Gone fisking. I don't often (if ever) do this but a piece by that nice upstanding and honest Mr Huhne in today's Grauniad made me a bit mad, as you might be able to deduce. There might be a few naughty words dotted about. My comments in bold.
Here's the piece:
Europe is once again turning into a disaster for the Conservatives. The prime minister is up for renegotiation and an in-out referendum: indeed it is his idea. Implicitly, if renegotiation fails, we should leave. But as David Cameron begins to realise the price of this promise in investment and jobs, he is desperately trying to reassure business that he can win a plebiscite backing EU membership.
Yes we know Dave will be for a 'stay in' vote in the referendum - he's a product of the same Common Purpose crap that guides your every waking move Mr Huhne, but at least Dave is offering us the chance to campaign and to have a vote - it's called democracy Mr Huhne, not something that you or your colleagues seem to have much of a clue about. This is the biggest issue regarding our freedom of determination, that has faced this country since the late 1940s and you would deny the people a vote? You like denying stuff don't you?
The big guns are pounding. Last week a CBI report estimated that every British household was £3,000 better off from membership, and urged that we stay. It rejected a Norwegian or Swiss half-pregnant option where you apply the rules but get no say over making them. Four-fifths of businesses backs EU membership, according to polls.
Plucking a figure out of the air (which is what the CBI did largely, more here) and then saying 'according to polls' without identifying the source is just a misleading cop out. Here's Dan Hannan in the Telegrah on the exact same issue. You'll have to do much better than that Mr Huhne in order to be credible. Actually, much, much more. If the argument is that we need to stay where we are so that we have a role in making the rules set by Brussels, how's that going in reality? The more entries (new members) from smaller countries, the less influence we have. If we were outside but part of EFTA we would have significant influence as do the Norweigians, (more here) and, what's more, if we didn't agree with or accept new rules we could just ignore them. What are they going to do in that eventuality, kick us out?..oh wait..
On Friday Nissan's most senior global executive said his company would reconsider its UK investment if we left. The company employs 6,500 people in the north-east. These warnings could cost the Tories votes in manufacturing areas where there are marginal seats.
Posturing. Would he really go if we offered an efficient tax environment and there was abosolutely no change to the UK's ability to trade with the Eurozone - indeed if we were better able to trade on a global basis, on our own behalf, with the Commonwealth and our special friend, the US, as 'us' rather than as part of an EU agreement? How is the jobs argument going down in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Ireland Mr Huhne? Where they're yoked into enabling Germany to boom, while they endure the prospect of almost endless poverty and lack of opportunity as a direct result of what the EU is doing?
And why is an ex Lib Dem, a failed minor party politician worried about Tory marginal seats? (expletive deleted)
The Conservatives, once the business party, are in the fevered grip of activists who have no conception of what matters to the economy or indeed the electorate. Ambitious Tory MPs know how to stroke their party's erogenous zones, which is why the MP Adam Afriyie is playing games in calling for a referendum next year, before the election.
'Once'? If the Tories are not still the business party, then we don't currently have one in the UK. And since business is the source of all the money we have to spend on everything, that might get a bit awkward. What a fucking stupid thing to say. Here's what Digby Jones thinks - would you (dear reader) trust him or Mr Huhne to have the UK's interests at heart on this issue?
On Saturday the Bruges Group, whose principal purpose is to keep a candle flickering at the altar of St Maggie, held a conference in London entitled "Which way out? How Britain can withdraw from the EU". The Tory right is busy plotting the how, not the why.
Because the why - unaccountability, the ability to set our trade, foreign and domestic policies without our (electorate) input, to make laws that bind people who did not vote for them, spend billions in tax payer's money with no accountability and no approved audit for 18 years, is already well established. Try finding a reason - a real benefit - that would justify our staying. I have tried and couldn't. The nearest I could get was the strength that we would have being part of a larger trading block. But if we were members of the EEA (as part of the European Free trade Association EFTA) we would still be part of that larger block, but outside the cloying, controlling, left-wing EU mechanism and, therefore, better able to trade with many other parts of the world. This is what former Eurofile Max Hastings thinks.
