pull off the same trick again.

Rule of law abandoned

It is the European Commission (the guardian and enforcer of the treaty), together with the Eurozone voting majority in the Council of Ministers and the European Court of Justice, that can determine what exactly are our financial obligations to the EU in this context.

As we have already experienced with Article 122, there are a range of elastically-worded articles in the treaty that are open to any self-serving interpretation the key EU bodies wish to construct. The rule of law simply does not apply in Brussels in any meaningful sense. So long as we are EU members, these unaccountable EU institutions will continue to enjoy supreme legal authority over ourselves and the other peoples of Europe.

Brussels is currently putting together a new package of measures designed to extend the degree of control the EU elite has over its subordinate entities. "Governing these very vast and equally diverse economies with a single currency is more of a challenge in a union of sovereign states than in a political federation," Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB govenor, commented in a recent speech. "That is the reason the European Central Bank is stressing tirelessly the necessity of strongly reinforcing the euro area economic governance."

'Economic governance'

One plan is for all governments to have to submit their annual budget proposals to the unelected European Commission for approval before they are shown and voted on by national parliaments. Brussels also wants to start taxing all EU citizens individually.

The EU elite appreciate that it is going to be very hard in future to persuade member governments to keep increasing their national annual contributions. Herman van Rompuy, Jose Manuel Barroso, Trichet and the others are commendably open about the need now to complement monetary union with fiscal union.

When opponents of the euro predicted this would eventually have to happen, they were derided by the likes of Ken Clarke and Chris Huhne as hysterical scaremongers.

The notion that Britain, Denmark and Sweden will be able to absent themselves from the forthcoming financial and political drives to save the euro from collapse is therefore naive in the extreme. The full insanity of having established a European single currency in the absence of an already existing unified, Pan-European people prepared to support it with their taxes is now self-evident.

Jacques Delors and the other fanatical architects of the Eurozone believed that once they had set in stone the single currency everything else, by some functionalist magic, would fall into place. According to the EU-state-builders, the governments of the member states would then tamely accept the logic of the situation and agree to hand over ever more political powers concerning economic policy to Brussels, the business cycles of the diverse national economies would miraculously converge and the different European peoples would organically merge into one collective consciousness, complete with new sense of political identity and loyalty.

Germans would then not mind, so the theory went, being taxed to help out other parts of the Eurozone, any more than they currently object to having their contributions redistributed to other parts of the Federal Republic.

Silver lining

This scenario, of course, was a total and utter fantasy in the minds of some members of the political elite and, like the other authoritarian, grandiose political fantasies from the European past, has extremely dangerous implications for the ordinary citizens of our continent; the people who really have to live with the consequences.

The inevitable eventual collapse of the Eurozone will have unpleasant consequences for all European economies and beyond. However, the silver lining is that the EU in its current undemocratic form cannot survive. The problem though is that its collapse, or transformation into a much more diluted form, could be drawn out over a number of years.

As we are seeing, the EU political class will do everything possible in the short to medium-term to resist the inevitable and will throw huge sums of public money at a problem that is beyond their power to solve.

The imperative for the British people must now be that we minimise for ourselves the damaging implications of this disintegration and get the hell out, quick.

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written by Marc Glendening

Denis MacShane's low tactics on an EU referendum

by Marc Glendening

Despite having been reported to the police by Parliamentary authorities over allegations that he has abused his expenses, Denis MacShane MP is not keeping a low profile politically.

Those of us who have observed, and been subjected to, him over the years would expect nothing less. He is, in so many ways, a figure of great amusement yet the low political tactics he employs are worth becoming familiar with in order to better counter them.

He was in characteristic mud-slinging form on Radio 4's Start The Week on May 9th, when up against People's Pledge Advisory Council member Ruth Lea.

Ruth had introduced the People's Pledge and explained the case for an EU referendum to Andrew Marr. Not content with simply arguing against our right to be consulted on EU membership, Denis proceeded at every opportunity to refer to referendums as 'plebiscites'.

This was a classic MacShaneism; a crude attempt to smear any opposing EU-related view with the stench of fascism, the far-right, and, somewhat ironically perhaps in this context, political authoritarianism.

Smear tactics

The word plebicite is now exclusively associated with the ways in which Napoleon, Mussolini and Hitler attempted to give their totalitarian regimes and projects the veneer of legitimacy by holding rigged tests of public opinion. Plebiscites were no more democratic than 'elections' in one party states or Zimbabwe and Iran.

In invoking this highly-charged historical concept MacShane was doing what he does best; playing the person, not the ball. It was the classic Blairite tactic of trying to distract those listening from the actual content of your opponent's arguments and associate them instead with deeply unattractive and sinister imagery.

