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Brexit Vote: 51.9% leave, 48.1% stay

Foreign involvement in internal affairs....


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/06/15/tory-rebels-leading-britain-towards-brexit-name/

... are the Tory rebels part of a wider plan to stop Brexit?

While Mr Grieve insists he does not want to stop Brexit, he likes to keep company with those who do.

On Wednesday Mr Grieve attended a meeting at the European Commission’s London headquarters in Smith Square (which was, ironically, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative HQ) convened by avowed opponents of Brexit.

Among the groups represented were Best For Britain, the anti-Brexit group founded by Hungarian-American investor Mr Soros, known as “the man who broke the Bank of England” after he bet against the pound during the 1992 Black Wednesday crisis.

The group has been courting hundreds of MPs that it believes it can convert to its cause of a second referendum. Each one is shown electoral data that “proves” they could increase support in their constituency by backing a second referendum or a “soft” Brexit.

Among the MPs targeted are Conservatives in constituencies with a high number of Labour Remainers: by appealing to those voters, the theory goes, they could scoop up thousands more votes at the next election. Presentations are being held three times a week attended by MPs individually or in groups.

Why this matters is that if Best For Britain succeeds in “turning” enough MPs (and it has a target of recruiting 100), Mrs May could be powerless to stop amendments to forthcoming Brexit-related bills that would achieve what Mr Grieve wants.

And there are many more facets to the well-funded campaign. As MPs geared up to vote on Tuesday, the Financial Times carried a full-page advert urging MPs to defy the Tory whip.

It reproduced the November front page of The Daily Telegraph that described 15 rebels as “The Brexit Mutineers” but replaced the headline with “The Brexit Heroes?”

The advert was paid for by the US-based civil rights campaign group Avaaz, which was founded by two other groups that have together received £1.3 million from Mr Soros.

Nor is Best For Britain the only anti-Brexit group out there. It works in collaboration with eight other groups that all moved onto the same floor of Millbank Tower in Westminster in March, including European Movement UK, Britain For Europe, Scientists for EU, Healthier IN the EU, InFacts, Our Future Our Choice and For Our Future’s Sake.

Once mocked as a disparate group of zealots getting in each other’s way, they are now disciplined, drilled and co-ordinated.

Also sharing the building’s first floor is Open Britain, which includes the People’s Vote campaign and which has organised next Saturday’s march.

It is funded by Roland Rudd, the chairman and founder of the PR company Finsbury who has been dubbed the “Godfather of Remain” and is a close friend of former Labour Cabinet minister Lord Mandelson.

Open Britain has close contact with MPs from all parties, with Mr Grieve, Anna Soubry and the former education minister Nicky Morgan among its former supporters.


Friends and associates .... https://www.americanprogress.org/series/global-progress/view/
 
I guess foreign interference is ok, as long as it is US Progressive causes doing the interfering...
 
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/977225/Brexit-news-UK-EU-House-of-Lords-Theresa-May-European-Union-Withdrawal-Bill

The enclosed video clip is classic in its demonstration of British Parliamentary Democracy at its finest.  Sir Humphrey would be pleased.  (As would R.D. Laing for that matter).

For the record, it means that Theresa May continues the battle.
 
The British people voted to leave the EU, but PM May seems to be trying to ignore that.In fact several ministers are leaving her government in opposition.
 
As a Brexiteer at heart I feel some stake in this discussion.

At the same time, as I have said upthread, I am immensely proud of the democratic display my mother country is putting on.

It is not efficient.  It is profoundly disconcerting, both to the Brits and the rest of the international community.  But it is considerably better than the alternatives .....

Here we see people within parties, Labour and Tory, voicing and voting their principles in the House.  We see debates in cabinet.  We see cabinet ministers quitting so as to be free to voice opposition to the government.  We see ministers and shadow ministers taking to their preferred newspapers to offer their opinions whole and entire without editorializing by reporters.  We see pundits discussing those opinions.  We see groups forming to oppose peacefully using the legitimate means at their disposal.  We see protests in the public square, petitions to parliament and appeals to the courts. 

What we don't see is blood in the streets....

For the bureaucrats of the world it must be terribly annoying to have all these people interfering with their jobs and making things more difficult for them.... but, for me, it is what democracy looks like.

Precious few trained seals in evidence at Westminster.
 
Too bad the purveyors of our own Westminister application can't do the same.
 
Much has been made of Britain's poor decision with respect to Brexit and how the position outside the EU is so inherently bad that Britain must have a deal other than one based on the WTO.

There are contrary opinions - such as this one -

But the Society opinion is that a deal must be made or Britain will suffer.