This is lunacy. The EU is simply incapable of being the bogeyman the Tory right and the UK Independence party try to put up. Its institutions are small: they employ 47,500 people, 11% of the size of the UK civil service. EU spending is 1% of EU output, or less than a 40th of total public spending. EU law is usually mind-bogglingly technical, and largely about establishing common standards. Without that effort, differing consumer protection can block trade. Unlike any other institution designed to tackle cross-national problems, the EU even has elected officials.
'Even' has elected officials. As if that's some justification. A few elected officials and most, in power are not elected by the majority of people whose money they spend. So it's a relatively small waste of our time and money so we should ignore it and let it get on with controlling our lives in the future? What kind of argument is that? Most of their officials view their cushy lifestyles as being much more important than doing the right thing by their countries of origin. It's an out of control unaccountable and largely unelected power base that has too much power over us and must be wound back to serve us rather than control us.
Nor does the electorate give a toss. Our EU membership does not even rank in the top 10 issues concerning voters. In an Ipsos Mori poll in September, just 1% said it was the most important issue facing Britain, compared with 25% specifically citing the economy. Even Ukip-Tory switchers worry more about immigration and the economy than about EU membership. Yet Tory activists are obsessed with the issue.
By design, the EU has fanned the flames of joke issues like straight bananas over the years to the point where most people now read the letters 'EU' in a story and switch off as its being a joke. It's the boy who cried wolf in reverse - leaving the EU to get on with taking control on a slice by slice basis. Just because people have been thus put off by the EU's tactics does not mean that it's not the biggest threat facing our freedom and democracy at this time and as a (former) UK politician, if you cannot see, understand and communicate that fact, then you are unworthy of the post. Which is self evident from your past behaviour.
How can we explain this? The Tories are a mix of two strands. The first is the whiggish, market-oriented and socially liberal strand. The second is the old Tory English nationalist tradition: militaristic, authoritarian and xenophobic.
Xenophobic? The Tories/British have been responsible for more growth of trade and uplift in living conditions in more countries around the globe than any other party/country on earth. That doesn't mean we roll over at the first sign of any dissent like you fucking idiots would, but neither does it mean we're xenophobic - that's just another example of opponents playing the race card, the man not the ball, rather than engaging properly and winning the argument. Just lazy journalism. Why am I not surprised?
That English nationalist strand runs all the way through Tory history: the archetypal leader in that tradition was Lord Salisbury. As a result, the Tory party has always needed a foreign bogeyman: the French until the entente cordiale in 1904, the Germans until 1945, and the Soviet Union until the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.
Oh do fuck off. We're talking about the future freedom of the British people here, as important now as it has ever been in our history.
When the Soviets could no longer credibly perform the role of foreign threat, who should volunteer but Jacques Delors, then European commission president and a French socialist who proclaimed to the Trades Union Congress in September 1988 that there had to be a "social Europe". As the commission's campaign for its 1992 Maastricht treaty gathered strength, the Tory right had its enemy.
Boris Johnson, then the Daily Telegraph's Brussels correspondent, performed his own walk-on role in the transformation by inventing an entirely new – and largely fictitious – brand of journalism known as the "bent-banana story". The story, in many guises, held that the EU was about to legislate some daft law that would threaten a way of life enjoyed by free-born Englishmen since King Ethelred.
In fact, the EU offers a prize that has been the objective of English foreign policy since the Tudors. We were a small trading nation that wanted to stop any domination that would close our continental markets. We spent blood and treasure fighting the Spanish, French and Germans to achieve that objective. Now the EU gives us what we always craved – and the Tory nationalists look the gift horse in the mouth.
What utter, utter fucking crap. This is not something that we are leading. This was all about trade at first but has now become about a single federal state and one for which we are paying more than everyone except Germany and France to deliver. Are you really suggesting that the objective of English foreign policy since the Tudors was to be governed by a foreign country? If so, your twattishness knows no bounds.
Pity the redundant Tory nationalist, because we live in a period with fewer external threats to our existence than at any time in our history. But the need for a foreign bogeyman does not depend on reality: it is a psychological urge that tells you more about the person who holds those views than about the world.