In this way, MacShane was also engaging in the post-modernist tactic of deconstruction; taking a fundamental truth and deliberately subverting it. He wanted to turn the tables on Ruth Lea by substituting in the listener's mind her argument for greater democracy with the insinuation that those who advocate an EU referendum are really advancing an anti-democratic position.

Low grade

At the Fabian Society conference on Europe earlier this year when an opposing speaker made an entirely factual and non-jingoistic reference to Britain's traditionally liberal system of law, MacShane interupted his remarks by boisterously and grotesquely breaking into a loud rendition of Land of Hope and Glory, complete with exaggerated conducting gestures.

He assumed, being in playground bully mode, that the audience, who were largely with him on the EU issue, would burst into hysterical laughter and join in the mockery of the other speaker. Instead, he was greeted by an embarrassed and richly deserved silence.

He is a past master of this sort of disingenuous, but dangerous nonsense. For years he has accused EU-critics of being 'xenophobes', 'little Englanders' and of the 'far-right'. When he has been challenged to name names - to have the courage to apply these cowardly labels to the likes of Tony Benn, Bob Crowe, Kate Hoey, John Cryer, Kelvin Hopkins, Gisela Stuart and the legion of other left EU-sceptics - he fails to do so and hides away.

Again, tres post-modern and Third Way to simply refuse to acknowledge and confront inconvenient contradictions head on; to put up or shut up.

Real debate

There are honourable believers in the goal of a politically united Europe. People such as Mark Littlewood, John Stevens, Dr Stephen Haseler and Richard Laming. They start from first principles and try to convince others on the basis of intellectual content.

Dirty Den, however, prefers instead to go down a road similar to that travelled in the 1950s by the communist-baiting and smearing notorious Senator McCarthy in relation to anybody who was on the centre-left. For MacShane, substitute 'reds under the bed' with 'xenophobes in the closet' or wherever he thinks EU-critics reside.

Denis, when will you have the courage to debate the EU and to take on the idea of an EU referendum without recourse to evoking the memory of fascism?

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written by Marc Glendening

DM backs new People's Pledge campaign for an EU referendum

by Marc Glendening

You may have read over the past week about an exciting new initiative to force a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU - called the
People's Pledge.

We've received many enquiries about it in recent days, so I'm pleased to report that the Democracy Movement is enthusiastically backing this new campaign.

Launched last week in the futuristic setting of the Altitude 360 venue on the 29th floor of Millbank Tower, Westminster, the People's Pledge is a potent new all-party campaign to secure a referendum on whether we wish to be ruled by those we elect to Westminster - or by the unaccountable institutions of the European Union.

Broad support

The campaign has assembled an impressive spectrum of supporters include John Cryer MP (Labour), Zac Goldsmith MP (Conservative), Jenny Jones AM (London Assembly Member, Green party), Marta Andreasen MEP (UKIP & former EU chief accountant), among many others.

It's chaired by businessman John Mills (Chairman, JML Group) and the director is Mark Seddon, ex editor of Tribune magazine and former member of the Labour National Executive Committee.

The prominent economist Ruth Lea is also a supporter, as are writers Fay Weldon CBE, Virginia Ironside and John King.

The campaign has the support not only of those who are opposed to, or sceptical about, the EU. It's also backed by those who are committed to Britain's continued EU membership - such as Keith Vaz, the former Europe minister and John Stevens, the former Conservative MEP - but who nevertheless acknowledge that the people should decide.

Unique pressure

But it's the campaign's strategy that really sets it apart from all previous referendum efforts and gives it a great chance of success.

The People's Pledge asks voters to pledge that they will only vote for a candidate at the next general election who promises to support a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU and to vote for it in the House of Commons.

Numbers of people signing the Pledge in each constituency will be displayed on the campaign's website alongside the MP's majority. This unique feature of the campaign will pile the pressure on MPs and their rival candidates, by enabling them to see exactly the strength of feeling in their area for the right to have a say on the EU - and how many votes they stand to gain, or lose, as a result of their stance on the issue.

The campaign's sophisticated website will also record and display each MP's voting record on all EU-related issues, available for any voter to look up using only their postcode, and will finally enable voters to hold their MP to account for their actions on the EU.

Local campaigns

From now until the next general election, through both national and local activities particularly in the marginal seats, supporters of the People's Pledge will be challenging MPs and their rival prospective candidates to declare their support for a referendum.

This campaign therefore presents a new and innovative way to harness and focus 'People Power' towards bringing about change in Britain's relationship with the EU. It's about pressuring the political elite into giving us what they have long denied us; a say on the future of our political system.

