2016-06-04T15:15:03+0000

Edwina Currie, famous for many things but formerly a Conservative MP until she lost her seat in 1997, sparked Twitter outrage today with a completely off-the-cuff remark about sovereignty.

Many of us (with many valid reasons) feel Edwina Currie is as mad as a bag of spanners, but her voice still has quite a reach due to her enthusiasm to retain the gaze of the UK public. So, when she speaks, many people hear.

It would appear that Ms Currie does not think UK citizens should concern ourselves with such trivial things as our National Sovereignty, something many past wars have been fought to preserve.

She may consider sovereignty to be over-rated, but going by the replies she received (only a small selection below), she underestimated the importance that very sovereignty had to the Twitterati.

One thing I’d ask Edwina though. If Remain offers the UK such prosperity, ensures our rent is paid and our kids fed, how come so many are unemployed across so many other EU member states?

Unemployment Rates across EU states, April 2016. Source: Eurostat

A small selection of replies…

Some of the replies Edwina received were not printable, even by our open-minded selves, but we’ve selected a few choice ones which made valid points (or were just damn funny).

Is this an official ‘Remain’ argument?

No, you’ll never hear any official Bremainers say such a thing, but it raises a valid question, which should be asked of them all.

I wonder how many UK citizens would actually vote to remain, if they knew they weren’t actually voting for the status quo, but to join a train trundling along the track to a single EU Superstate, a single national identity and a government centralised in Brussels (with that mentally expensiveshift periodically to Strasbourg, which WE also pay for)?

Bremainers speaking in an official capacity will not say it, but all should be prompted to answer a simple question.

Do you believe the UK should succumb to an ever-creeping EU, submerge ourselves completely into the newly spawned EU ‘nation’ and completely hand our sovereignty over to Brussels?

How many Bremainers would publicly answer yes to such a question? Yet all the signs are there.

Before I continue, let me select a small part from the European Commission’s own website report into the recent G7 summit, linked to in my above examples of an ever-creeping EU Superstate.

Is the EU now a full G7 member? If so, who has left to keep the number at 7?

This certainly smacks of an EU with national identity plans for the future.

Even our old mate Guy Verhofstadt (formerly PM of Belgium, now leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, ALDE, in the European Parliament) has stated clearly the plan.

This is not a plan any official Bremainers wish to discuss at all. They’d rather spend their time trying to alienate everyone with a valid gripe against a very undemocratic-looking EU.

The UK has a veto

Ok, we have the right to veto a lot of these plans (not all, but certainly some, on the face of it), but we said that in 1975 too. As it is, our veto is worthless when the EU simply bypasses and does what it wants anyway. The UK veto has been eroded since conception and there is no reason to expect further erosion not to happen in the future.

Think not? Ask George Osborne what happened to his pledge that the EU would not impose a ‘tampon tax’.

Think not? Then I’d refer you to the totally undemocratic way the European Constitution was established under the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007 (signed December 2007, came into force December 2009).

Referendums were held in France and Netherlands in 2005 over a proposed European Constitution (creation of an EU system of government, a president, etc), but were rejected firmly by voters. The EU was not to be deterred though, simply rebadging their proposed ‘constitution’ under the Treaty of Lisbon, signed shortly afterwards.

Why would this matter, I hear you ask? Put simply, Treaties are signed between global leaders, not subject to the will of the people at all. Therefore, in the case of the UK, Gordon Brown as PM at the time, simply signed his agreement and the UK was duly signed up in full to the same constitution the citizens of France and Netherlands so vehemently opposed only a few years before.

It was bad enough for UK citizens, such betrayal of the democratic process, but imagine how the French and Dutch felt at the time?

The Treaty of Lisbon goes a little further. It further streamlined decision-making, making it harder for countries to block legislation that most countries favour. This is what you’ll hear some vociferous Eurosceptics refer to as “Gordon Brown signing away our veto”, when he knowingly added his scrawl to such a ‘treaty’ on our behalf.

So, think about your veto. Consider how much it is worth now, compared to previously. Then consider what they’ll do next, as they further erode any individual member-state powers (for the greater good).

Who is this new, all powerful, EU president?

Jean Claude Juncker, failed ex-president of Luxembourg. That economic powerhouse. That bastion of global industrial strength.

A man nobody in the UK had a real say over. A man none of us ever voted for. A man now charged with leading this newly spawned EU democracy.

The very same Jean-Claude Juncker who presided over Luxembourg when it was openly encouraging European tax avoidance.

The very same Jean-Claude Juncker who appeared obviously drunk, slapping and hugging EU member state leaders at the EU-Eastern Partnership summit in Latvia, May 2015.

All hail our glorious, alcoholic leader.

So Edwina Currie, our sovereignty then…

Well, Edwina has a point. Sovereignty is not something all UK citizens wish to hang onto. Perhaps there are some in the UK who wish no longer to be ruled from Westminster, preferring a distant government. A government who prefers to do most of it’s business away from the public gaze, away from scrutiny and far removed from any citizen with a democratic right to vote thoseIN power back OUT of it.

I do wish, however, the Remain campaign would be honest with the UK public and openly tell them that is what they are voting for, when they vote to remain a member of this farcical European Union.

I’d like someone from the Remain side of the debate actually to stand up and be honest. Tell the UK public that the EU is a Superstate project, one which operates at the behest of big corporations. Tell the UK public that most decisions will be made away from their scrutiny, where public opinion will matter least.

At least Edwina Currie was HONEST in her moment of madness.

“The European democratic model has become a corporate one thanks to the EU. In return for the services the union provides, particularly for peace in our time, the public is prepared to give up its democratic grip. The important decisions in EU life are made away from public scrutiny and by figures and institutions which are poorly understood and little captured by the democratic process. The argument against a pan-European superpower was always that its subject peoples would suffer from a lack of say over how they were run – we are now in the situation where this has happened, and while dissent is growing, the harsh truth is that the subject peoples never quite cared enough about democracy to reverse the process.”

Andrew Alexander, Oxford Royale Academy, 2013

This post was originally published by the author 4 June 2016 http://ukrants.co.uk/edwina-currie-uk-sovereignty-twitter-scandal/

Daily Globe British Values, Global Perspective

The infamous Edwina Currie reminds us of the lack of debate over UK Sovereignty in upcoming EU Referendum