Bogeyman? Is this the Daily Star? Once again, playing the man not the ball. Insulting the person who holds genuine views rather than addressing his or her concerns. Unless you address the argument why should anyone take what you say seriously? In fact why should anyone take anything you say ever again, seriously Mr Huhne? And if you really think there are fewer external threats to our way of life now than ever before, have a look at Sweden and Belgium and the Middle East. Good grief.
This psychosis is a massive problem for Tory leaders. Cameron should have faced down these demons in opposition, just as his hero Tony Blair faced down the nationalisers with the abolition of clause IV from Labour's constitution. The tragedy for the Tories – and for Cameron's project – is that he never did.
The tragedy for you and those who support this view, is that Dave had no chance of ever facing down people who take the cause of the UK as being more important than being ruled from overseas. Who value our freedoms and our nationality and our sovereignty. You might advocate handing over our powers - powers, on this of all days, that have been so hard won, but there are still many people - not xenophobes, not racists, not 'little Englanders' but proud Britains who want to trade with the world, who love Europe but not the EU, and who want some control and some influence over the people for whom we vote and to whom we provide the money that they spend in our name.
Worse, he threw red meat to rightwingers with a promise in his leadership campaign to withdraw from the European People's party, the pro-EU grouping that contains the sane continental conservative parties.
'Sane'. Again, insult anyone who takes a different view instead of engaging in a rational argument. This guy is truly a fuckwit of epic proportions. Where's the proof for what you say? Where's the source? You're just printing (writing) your own prejudices here. How objective or fact-checked is that Mr Rusbridger?
Cameron now lacks the courage to refuse more of the concessions that he began. Like so many leaders before him, he is a sad hostage to the way he won.
The sadness is mainly that he could only win by being forced to form a coalition with people who are simply not equipped for high office and who do not have the interests of their nation or their electorate at heart. A conclusion that you have confirmed, in spades, via this unbelievably naive article.
For what it's worth, if you want some more on my views on this subject you can find it:
Here (Referendum)
Here (playing the man and not the ball)
Here (Agenda 21, EU control of our lives etc)
Here (will leaving the EU cost British jobs?)
Here (getting back some control over our politicians)
and
Here (the end of democracy in Europe?)
Thanks for reading.
Here's the piece:
Europe is once again turning into a disaster for the Conservatives. The prime minister is up for renegotiation and an in-out referendum: indeed it is his idea. Implicitly, if renegotiation fails, we should leave. But as David Cameron begins to realise the price of this promise in investment and jobs, he is desperately trying to reassure business that he can win a plebiscite backing EU membership.
Yes we know Dave will be for a 'stay in' vote in the referendum - he's a product of the same Common Purpose crap that guides your every waking move Mr Huhne, but at least Dave is offering us the chance to campaign and to have a vote - it's called democracy Mr Huhne, not something that you or your colleagues seem to have much of a clue about. This is the biggest issue regarding our freedom of determination, that has faced this country since the late 1940s and you would deny the people a vote? You like denying stuff don't you?
The big guns are pounding. Last week a CBI report estimated that every British household was £3,000 better off from membership, and urged that we stay. It rejected a Norwegian or Swiss half-pregnant option where you apply the rules but get no say over making them. Four-fifths of businesses backs EU membership, according to polls.
Plucking a figure out of the air (which is what the CBI did largely, more here) and then saying 'according to polls' without identifying the source is just a misleading cop out. Here's Dan Hannan in the Telegrah on the exact same issue. You'll have to do much better than that Mr Huhne in order to be credible. Actually, much, much more. If the argument is that we need to stay where we are so that we have a role in making the rules set by Brussels, how's that going in reality? The more entries (new members) from smaller countries, the less influence we have. If we were outside but part of EFTA we would have significant influence as do the Norweigians, (more here) and, what's more, if we didn't agree with or accept new rules we could just ignore them. What are they going to do in that eventuality, kick us out?..oh wait..
On Friday Nissan's most senior global executive said his company would reconsider its UK investment if we left. The company employs 6,500 people in the north-east. These warnings could cost the Tories votes in manufacturing areas where there are marginal seats.