With the passing of the EU Constitution/Lisbon treaty, and with a new forthcoming EU treaty designed to establish what Angela Merkel calls 'European economic governance', it is now clear that we as a people have to make a choice: Are we to be governed centrally from Brussels in a growing range of key policy areas or, instead, do we wish an alternative democratic future for our country?

Sign the People's Pledge

We're urging all our supporters to sign the People's Pledge and to encourage as many others as they know to do so as well.

While the People's Pledge will make the case for people to be consulted about the EU's powers, it will not take sides on whether Britain should be 'in' or 'out'. That's why, while working closely with the People's Pledge to secure a referendum, the Democracy Movement and other EU-critical groups will also continue independently to make the case for Britain to forge a new, genuinely co-operative relationship with our European neighbours that, unlike the EU, respects democracy.

When the People's Pledge is successful in securing that referendum, we who want change must ensure we are in a position to WIN it!

So look out for more information here soon about how the DM will be taking forward the case for a referendum by supporting the People's Pledge - and promoting a new vision for Britain outside and beyond the confines of EU membership.

People's Pledge campaign for an EU referendum

The Daily Mail today gives major coverage to the looming launch of a new organisation called the People's Pledge.

Under the headline, Give us a vote on our future in Europe, the Mail reports that this new cross-party campaign aims to "pile pressure on party leaders and MPs to support a poll that would settle the divisive question of EU membership once and for all."

An online version of the article can be seen on the Daily Mail website here.

The People's Pledge is a unique and potent new initiative, which the DM is very pleased to be supporting. More information about the campaign will follow in the next few days.

Britain still vulnerable to euro crisis

by Marc Glendening

British taxpayers risk losing £8 billion if, as many are now predicting, Greece defaults on the EU/IMF loan in which we were forced to participate back in May last year.

Britain has being sucked into the current crisis affecting the eurozone under Article 122 of the Lisbon treaty, which was passed without the democratic consent of the electorate despite a referendum being promised by all political parties.

This article allows the EU Council of Ministers, by qualified majority vote, to provide collective assistance to a member state hit by "natural disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control...".

However, through a highly elastic and convenient interpretation by the EU elite, the clause is now being used to force countries outside the single currency to bail out those countries that have run into financial trouble.

It is effectively being used by the EU to help itself to billions of pounds of taxpayers' money - even from those countries who have chosen to remain outside the euro - to prop up their fundamentally flawed single currency project.

"Regrettable" billions

Back in November, the House of Lords Treasury spokesman Lord Sassoon described the way Article 122 had been twisted by the EU as "regrettable".

With £8bn on the line, this must surely be a strong contender for the title of understatement of the year!

In reply to a question from Lord Pearson on 22 November, Sassoon said: "It is clearly regrettable that articles of the European Union treaty, such as Article 122, which should have been used for such things as natural disasters, has been enabled to be used for a mechanism in which the UK was committed to be a contributor by the previous Government."

With Portugal, Belgium, Spain and possibly Italy still facing major economic problems, and many now seeing eventual debt default by Greece and Ireland as inevitable, British taxpayers are facing huge potential liabilities.

Government weakness

In a belated bid to shut the stable door and end Britain's financial vulnerability to the euro's flaws, David Cameron in December sought a "political commitment" from EU leaders that Article 122 would no longer be mis-used in this way.

However, the best he could achieve was an exemption for Britain once the new European Stability Mechanism is created via a treaty change - in 2013. Yet there may be plenty of bailouts between now and then!

Should both Portugal and, more seriously, Spain need financial assistance, it is estimated that Britain's liability under Article 122 will be £16 billion and David Cameron has effectively confirmed that his government is completely powerless to limit this.

Criticising his party leader's actions, Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP for Clacton, said: "This latest failure shows the futility of the government's position. Unless it is willing to challenge the premise of EU membership and the terms on which we signed up, it can never get its way," he said. "The government is utterly impotent."

Referendum needed

The British people never consented to join the euro and yet we find ourselves having to risk billions of pounds to help sustain that dysfunctional system.

This is why we must have a referendum to decide whether or not we want to be bound by Article 122 and all the other provisions of the Lisbon treaty.

The only referendum that makes any sense now is one on whether we want to accept full EU political union or a new relationship based on trade and voluntary ad-hoc co-operation.

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written by Marc Glendening

Will the real Wayne David please step forward

Before moving on from the debate surrounding recent EU budget negotiations, it's worth taking a moment to scrutinise the quite breathtaking hypocrisy exhibited on the subject by Labour's new shadow Europe minister Wayne David MP.

In various reports about David Cameron's (increasingly dubious) efforts to reign in the EU's ever-expanding budget, Mr David offered quotes suggesting that a "sizeable" rise in the EU budget would be "against the national interest", saying: "I think we should dig our heels in and say that we want a freeze in the European Union [budget]."