William Hague, remainer, former leader of the Conservatives and one time Foreign Secretary, and one suspects strong proponent of May's Chequers Proposal, has today penned a piece in the Telegraph suggesting that Macron needs to move and make a deal with Britain or else

Within Britain, many of us who have advocated pragmatic solutions to Brexit would switch to calling for this country to maximise its competitive advantage against the rest of Europe in every way possible – open the freeports, make financial regulation more attractive for those locating in the UK and halt payments to the EU budget.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/08/06/france-key-credible-brexit-deal-macrons-interest-make-happen/

Curiously that is the very argument that the Brexiteers have been making all along - that Britain, freed of the EU regulatory regime, has the tools to remake itself again, prosperously.

Hague's submission seems to me to indicate that the Brexiteers are correct in thinking that even British supporters of the EU, the Remainers, are willing to knee-cap Britain in order to maintain and support the EU regardless of economic costs to Britain.

Pretty hard to get a good deal when the people doing the dealing don't want to be dealing in the first place.

Staff Edit: Removed link, as it lead to user's desktop...
 
Offered without comment - and quoted in its entirety

Why is it that so many leading Brexiteers studied history?
Greg Hall



The history boys: Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Arron Banks (Getty)
Greg Hall

11 August 2018

9:00 AM


What do Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Cummings all have in common? They are Brexiteers, of course. Yet little is it known that they all studied history or classics at university. Add to this list John Redwood, Bill Cash, Daniel Hannan, Owen Paterson and Douglas Carswell — some of the most influential Eurosceptic MPs from the past 30 years. Michael Gove may have studied English literature, but as education secretary he sought to establish a ‘narrative of British progress’ in the history curriculum. Boris has written a biography of Winston Churchill and Nick Timothy has written a biography of Joseph Chamberlain. Even two of the so-called ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’, Arron Banks and Nigel Farage, are self-proclaimed history buffs. After claiming that Ancient Rome was ‘destroyed’ by immigration, Banks was called out by classicist Mary Beard, to which he retorted: ‘I studied Roman history extensively — you don’t have a monopoly on history!’ Nigel Farage is a regular visitor to the battlefields and cemeteries of Europe.

Why is this significant? Much has been made by the liberal left of the association between Brexit and nostalgia, whether it be the dream of returning to an imperial past or the restoration of parliamentary sovereignty. Take Back Control. And the implication of nostalgia is not a positive one; after all, when the term was first coined it referred to a medical condition. Many opponents of Brexit would argue that Brexiteers do have a medical condition — Anna Soubry has already said that all the banging on about Europe is ‘not particularly good for their [the Brexiteers’] mental health’. It may be nostalgia for some, but for others, such as the Question Time audience member who rebuffed Matt Forde last May, Brexit is about ‘the future not the past’.

And if nostalgia is unhelpful, then so too is amnesia. In the UK our past is not comprehensively taught — hence Gove’s reforms; and when it is, it is often the subject of derision. I am not suggesting that anyone who studied history or has a similar degree is a Brexiteer — far from it in fact. More than 300 prominent historians signed a letter to the Guardian before the referendum encouraging Britain to Remain. Yet it is no coincidence that many of the leading Brexiteers have. Whereas the Declaration of Independence is gospel in America, in the UK only a history graduate like Jacob Rees-Mogg could describe the White Paper agreed at Chequers as ‘the greatest vassalage since King John paid homage to Philip II at Le Goulet in 1200’. The pollsters at Vote Leave decided that ‘Take Back Control’ was the most effective slogan, but what it communicates is the doctrine which the History Boys continue to espouse: parliamentary sovereignty. If you know your British history, then you’ll known that this is not an abstract idea but something which parliamentarians have wrestled for since, well, not long after Le Goulet.

In comparison, the leading opponents of Brexit such as Ken Clarke QC, Keir Starmer QC, Tony Blair, Chuka Umunna, Anna Soubry and Matthew Parris all read law or jurisprudence at university. To be sure, they have appealed to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, but only since the referendum, and in order to soften the withdrawal process. Harold Wilson and Ted Heath, the prime ministers who brought the UK into the European Economic Community, studied the now-infamous philosophy, politics and economics. So too did Michael Heseltine, David Cameron, Peter Mandelson, the Miliband brothers, Yvette Cooper and Will Straw, the director of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign. Does this point to conspiracy? No. But it is an interesting pattern to highlight. The old ruling class — politicians such as Herbert Asquith, Harold Macmillan and Boris — studied the classics. The new ruling class — the ‘experts’ — have studied vocational degrees like law and PPE. Whereas our rulers were once versed in the past, they are now versed in technocracy.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule and I am not suggesting that those who oppose Brexit have not studied history or are not interested in it (Dominic Grieve and George Osborne, for instance, read history). But it does not seem too unreasonable to presume that many of the influential opponents of Brexit in politics and the media do so because of their education. If you studied modules on European law or international political economy at university, rather than, say, the Glorious Revolution, it is not surprising that you will come to prioritise the global over the national, the present over the past. Undoubtedly the lawyers ‘understand the importance of statute’, as Soubry put it, but do they understand the importance of history? Magna Carta and what it stands for becomes one of many legal cases to memorise, not a founding national document.

Where does this leave Brexit? I’ll leave the detail to Theresa May, but I suspect that the outcome she achieves will not end this Thirty Years War between our representatives. This is a war which began, and which may have to be settled, on campus. To be sure, such a divergence of outlook among political representatives is not new. Following the French Revolution, Edmund Burke reflected on the fact that the Third Estate, the body of men which came to dominate the legislature in 1789, was composed mainly of lawyers. Fuelled by Enlightenment theories and self-interest, they overturned the ancien régime.

In our case, forget the Bad Boys of Brexit: 23 June 2016 was the work of the History Boys, and its destiny lies with whichever group of graduates holds the balance of power.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/why-is-it-that-so-many-leading-brexiteers-studied-history/


Edit: And thanks to the moderators for catching my security problem on the preceding post.  Cheers.
 
So, the big argument in Britain is whether or not it needs a deal with the EU or it "crashes out" without a deal.

The population at large seems a lot more sanguine about the no-deal/WTO/FTA prospects than does the "establishment".  The "establishment" is at one with its legal advice.

Which brings us to this briefing from the Law Society:

10.40am update: Legal sector growth could halve by 2025 without trade deal

Growth in the legal sector could halve by 2025 if the UK leaves the EU without a trade deal, the Law Society has warned.

The professional body has estimated the secotr would grow by 2.2 percent each year between 2019 and 2025 if the UK pursued a soft Brexit, remaining inside the customs union and single market.

But this growth could halve to 1.1 percent if the UK exits the bloc without a trade deal.


The figures, compiled by Thomson Reuters, showed that opting for a no deal over a soft Brexit would wipe almost £3bn from the turnover of the sector.

The Law Society also predicted that by 2025 there could be up to 5,000 few people employed in the legal sector if the UK agrees a Canada-style free trade agreement with the EU.

But this could rise to 10,000 if the UK leaves the EU under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1006709/brexit-latest-news-no-deal-brexit-michel-barnier-emergency-talks-northern-ireland

Cynics might suspect some special pleading on the part of Law Society support for the EU and Free Trade Agreements.

It sounds as if businesses are faced with competing costs.  They can either pay the costs of filling out paperwork to comply with tariffs, or, they can pay the costs of hiring lawyers to fill out paperwork to avoid tariffs.

Apparently the Law Society has its preferences.

I suppose we should be glad that we have lawyers negotiating trade deals.


Edit to add link
 
Chris Pook said:
I hear the voice of Humphrey - 


https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/882881/Brexit-EU-secret-document-truth-British-public

More on  FCO30/1048 -

This, in 1971, represents an explicit internationalist proposal to Edward Heath from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office laying out the procedures and benefits for eliminating national sovereignty, the sovereignty of parliament and the necessary transfer of power to European bureaucrats and the European Court of Justice.  Democracy would be limited but, hopefully, at some point in the future, weather permitting, it would be restored at the European level - Westminster would be relegated.

It also describes how the plebs need to be kept in the dark until it is too late for them to do anything about it.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/883540/FCO-30-1048-Brexit-EU-secret-document-damned-Britain-EU-membership

A SECRET document prepared for pro-Europe Tory Prime Minster Edward Heath shows how the Foreign Office knew EU membership would dismantle Britain as a sovereign nation.

By LARA DEAUVILLE
PUBLISHED: 09:01, Fri, Sep 28, 2018 | UPDATED: 20:27, Fri, Sep 28, 2018

More damningly, in line after line, the faceless Whitehall mandarins behind the astonishing briefing paper FCO 30/1048 actively welcome Britain’s decline and Europe’s predominance.

The briefing paper acknowledges that Britain would in time become little more than a puppet state of Brussels, after ceding judicial and executive powers to the fledgling EU – then called the EEC.

But, instead of sounding alarm bells, the authors of the paper warn ministers to hide the truth from the British public.

And, damningly for Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath, and all those who kept quiet about the findings in the early 70s, the document, known as FCO30/1048, was locked away under Official Secrets Act rules for almost five decades.

What the writers – famously championed by Mr Heath – could not have envisioned was that the British public would see though the audacious abuse of power and vote to LEAVE Europe in a fiercely contested referendum half a century later.

To some critics the lie is at the heart of the Brexit battle faced by Theresa May as she prepares to face her embattled delegates at Tory Party Conference, in Birmingham next week.

The classified paper, dated April 1971, even suggested the Government should keep the British public in the dark about what EEC membership means predicting that it would take 30 years for voters to realise what was happening by which time it would be too late to leave.

Bizarrely FCO 30/1048 reads more like an educated anarchists’ guide to crushing Britain’s political standing on the world stage than the sober briefing of civil service pillars of the British establishment.

The language suggests repeatedly that the British people are too stupid to grasp the implications of joining the EEC (which became the EU in 1993) and that indeed this stupidity could be used against them to hide the truth until it was essentially too late to do anything about it.