Posturing. Would he really go if we offered an efficient tax environment and there was abosolutely no change to the UK's ability to trade with the Eurozone - indeed if we were better able to trade on a global basis, on our own behalf, with the Commonwealth and our special friend, the US, as 'us' rather than as part of an EU agreement? How is the jobs argument going down in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Ireland Mr Huhne? Where they're yoked into enabling Germany to boom, while they endure the prospect of almost endless poverty and lack of opportunity as a direct result of what the EU is doing?
And why is an ex Lib Dem, a failed minor party politician worried about Tory marginal seats? (expletive deleted)
The Conservatives, once the business party, are in the fevered grip of activists who have no conception of what matters to the economy or indeed the electorate. Ambitious Tory MPs know how to stroke their party's erogenous zones, which is why the MP Adam Afriyie is playing games in calling for a referendum next year, before the election.
'Once'? If the Tories are not still the business party, then we don't currently have one in the UK. And since business is the source of all the money we have to spend on everything, that might get a bit awkward. What a fucking stupid thing to say. Here's what Digby Jones thinks - would you (dear reader) trust him or Mr Huhne to have the UK's interests at heart on this issue?
On Saturday the Bruges Group, whose principal purpose is to keep a candle flickering at the altar of St Maggie, held a conference in London entitled "Which way out? How Britain can withdraw from the EU". The Tory right is busy plotting the how, not the why.
Because the why - unaccountability, the ability to set our trade, foreign and domestic policies without our (electorate) input, to make laws that bind people who did not vote for them, spend billions in tax payer's money with no accountability and no approved audit for 18 years, is already well established. Try finding a reason - a real benefit - that would justify our staying. I have tried and couldn't. The nearest I could get was the strength that we would have being part of a larger trading block. But if we were members of the EEA (as part of the European Free trade Association EFTA) we would still be part of that larger block, but outside the cloying, controlling, left-wing EU mechanism and, therefore, better able to trade with many other parts of the world. This is what former Eurofile Max Hastings thinks.
This is lunacy. The EU is simply incapable of being the bogeyman the Tory right and the UK Independence party try to put up. Its institutions are small: they employ 47,500 people, 11% of the size of the UK civil service. EU spending is 1% of EU output, or less than a 40th of total public spending. EU law is usually mind-bogglingly technical, and largely about establishing common standards. Without that effort, differing consumer protection can block trade. Unlike any other institution designed to tackle cross-national problems, the EU even has elected officials.
'Even' has elected officials. As if that's some justification. A few elected officials and most, in power are not elected by the majority of people whose money they spend. So it's a relatively small waste of our time and money so we should ignore it and let it get on with controlling our lives in the future? What kind of argument is that? Most of their officials view their cushy lifestyles as being much more important than doing the right thing by their countries of origin. It's an out of control unaccountable and largely unelected power base that has too much power over us and must be wound back to serve us rather than control us.
Nor does the electorate give a toss. Our EU membership does not even rank in the top 10 issues concerning voters. In an Ipsos Mori poll in September, just 1% said it was the most important issue facing Britain, compared with 25% specifically citing the economy. Even Ukip-Tory switchers worry more about immigration and the economy than about EU membership. Yet Tory activists are obsessed with the issue.
By design, the EU has fanned the flames of joke issues like straight bananas over the years to the point where most people now read the letters 'EU' in a story and switch off as its being a joke. It's the boy who cried wolf in reverse - leaving the EU to get on with taking control on a slice by slice basis. Just because people have been thus put off by the EU's tactics does not mean that it's not the biggest threat facing our freedom and democracy at this time and as a (former) UK politician, if you cannot see, understand and communicate that fact, then you are unworthy of the post. Which is self evident from your past behaviour.
How can we explain this? The Tories are a mix of two strands. The first is the whiggish, market-oriented and socially liberal strand. The second is the old Tory English nationalist tradition: militaristic, authoritarian and xenophobic.
Xenophobic? The Tories/British have been responsible for more growth of trade and uplift in living conditions in more countries around the globe than any other party/country on earth. That doesn't mean we roll over at the first sign of any dissent like you fucking idiots would, but neither does it mean we're xenophobic - that's just another example of opponents playing the race card, the man not the ball, rather than engaging properly and winning the argument. Just lazy journalism. Why am I not surprised?
That English nationalist strand runs all the way through Tory history: the archetypal leader in that tradition was Lord Salisbury. As a result, the Tory party has always needed a foreign bogeyman: the French until the entente cordiale in 1904, the Germans until 1945, and the Soviet Union until the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.
Oh do fuck off. We're talking about the future freedom of the British people here, as important now as it has ever been in our history.
When the Soviets could no longer credibly perform the role of foreign threat, who should volunteer but Jacques Delors, then European commission president and a French socialist who proclaimed to the Trades Union Congress in September 1988 that there had to be a "social Europe". As the commission's campaign for its 1992 Maastricht treaty gathered strength, the Tory right had its enemy.
Boris Johnson, then the Daily Telegraph's Brussels correspondent, performed his own walk-on role in the transformation by inventing an entirely new – and largely fictitious – brand of journalism known as the "bent-banana story". The story, in many guises, held that the EU was about to legislate some daft law that would threaten a way of life enjoyed by free-born Englishmen since King Ethelred.
In fact, the EU offers a prize that has been the objective of English foreign policy since the Tudors. We were a small trading nation that wanted to stop any domination that would close our continental markets. We spent blood and treasure fighting the Spanish, French and Germans to achieve that objective. Now the EU gives us what we always craved – and the Tory nationalists look the gift horse in the mouth.
What utter, utter fucking crap. This is not something that we are leading. This was all about trade at first but has now become about a single federal state and one for which we are paying more than everyone except Germany and France to deliver. Are you really suggesting that the objective of English foreign policy since the Tudors was to be governed by a foreign country? If so, your twattishness knows no bounds.
Pity the redundant Tory nationalist, because we live in a period with fewer external threats to our existence than at any time in our history. But the need for a foreign bogeyman does not depend on reality: it is a psychological urge that tells you more about the person who holds those views than about the world.
Bogeyman? Is this the Daily Star? Once again, playing the man not the ball. Insulting the person who holds genuine views rather than addressing his or her concerns. Unless you address the argument why should anyone take what you say seriously? In fact why should anyone take anything you say ever again, seriously Mr Huhne? And if you really think there are fewer external threats to our way of life now than ever before, have a look at Sweden and Belgium and the Middle East. Good grief.
This psychosis is a massive problem for Tory leaders. Cameron should have faced down these demons in opposition, just as his hero Tony Blair faced down the nationalisers with the abolition of clause IV from Labour's constitution. The tragedy for the Tories – and for Cameron's project – is that he never did.
The tragedy for you and those who support this view, is that Dave had no chance of ever facing down people who take the cause of the UK as being more important than being ruled from overseas. Who value our freedoms and our nationality and our sovereignty. You might advocate handing over our powers - powers, on this of all days, that have been so hard won, but there are still many people - not xenophobes, not racists, not 'little Englanders' but proud Britains who want to trade with the world, who love Europe but not the EU, and who want some control and some influence over the people for whom we vote and to whom we provide the money that they spend in our name.
Worse, he threw red meat to rightwingers with a promise in his leadership campaign to withdraw from the European People's party, the pro-EU grouping that contains the sane continental conservative parties.
'Sane'. Again, insult anyone who takes a different view instead of engaging in a rational argument. This guy is truly a fuckwit of epic proportions. Where's the proof for what you say? Where's the source? You're just printing (writing) your own prejudices here. How objective or fact-checked is that Mr Rusbridger?
Cameron now lacks the courage to refuse more of the concessions that he began. Like so many leaders before him, he is a sad hostage to the way he won.
The sadness is mainly that he could only win by being forced to form a coalition with people who are simply not equipped for high office and who do not have the interests of their nation or their electorate at heart. A conclusion that you have confirmed, in spades, via this unbelievably naive article.
For what it's worth, if you want some more on my views on this subject you can find it:
Here (Referendum)
Here (playing the man and not the ball)
Here (Agenda 21, EU control of our lives etc)
Here (will leaving the EU cost British jobs?)
Here (getting back some control over our politicians)
and
Here (the end of democracy in Europe?)
Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment