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The Word On The Treaty
Here's a round-up of quotes on the EU "reform treaty" agreed by government leaders in Lisbon late last week
"It was apt that Gordon Brown's agreement to the EU treaty should have coincided with the announcement that MPs are to get an additional two weeks' holiday a year because there is so little for them to do.
"The Lisbon Treaty, after all, is another giant step towards a new form of government, empowered to decide most of the laws that govern our lives, making our Westminster MPs even more redundant than they are now."
- Christopher Booker, The Daily Telegraph
"The American Constitution was written on five sheets of paper and signed by 39 representatives of the American People. The EU Constitution, now refashioned as the Reform Treaty, is a turgid 250-page tome which Gordon Brown wants to spend months examining, in order to ‘dampen opposition’ and demonstrate that the document is ‘too complex to be decided by referendum’. This treaty does not constitute the will of the people, but the cynicism and cowardice of isolated EU elites."
- Brendan O'Neill, Spiked
"The Prime Minister, who is without a drink, is hailed by the Portuguese leader who hosted the Lisbon summit where agreement on a text to replace the EU Constitution - rejected by the French and Dutch in 2005 - was found.
"It is 2.10am and, amid much backslapping and self-congratulation, Mr Socrates sees the British leader.
"Gordon Brown," he says.
A smiling Mr Brown praises the Portuguese prime minister's handling of negotiations.
"Well done. You have done brilliantly. We are very proud of you," he says.
Mr Socrates retorts: "It was fantastic, the first council of Gordon Brown."
Striking a more serious note, Mr Brown checks with Mr Socrates to make sure Britain's "red line" conditions had not inconvenienced negotiations.
"So I was not the block on anything?" he asks. "No, no," Mr Socrates assures him.
As the party intensifies, Mr Socrates can he heard jovially discussing Mr Brown's "plans" to get the Treaty past British referendum campaigners.
"You will have big arguments on... (words drowned out). You will take the floor, no problem," the Portuguese leader says amid laughter from both men.
"I will do my best. You have done brilliantly. It is a great success," replies Mr Brown."
- Conversation between PM Gordon Brown and Portugal's PM José Socrates, reported by Bruno Waterfield in the Telegraph (via EU Referendum)
"Three years ago, when Richard North and I were writing a history of the European Union, trawling hundreds of books and thousands of documents, nothing struck us more than how consistently this grandiose project has been built on deceit as to its true nature (hence our title, The Great Deception).
"It is more than 60 years since one of its progenitors, Altiero Spinelli, wrote that its aim should be stealthily to assemble the components of a supranational government and only to declare its true purpose at the end of the process by unveiling a "constitution".
"It is more than 50 years since another founder, Paul-Henri Spaak, advised Jean Monnet, who was above all "the Father of Europe", that the only way to achieve their goal – a politically integrated Europe – was to pretend that it was only a "Common Market"."
(...)
"Of all the immense changes this will make in how we are governed, none is arguably more important, or has received less attention, than the formal creation of the European Council as the cabinet of our new government. The prime ministers who make it up are placed under a wholly new obligation to put their loyalty to "the Union" above that to their own countries.
"With this treaty we shall finally be ruled by a government that cannot be dismissed, making Britain, in effect, a small part of a giant one-party state. This may make Mr Brown feel important, as part of "the Big Show", but it is hardly surprising that he does not dare consult the wishes of his countrymen on what he has done."
- Booker again
The treaty agreed on Friday "keeps what you call red lines for the time being”.
- European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso
