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Closing Down Debate On Europe
As the EU Referendum Blog reports, the British government has won a vote to curtail debate on the EU Constitution.
The debate will now run for 12 days, rather than the 18 opposition MPs had hoped for (the BBC opts for "MPs back Lisbon treaty timetable." William Hague pointed out that the government's timetable allows for just 45 seconds to debate each line in the constitution.
Even supporters of the treaty are worried about the government's timetable:
"The modernising tendencies of the government wanting to do something good in terms of procedure have been overridden by the old tendency ... of the Stalin in Number 10 and his friends wanting to be very authoritarian about the timetable of this bill", said Liberal Democrats spokesman Simon Hughes. Last week, the Speaker of the House of Commons prevented a group of Labour and Conservative MPs calling for a debate to censure the government on refusing to allow a referendum on the treaty.
The EU Referendum Blog has some more quotes from parliamentarians, including Sir Nicolas Winterton:
"This motion is misguided and is an abuse of the House. I would normally hesitate to say this, but to my mind this sort of tactic would not have been untypical of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Such a tactic is shameful and an abuse of the House."
The government's closing-down tactics have come to the attention of veteran procedural experts, too. In the Telegraph's letters page, Lord Naseby recalls how as a Committee chairman he ensured every interested MP had his say on bills: He argues that the current procedure for rushing through the Treaty is "railroading" and "is not democracy: it is virtual dictatorship".
The EU Referendum Blog also deals with the issue of how the government is signing a "blank cheque" with the Lisbon Treaty. As a newspaper makes clear, the full extent of the powers due to be handed to Brussels has not been decided.
31 areas of competence, including foreign policy, justice and the role of the EU President have yet to be agreed: Indeed, this fuzziness doubtless suits federalists in Brussels, as territory can be gained from national governments via future treaties (allowed for in the Lisbon Treaty, as EURSOC reported last week) and European Court cases.
It doesn't convince Brits.
But what happens after the Treaty is signed?
The Economist's Charlemagne column dismisses British Eurosceptic hopes that the UK could have a semi-detached relationship with Brussels along the lines of that enjoyed by Norway or Switzerland.
"It is unhealthy nonsense to think that anybody would gain from a semi-detached Britain", the column maintains. There is a great deal of bad faith on both sides, it continues: On the government's, which continues to claim in the face of solid evidence that the Lisbon Treaty is substantially different from the rejected Constitution; on that of the Eurosceptics, who want to see the EU condemned to further years of "institutional wrangling."
Brussels grandees see British voters as being exceptionally stupid for their inability to see the benefits of further integration - the more generous, Charlemagne continues, blame the Eurosceptic Press. (Of course, the British prefer to see themselves as independent thinkers and dissenters, unlike their sheepish cousins on the Continent).
"No EU leader has yet called for Britain's expulsion," he writes, "But the idea is gaining currency that Britain may be an intolerable obstacle to European unity. At the right Brussels dinners, speakers of a certain grandeur (an ex-commissioner, say, or a bigwig from the European Parliament) win table-thumping applause by denouncing perfidious Albion, before noting solemnly that the Lisbon treaty, for the first time, allows countries to get out."
Charlemagne makes the case that a British exit from the EU would be undesirable, unpleasant and unworkable. Fair enough. He bases his argument on the fact that "the EU is, first and foremost, an economic project."
If only. EURSOC is willing to bet that if the EU was limited to being an economic project, Brits would wholeheartedly support it. Indeed, they voted for a Common Market nearly 35 years ago, and many would do so again. Unfortunately, economics has slipped down the EU's list of priorities. Thanks to Nicolas Sarkzoy's removal of the phrase "free competition" from the EU's latest Constitution, it will continue to slip down the list.
Necessary agreements between governments to ensure fair trading standards have been hijacked by those with a greater vision - a Europe united politically, diplomatically and socially. This is what the Constitution represents, and what British voters reject.