Again and again they assert that Britain’s parliament will be sidelined and that, sooner rather than later, there will be a United States of Europe with a single currency.

Here we read between the lines of the most damning paragraphs of the FCO 30/1048 and explain what the writers really meant:

The paper starts with a academic discussion of sovereignty – arguing that sovereignty is not necessarily a good thing.

By page five we are left in no doubt as to the author’s position on sovereignty as he writes:

“Sovereignty is a technical concept with in many ways only limited bearing on the questions of power and influence that form the normal preoccupation of foreign policy.”

And after some rambling paragraphs about the Queen having sole sovereign law making power in Britain he cuts to the chase saying:

“Membership of the Communities will involve us in extensive limitations upon our freedom of action.”

The first acknowledgement that Britain was about to transfer significant powers to Europe.

A few paragraphs later he confirms this saying: “we shall be accepting an external legislature which regards itself as having direct powers of legislating with effect within the United Kingdom, even in derogation of United Kingdom statutes, and as having in certain fields exclusive legislative competence, so that our own legislature has none.”

And further the authors not only concede the handing over of power but that this is a no-going back deal:

we shall be accepting that the Commission will jointly represent the member states, who to that extent will have their individual international negotiating powers limited; and we shall in various fields be accepting a wide degree of coordination of our policy with that of the rest of the Community. All of this we shall be accepting “for an unlimited period,” with no provision for withdrawal.

In a clumsy attempt to diminish the massive changes to the way Britain is governed the writer says: “Overall it is clear that membership of the Community in its present form would involve only limited diminution of external sovereignty in practice.”

But just a page later the author makes it crystal clear that it is just a matter of time before Europe starts eating away at Britain’s ability to govern itself saying: “The loss of external sovereignty will however increase as the Community develops, according to the intention of the preamble to the Treaty of Rome 'to establish the foundations of an even closer union among the European peoples'.”

Paragraph 12(I) is one of the most damning – as it clearly details the way in which EU law will trample over British law. But that this must be kept from the common knowledge of the British people.

He writes: “By accepting the Community Treaties we shall have to adapt the whole range of subsidiary law which has been made by the Communities. Not only this but we shall be making provision in advance for the unquestioned direct application (i.e. without any further participation by Parliament) of Community laws not yet made (even though Ministers would have a part, through membership of the Council, in the making of some of these laws). Community law operates only in the fields covered by the Treaties, viz, customs duties; agriculture; free movement of labour; services and capital; transport; monopolies and restrictive practices; state aid for industry; and the regulation of the coal and steel and nuclear energy industries. Outside this considerable range there would remain unchanged by far the greater part of our domestic law.

Community law is required to take precedence over domestic law: i.e. if a Community law conflicts with a statute, it is the statute which has to give way. This is something not implied in other commitments which we have entered into in the past. Previous treaties have imposed on us obligations which have required us to legislate in order to fulfil the international obligations set out in the treaty, but any discrepancy between our legislation and the treaty obligations has been solely a question of a possible breach of those international obligations the conflicting statute has still undoubtedly been the law to be applied in this country. But the community system requires that such Community Law as applies directly as law in this country should by virtue of its own legal force as law in this country prevail over conflicting national legislation.”

Clause III adds with shocking prescience that the seismic legal shift would in effect be creating a federal law in a United States of Europe. And this was 46 years ago, back in 1971.

He writes: “The power of the European Court to consider the extent to which a UK statute is compatible with Community Law will indirectly involve an innovation for us, as the European Court’s decisions will be binding on our courts which might then have to rule on the validity or applicability of the United Kingdom statute.


"(iv) The Law Officers have emphasised that in accepting Community Law in this country we shall need to make it effective as part of a new and separate legal order, distinct from, but co-existing side by side with, the law of the United Kingdom. They have referred to the basic European Communities Treaty provisions as amounting “in effect to a new body of ‘Federal’ statute law.”


Next he deals with the reality of the homogenising of British life into European life and says:

“In lay terms we may say that if Britain joined the Community there would be many implications for both external and internal (particularly parliamentary) sovereignty. Some of these would be wholly novel, and the general effect particularly in the longer turn would be of more pervasive and wide-ranging change than with any earlier commitments. Largely this is because the Community treaties when drawn up were seen as arrangements not merely for collaboration but for positive integration of large parts of the economic and social life of the Member States. As a result the conventional theoretical line dividing internal from external affairs has become blurred, a process which as we have seen is already advancing with the development of transnational economic activity.”

The patronising tone deepens further as the writer suggests Britain is populated by xenophobes who have a large ‘mistrust of foreigners.’ He bizarrely quotes novelist Nancy Mitford saying: “Nancy Mitford’s Uncle Matthew was not alone in considering that: “Abroad is hell and foreigners are fiends.”

He writes:

15.(i) National Identity: "We are all deeply conscious through tradition, upbringing and education of the distinctive fact of being British. Given our island position and long territorial and national integrity, the traditional relative freedom from comprehensive foreign, especially European, alliances and entanglements, this national consciousness may well be stronger than that of most nations.

"When “sovereignty” is called into question in the debate about entry to the Community, people may feel that it is this “Britishness” that is at stake.
Hence Mr Rippon’s pointed question “are the French any less French?” for their membership. There is another, less attractive, aspect of this national pride. This is the large measure of dislike and mistrust of foreigners that persists in Britain. Nancy Mitford’s Uncle Matthew was not alone in considering that: “Abroad is hell and foreigners are fiends.”

"(iii) Remoteness of the Bureaucracy: It is generally acknowledged that in modern industrialised society the impersonal and remote workings of the Government bureaucracy are sources of major anxiety and mistrust. The operations of democracy seem decreasingly fitted to control the all-embracing regulatory activities of the Civil Service. In entry to the Community we may seem to be opting for a system in which bureaucracy will be more remote (as well as largely foreign) and will operate in ways many of which are already determined and which are deeply strange to us. This bureaucracy is by common consent more powerful than compared with the democratic systems of the Community than is ideal. Yet the way to remedy this balance without reducing the Community to a mere standing association for negotiation between national Ministers is by strengthening the Community’s democratic processes which in turn means more change and more “loss of sovereignty.”

The following paragraph iv is so damningly anti-British it reads like the ramblings of some pseudo Guy Burgess type Oxbridge communist attacking, as it does, Britain’s idea she has any power on the world stage as fantasy.

He writes:

"(iv) National Power: As explained in paragraph 6 above, questions of power and influence have a close popular connection with ideas of sovereignty. The British have long been accustomed to the belief that we play a major part in ordering the affairs of the world and that in ordering our own affairs we are beholden to none. Much of this is mere illusion. As a middle power we can proceed only by treaty, alliance and compromise. So we are dependent on others both for the effective defence of the United Kingdom and also for the commercial and international financial conditions which govern our own economy. But this fact though intellectually conceded, is not widely or deeply understood; instinctive attitudes derive from a period of greater British power. Joining the Community does strike at these attitudes: it is a further large step away from what is thought to be unfettered national freedom and a public acknowledgement of our reduced national power; moreover, joining the Community institutionalises in a single, permanent coalition the necessary process of accommodation and alliance over large areas of policy, domestic as well as external. Even though these areas may be less immediately relevant to survival than defence, as covered by NATO, the form of the Community structure and the intentions explicit in the preamble to the Treaty of Rome emphasise the merging of national interests.”

In a section that could have been written 46 minutes ago rather than 46 years ago he deals with the inevitable – and welcome – single currency, and the prospect of an EU army.

He writes: “…but it will be in the British interest after accession to encourage the development of the Community toward an effectively harmonised economic, fiscal and monetary system and a fairly closely coordinated and consistent foreign and defence policy. This sort of grouping would bring major politico/economic advantages but would take many years to develop and to win political acceptance. If it came to do so then essential aspects of sovereignty both internal and external would indeed increasingly be transferred to the Community itself.”

Towards the end the anti-British, pro-Europe rhetoric is in full flow, accepting Britain’s notion of itself as an independent state would be completely dismantled. Britain would be a European state, it’s Parliament neutered.

"19...then over a wide range of subjects (trade, aid, monetary affairs and most technological questions) Community policies toward the outside world would be common or closely harmonised. Although diplomatic representation would remain country by country its national role would be much diminished since the instructions to representatives would have been coordinated among member states. By the end of the century with effective defence and political harmonisation the erosion of the international role of the member states could be almost complete. This is a far distant prospect; but as members of the Community our major interests may lie in its progressive development since it is only when the Western Europe of which we shall be a part can realise its full potential as a political as well as economic unit that we shall derive full benefits from membership."

"20. …of the functions of the Community could probably only take place with concomitant development of the institutions of the Community. It is hard to envisage the necessary decisions being taken under the present organisation of the Community; more effective decision-making at Community level would either require majority voting on an increasing range of issues in the Council or stronger pressures to reach quick decisions by consensus. In either case the role of the Commission would become more important as the Community became responsible for the regulation of wider areas of the internal affairs of the member states and this would in turn increase the need to strengthen the democratic institutions of the Community, including perhaps a directly elected Parliament. In that event the development of a prestigious and effective directly elected Community Parliament would clearly mean the consequential weakening of the British Parliament as well as the erosion of 'parliamentary sovereignty'."

FCO 30/1048 even predicts Michel Barnier’s current attempt to bully and punish Britain for having the temerity to leave the EU saying member states would probably nominally have the ability to leave until about the year 2000, but such a move would have increasingly damaging economic consequences for the defector.”

And in yet another sideswipe at the British public he says it will be important for politicians to deal with – or cover-up – “anxieties about British power and influence (masquerading under the term sovereignty) by presenting the choice between the effect of entry and on Britain’s power and influence in a rapidly changing world.”