Really? That's a turn up for the books.

Contradictions

Because not only did Mr David vote in November 2007 in favour of the European Union Finance Bill that approved the last EU budget deal increasing Britain's contributions by an extraordinary 60% through to 2013.

But the former MEP and leader of the Labour group in the European Parliament also in early 2008 voted to approve the Lisbon Treaty (and against the referendum his party promised voters), which is how Brussels is now attempting to justify the EU's need for yet more billions.

In particular, on 20 February 2008, Mr David voted in favour of the Lisbon Treaty's foreign, security and defence policy provisions that authorised the creation of the vastly expensive EU European External Action Service.

This is the new £5.8bn-a-year EU agency headed by the unelected Baroness Catherine Ashton that will be housed in a £10.5 million-a-year building, staffed in Brussels and worldwide by thousands of expensively-salaried EU officials, some of whom will enjoy being ferried about in one of the shiny new bullet-proof limos that will set back Europe's taxpayers £32m.

Regrets?

So for Mr David to turn around now and posture in favour of 'digging in our heels' and freezing Britain's contributions to the EU is all very well, so far as it goes.

But if he wants his apparent conversion to be taken seriously, Mr David first needs to express regret for his poor voting decisions in the past that have ccontributed to the situation Mr Cameron is today having to deal with.

Because if actions speak louder than words, Mr David's very evident past enthusiasm for gifting the EU large amounts of extra cash and voting EU institutions more powers will indicate to most that he's merely playing the sort of low-grade, party-political games that make the public very cynical about politicians and that ultimately only degrade our democracy.

So how about those regrets, Mr David? According to his website, he can be contacted at davidw@parliament.uk. Why not drop him a line and ask him? Especially if you live in his Caerphilly constituency.

Will Cameron yet freeze the EU budget?

David Cameron's strategy to secure a freeze in the EU budget may be becoming clearer.

It was, of course, never in prospect that all the EU's member governments and institutions would agree to a zero percent increase in the EU's spending during 2011.

Nevermind the cut in funding that is truly justified by the drastic austerity measures being implemented in the EU's member countries and the EU's perpetual failure to safeguard from waste and fraud the public money it is given.

Nevertheless, has Mr Cameron gambled that protracted disagreement over the level of increase may deliver exactly what he wants?

Institutional stand-off

By securing the backing of ten other EU member countries for the position that the rise must not exceed 2.9%, David Cameron has set up a stand-off between the European Council on the one hand and the European 'Parliament' and Commission on the other.

The procedure for agreeing the EU's annual budget is set out in Article 314 of the EU treaty, as usefully highlighted over on the Your Freedom and Ours blog. Skip to paragraph 5 to find the current state of play.

During the forthcoming potential 21 days of 'conciliation', the likely response from the 'Parliament' and Commission to what has occured over the last two will be to propose a figure somewhere between the 5.9% increase they currently want and the 2.9% backed by a blocking minority on the Council.

If no agreement is reached during conciliation, paragraph 8 confirms that the procedure goes right back to the start, with the Commission required to submit a new draft budget.

Freezing stalemate

That there may be no agreement during conciliation seems a real possibility. The EU 'Parliament' in particular is easily pompous enough about its position and role to believe its duty is to 'take on' national governments. And need we really say more about Commission president Jose 'dimension of empire' Barroso?

By demanding billions extra from cash-strapped European countries that will no doubt have to be additionally borrowed before being handed over, these two EU institutions have at least usefully demonstrated the emptiness of their rhetoric about seeking to help Europe recover economically.

The bigger question during conciliation is whether Mr Cameron's group of supportive countries on the European Council will stand firm.

Should this roundabout of negotiations not be resolved in time for the new budget to start in 2011, Article 315 of the treaty confirms that "not more than one twelfth of the budget appropriations for the preceding financial year may be spent each month ..."

In other words - in the absence of a specific concession by the Council that more than one twelfth per month may be spent, which would be unlikely given they will be attempting to pressure the 'Parliament' and Commission into swift acquiescence to their 2.9% deal - the 2010 EU budget continues into next year.

Bingo! That freeze.

Futile games

So is David Cameron gaming the 'Parliament' and Commission with their own procedures in order to achieve what he wants? Time, and the reaction of those institutions, will tell. Ultimately, it matters little.

For all the reasons and more that were well argued by Harry Phibbs in the Daily Mail, even a freeze isn't nearly strong enough action against the EU's financial incompetence and abject waste and the best case scenario of all this is still most likely to be a 2.9% increase.

That would leave Britain still having to stump up an extra £430 million for the EU next year, on top of the £8.3bn (net) we're already committed to handing over, while making big cuts to essential public services at home.

Justify that, Prime Minister.