“After entry there would be a major responsibility on HMG and on all political parties not to exacerbate public concern by attributing unpopular measures or unfavourable economic developments to the remote and unmanageable workings of the Community. This counsel of perfection may be the more difficult to achieve because these same unpopular measures may sometimes be made more acceptable if they are put in a Community context, and this technique may offer a way to avoid the more sterile forms of inter-governmental bargaining. But the difference between on the one hand explaining policy in terms of general and Community-wide interest and, on the other, blaming membership for national problems is real and important.”

Finally, in conclusion, the writers concede openly that Parliament will be made effectively redundant saying:

“To control and supervise this process it will be necessary to strengthen the democratic organisation of the Community with consequent decline of the primacy and prestige of the national parliaments.”

And then, there is this headline:

Nations putting the EU in danger
Mon, October 23, 2017


My personal take on this document is not just concern about the impact on Britain about the document itself but the fact that it is indicative of broad tranche of western thought.  And, unfortunately, in my opinion, that thought finds common ground in Ottawa, the State Department, the EU and Whitehall.  It also finds expression in parties as diverse politically as the Socialists, Communists, Liberals, Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives and the Church parties of the right.  The common ground is the belief in the requirement for supra-national agency and is based on the notion that somewhere along the line there is a perfectable human agency that can determine absolute answers and render perfect laws and usher in the millenium on earth.  This notion is currently defined as the liberal rule of law.

In fact, in my opinion, it is the age old quest for control rationalized by other means.

As the heir of non-conformists, dissenters, disestablishmentarians and other reprobates: I object.


PS - I didn't run out of yellow ink. I got fed up hitting the switches. There is too much of import in that article.


 
Chris

I'm not taking issue with your opinions at the end of the post. Those are yours and fairly held. I do take issue with the article itself and the issues that it raises specifically about its suggestion that FCO30/1048 considered the public stupid and advocated a program of misdirection and concealment of the facts.

The article does not provide a link to the paper itself so that a reader can check for himself but fortunately it's not that hard to find online. I've located one that is an "annotated" version. The text in italics, is the actual paper and the unitalicised text are the annotated comments. I found this one useful because one could read the criticism directly with the actual text and form one's own conclusions.

http://www.eureferendum.com/documents/FCOsovereignty2.pdf

I don't think that there is any doubt that the writers were advocating in favour of union with the EEC and were actively laying out both the benefits as well as the shortcomings, principally the reduction/loss of sovereignty and that EEC institutions would take predominance over domestic ones. At the time that's what the whole issue was; to build a strong and powerful central community which would be greater, stronger, richer than it's independent parts.

In my view that is what a ministerial paper should do in advising the various ministers of the facts, options, risks etc.

Along the way it points out that there are perceptions and anxieties within the public that must be understood and addressed. Specifically the paper says:

Before entry it is important to deal squarely with the anxieties about British
power and influence (masquerading under the term sovereignty) by presenting the choice
between the effect of entry and on Britain’s power and influence in a rapidly changing world

The article interprets this as "cover-up". I think that's a major and unfair leap.

Similarly, the article talks about:

The patronising tone deepens further as the writer suggests Britain is populated by xenophobes who have a large ‘mistrust of foreigners.’ He bizarrely quotes novelist Nancy Mitford saying: “Nancy Mitford’s Uncle Matthew was not alone in considering that: “Abroad is hell and foreigners are fiends.”

This comes from para 15(i) of the paper which starts:

We are all deeply conscious through tradition, upbringing and education of the distinctive
fact of being British. Given our island position and long territorial and national integrity,
the traditional relative freedom from comprehensive foreign, especially European, alliances
and entanglements, this national consciousness may well be stronger than that of most
nations. We are all deeply conscious through tradition, upbringing and education of the distinctive
fact of being British. Given our island position and long territorial and national integrity,
the traditional relative freedom from comprehensive foreign, especially European, alliances
and entanglements, this national consciousness may well be stronger than that of most
nations.

Let's call a spade a spade. The Brits were, and continue, to be xenophobes. All you need to do is read the Daily Mail and you'll see articles that look back at WWII and Nazis every second day. They just can't let go of the fact that the continent is populated by Krauts, Frogs, Dagos and various other groups of strangers. The paper is neither patronizing nor bizarre; it states a fact in subtle tones and cautions the ministers to be aware of that underlying public opinion.

Like I said before. We may all differ on whether or not the EU (or the EEC at the time) is a good thing, and there are  fair positions to take on both side of that issue. I think that this article, however, takes the clear fact that the authors of the paper were in favour of union and advising the ministers of the various upside and downside issues and spins that into some fanciful yarn that there was a massive bureaucratic conspiracy to hide the truth from the public in order to implement their plan.

Read the paper for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

:cheers:

Edited to fix my crappy grammar
 
Thank you for posting the link.  Quite expositive.

The issue continues to be one of power and how to influence it.  Quebec and Alberta already have issues internally with people contending over whether or not their provincial governments are reflective of the needs and wants of the residents.  Those are communities of millions.  They have problems with Ottawa acting in ways often seen at odds with their wants and needs and felt to be ignoring them on the basis of serving the needs and wants of the larger community.  It is an open debate as to whether or not the needs and wants are being fairly understood by the government of the day or whether or not the needs and wants are revealed truths that surpass the understanding of mere mortals. 

The larger the community the less the opportunity for the individual to influence either the community or its leadership.  The larger the community the greater the opportunity for the leadership to indulge its sense of infallibility and act according to the leaderships sense of needs and wants - and we are left with relying on the benevolence of the leadership.  Which is where we started.

I, for one, uniquely, as an individual, am not prepared to put my faith in the benevolence of a single, unique, individual purporting to act infallibly in the name of 7 billion single, unique, individuals.

We have ample historical examples going back 12,000 years of failed attempts to establish empire both internally and externally.

I believe that Quebec has been somewhat less than happy with such efforts both pre- and post-1867. 

Parliamentary democracy, within cultural and geographic limits, at least has the advantage of tamping down internal discord for a couple of centuries and doing no worse externally than more absolutist neighbours.

Yours in Xenophobia.  :cheers:
 
Chris Pook said:
Thank you for posting the link.  Quite expositive.

The issue continues to be one of power and how to influence it.  Quebec and Alberta already have issues internally with people contending over whether or not their provincial governments are reflective of the needs and wants of the residents.  Those are communities of millions.  They have problems with Ottawa acting in ways often seen at odds with their wants and needs and felt to be ignoring them on the basis of serving the needs and wants of the larger community.  It is an open debate as to whether or not the needs and wants are being fairly understood by the government of the day or whether or not the needs and wants are revealed truths that surpass the understanding of mere mortals. 

The larger the community the less the opportunity for the individual to influence either the community or its leadership.  The larger the community the greater the opportunity for the leadership to indulge its sense of infallibility and act according to the leaderships sense of needs and wants - and we are left with relying on the benevolence of the leadership.  Which is where we started.

I, for one, uniquely, as an individual, am not prepared to put my faith in the benevolence of a single, unique, individual purporting to act infallibly in the name of 7 billion single, unique, individuals.

We have ample historical examples going back 12,000 years of failed attempts to establish empire both internally and externally.

I believe that Quebec has been somewhat less than happy with such efforts both pre- and post-1867. 

Parliamentary democracy, within cultural and geographic limits, at least has the advantage of tamping down internal discord for a couple of centuries and doing no worse externally than more absolutist neighbours.

Yours in Xenophobia.  :cheers:

I'm a bit of a xenophobe myself and not really a fan of the EU as structured. I sometimes wonder about how a big city like Toronto or New York can function and the answer is quite simple: by one neighbourhood at a time. The trick is finding exactly the right division of responsibilities between what goes on at the local level and what happens at the ever expanding higher regional etc levels.

IMHO that's where the EU fails. It throws too much power at the central government in dealing with issues that are much better dealt with at the local level. I put this down to the fact that much of the EU functions under a civil code system. Civil codes, again IMHO, tend towards being micromanagement systems. I think laws work best when they restrict or forbid specific unwanted acts and leave individuals and companies to operate freely and innovatively everywhere else rather than setting out a formula or process that must be followed by everyone in all cases. The US offers an interesting contrast having a common law basis but a codified statute system. More importantly it is a system of dual sovereignty as between the federal and states governments as may be limited by it's constitution.

I spent quite a few years working with individuals from the EU and noted that there was a tremendous difference in attitude to many things between the northern more Scandinavian/Germanic (including the UK) nations and the southern Latin (Roman influenced) countries like France, Spain, Italy etc. I would think it would be very difficult to create any system that would create consensus amongst such disparate cultures.

I expect that the debates as to which is the superior system are be endless.

:cheers:

 
I believe that debates over the superiority of systems are endless and that "finding exactly the right division of responsibilities" is a mugs game.

It is precisely for those reasons that I oppose the centralization of authority and commend local democracy regardless of whether or not local democracy produces a system under which I might wish to live.

With centralization I am left with two options.  I must obey or fight.  With dispersed local democracy the odds are that I can find a location where I can live with convivial values.

The only trick required is toleration of cultural norms - no matter how ugly they may seem to others.

Edit:

One of the more interesting parts of the Canadian Experiment was the settling of the Prairies.  The Governments of the Day encouraged "ghettoization" as some would deride it today.  They encouraged the transposition of whole communities to create like-minded communities on the Prairies.  Hungarians in Esterhazy.  Ukrainians in Vegreville.  French in Gravelbourg.  Icelanders in Gimli. Dutch. Scots. Catholic. Orthodox. Mennonites. Hutterites. Mormons. Reformers.

This encouraged the local, as a "support group", with a common culture, rule book, language, church and sense of community while the various communities figured out how to work with the neighbouring communities and with their new national governments.

Canada was intentionally a patchwork of independent communities:  An exportable model.

 
I believe I have found the answer.  Why is the government of the UK having such a hard time with Brexit?

But the Prime Minister will struggle to paint much of a picture given that the Government is still trying to nail down the nuts and bolts.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/12/03/theresa-may-keeps-giving-mps-reasons-vote-against-brexit-deal/

Painting a picture with nuts, bolts and a hammer is not a strategy that immediately commends itself to me
 
A thought about Chaos.

The governing party is responsible for finding solutions.
The opposition is responsible for critiquing those solutions.

At the next election the governing party will be held to account by the public for the quality of those solutions.

The public will then decide whether to allow the the governing party to continue governing.
The leader of the opposition may then have an opportunity to take over governing.

Now, both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbin have parties that are split over Brexit.
This is a problem for Theresa as she tries to find solutions.
This is not a problem for Jeremy.  All he has to do is continue to oppose her solutions.

Jeremy is in the position where all he has to do is not interfere with an enemy intent on destroying itself.

Meanwhile Brexit.

Jeremy is on record as wanting to leave the EU.  40 years in parliament and nary a kind word.
Theresa in on record as wanting the remain.

The public is split with not much of an advantage either way.  No particular electoral advantage for either party.  Half the population will blame the governing party regardless of the outcome.

The opposition will throw away its electoral advantage if it ends up supporting whatever deal the governing party proclaims.  Including no deal.

In the event of no deal the governing party gets the blame and the opposing party gets the opportunity.

And Jeremy Corbin?  He gets to leave the EU, as he has wanted for the last 40 years, put two fingers up to the establishment, wreck the Tories,and be free from EU interference while he imposes his brand of socialism on the UK.

My take?  Jeremy Corbin will do what it takes to ensure "no deal" and that Theresa and the Tories take the blame.

As a Brexiteer - pluses and minuses. 

Britain survived Cromwell, Harold Wilson and Clement Atlee.  Might have to dig deep again.
 
Only in England are these titles imaginable together--PM Theresa May says:

...
But I believe that with a mandate from this House and supported by the Attorney General, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, I can secure such a change in advance of our departure from the EU...
https://www.independent.ie/ca/business/brexit/it-is-not-renegotiable-theresa-may-under-fire-as-she-bids-to-drop-the-brexit-backstop-37762125.html#

Mark
Ottawa
 
https://whatukthinks.org/eu/opinion-polls/uk-poll-results/page/3/

An absolutely fascinating link - 74 pages of opinion polls ( I got to page 2 and a bit) on every question of the day pertaining to Brexit, deals, immigration, tariffs and what matters - up to March 11.

A great antidote to the headlines and all those drunken, sleepless MPs at Westminster.  25% are scared of leaving. 25% are determined to leave. 25% don't know and 25% don't care.

The sun will rise in the morning as usual and bills will have to be paid.
 
I have been refraining from commenting on this democratic exercise which, in the main, is still being conducted by the rules (although, to be honest while the match is still mainly on the pitch it is looking more and more like an Old Firm Cup final at Ibrox with a bent Ref).  I am reduced to following events with both amusement and bemusement because I don't really expect an outcome on this one any more. No more than I expect a resolution of the Basque, Provencale and Catalonian problems - Or Scotti Tcheuchters vs Covenanting Picts. 

However - this really caught my attention:

In an attack on MEPs critical of a long Brexit delay, Mr Tusk urged them to still consider British Remainers as "Europeans".

He said: "You cannot betray the 6 million people who signed the petition to revoke Article 50 or the increasing majority who want to remain in the EU, they may feel that they are not sufficiently represented by the UK parliament but they must feel they are sufficiently represented by you in this chamber because they are Europeans."

For those of you not keeping up - there is an on-line petition (accessible by anybody from any country) with some 6 million names calling for Brexit to be cancelled.  Just to be clear some 17 million voted to leave, 16 voted to stay, another 16 or so didn't care enough to get out of bed, and a bunch more weren't eligible to vote.

What gets me about President Tusk's comment is that he is from Poland. 

What would be his reaction if he saw the following in the daily news:

In an attack on MEPs critical of a long Brexit delay, Mr Tusk Putin urged them the Russian Parliament to still consider British Remainers Communists in Poland as "Europeans  Russians".

He said: "You cannot betray the 6 million people who signed the petition to revoke Article 50 or the increasing majority who want to remain in the EU those who want to rejoin with Mother Russia, they may feel that they are not sufficiently represented by the UK Polish and EU parliament(s) but they must feel they are sufficiently represented by you in this chamber because they are Europeans  Russians."

As I have said elsewhere - it is easy to become cynical when you hear rhetoric like this.

The good news is that none of this really matters.  We're still here despite thousands of years of the same rhetoric and worse actions.

 
98 Reasons To Stay In The EU: Benefits Of Membership For The UK

https://smallbusinessprices.co.uk/remain-eu/  :2c:

 
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