Quote of the day
“The real dividing line is not ‘cuts versus investment’, but honesty versus dishonesty. We should have the confidence to tell the public the truth that Britain faces a debt crisis; that existing plans show that real spending will have to be cut, whoever is elected; and that the bills of rising unemployment and the huge interest costs of a soaring national debt mean that many government departments will face budget cuts. These are statements of fact and to deny them invites ridicule.”
- Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, writing for the Times (full article HERE)
Excellent burst of honest and clarity from Osborne.
Now we just a similar bout of honesty and clarity from Cameron on the LisbonConstiTreaty and the Tories’ policy towards the EU in general.
Honesty is going to be a useful word for the Conservatives to bash Labour over the head with, the last thing they want is dishonesty from their own side….
Sounds like Cameron is stuck with the Treaty and will accept the ratification, but he will need something bold to placate the eurosceptics.
You’re right LFAT but that is a double edged sword. If they bang the honesty drum and then, once elected, get caught lying, they’ll suffer. A lot. Labour came in with trust-me-Tony pledging that, in the wake of what we, at the time, called Sleaze, they’d be ‘white than white’.
Accordingly, when they were caught selling Lordships, Laws, commercial favours (remember Eccleston and F1?) and the rest, they suffer not only for the disgusting casino of democracy that they created, but for being filthy hypocrites to boot.
I doubt if he’ll be able to offer anything bold enough to placate me. This is, or should be, a matter of trust between the Government and the governed.
At the last election, the Tories promised a Referendum on the EU Constitution and it is generally accepted that the Lisbon ConstiTreaty is basically the same thing.
The Tories didn’t promise to hold a Referendum “if Labour decide to renege on their commitment to a referendum and push the Treaty through regardless. But not to hold one if all the other nations that make up the EU vote in favour – even if they have to be made to vote twice.”
Cameron is on record saying that if a Referendum IS held, the Tories would campaign for a NO. So basically, he believes the Treaty is bad for the UK.
Why does it suddenly become acceptable just because Ireland has been bribed, bullied and threatened into voting a second time in order to ‘give the right answer.’
Cameron will lose a lot of votes to UKIP if he reneges on the Referendum.
this was a breath of fresh air. About time someone stood up to this particular Brownie.
Boudicca, the answer is that it cannot be unilaterally repealed by any country once it is in force. Once the Lisbon treaty is passed, like all other treaties, it ammends the founding treaty, the Treaty of Rome. Therefore, the Lisbon Treaty in itself ceases to be a seperate article but becomes part of the whole, (which has always been a semi constitutional document anyway).
The only available question in a referendum for Cameron at that point is ‘in or out’. The Lisbon Treaty cannot be seperated out from the whole, a country must abide by the sole empowered treaty, the Treaty of Rome (as ammended by Lisbon), or leave the EU
As for the main quote, I expect to hear nothing but outright lies from Labour all the way to the next election, because they have nothing to lose. All they can hope to do is plant the seed that they would not have made the cuts and cry foul when the Conservatives are forced to do exactly what they would have been forced to do, (probably by the IMF), if they were somehow in a position to form the next government.
Labour’s strategy is now about how they oppose, not how they govern.
I commented in the other thread about the viability of legally repealing the treaty but stumbled in the argument when I was forced to use many, many long words which (by design, I contend) is the only way to discuss such arcane texts…
@Tony E –
So how come the UK was able to hold a Referendum on joining what was then the Common Market two years after Ted Heath took us in? If the vote had been NO, the Treaty would have been taken as null and void.
No Parliament can bind future Parliaments. A Treaty is not entered into by the UK in perpetuity. A Treaty can be renegotiated or revoked – if circumstances change and/or the Will is there.
If Cameron held a post-Ratification Referendum on the LisbonConstiTreaty, with the justification that the UK electorate had been promised a Referendum by all the main parties, and the vote was NO then, as a Sovereign nation we would be entitled to revoke the Treaty.
By suggesting that the Treaty cannot be repealed, you are accepting that the EU is now Sovereign over the UK.
@Boudicca
My comment in the Lisbon Treaty thread was:
“As I have long argued (right back to moots at Uni in 1994), sovereignty is an absolute. You are either sovereign or not. If you give up ‘a little bit of sovereignty’ then you are no longer sovereign since sovereignty implies the absolute freedom to legislate on anything in any way.
The White and Green papers predating the UKs entry into the EEC in 1972 expressly recognised this.
Additionally, since the Act joining the EEC and its successor acts place themselves and EU law in primacy over domestic UK law then it is open to question whether we could, legally, repeal them at all. The only way out could be to, effectively, replace parliament by some form of revolution and use that to restate sovereignty although that may attract some form of intervention from outside, assuming that the Euros wouldn’t just let us go.”
and
“Its a complex legal position. It has long been held that Parliament cannot bind its successors – otherwise it would be able to limit its sovereignty in the future which is a contradiction of logic. This fundamental tennet of our (unwritten) constitution has to be set aside for the EEC Ascension to do what it claims it does – set the EU legislation above our normal laws.
The arguments divide thus:
Either we were never sovereign, Parliament could always bind its successors but never successfully did so before 1972. This has larger philosophical implications – if we were never sovereign then wtf are we moaning about?
Or, Parliament was and is still sovereign and cannot bind its successors and thus EEC/EU legislation is not above our other laws, in reality. This means that in addition to being vulnerable to direct repeal, EC laws are also subject to the ‘doctrine of implied repeal’ which is a constitutional law widget that means where later legislation contradicts earlier laws, the early laws are ‘repealed’ in so far as they are contradicted by the new law. This is complicated by the fact that EU laws originate in treaties signed by High Contracting Parties (states) and so we’d automatically be breaching treaties and being naughty/behaving illegally in the context of international law.”
They need to use these occasional bouts of honesty to bash Labour properly. On TV the politicos are far too chummy with one another, I’d like to see some proverbial blood spilled – much as Paddy Ashdown managed the other week on Question Time. His demolition of Baroness Royall’s claims on openness and transparency was beautiful.
A proper public fisking of Brown, his policies and his positions would do massive amounts of damage to Labour, but it must be relentless, merciless and backed up with a publically available dossier nicely highlighting damaging quotes by the likes of Brown and Balls.
Labour could respond likewise, but it would be seen as a rear-guard action.
Boudicca, you are exactly right, and we are making the same point to a degree.
This is how I believe the law stands:
In 1975, The treaty of Rome would not have been null and void had we voted to leave the EC, the 1972 European Communities Act would have been repealed, thereby ending our membership of the Common Market.(Please someone correct me if the name of the act is incorrect)
We could always leave the EU, simply by repealing that act. What we cannot do is force a change in the Treaty of Rome without the consent of all the other nations who are signatory to it. This would require another treaty, an ammending treaty similar to the structure of Lisbon, Maastrict or Amsterdam. (The constitution was the same in effect but different in structure because it would have replaced the Treaty of Rome, something that Lisbon only ammends, hence Labour’s whole argument re the referendum).
Under the 1972 European Communities Act act we allow judgements made in European Law to have presidence over domestic law, but this does not set aside the sovereignty of parliament because we can at any time repeal the 1972 act and leave the union. In this way, parliament is not technically binding its successors.
So as the truth slowly sinks in, our dire straits can no longer be denied, hence ‘honesty’ and the ‘dishonesty’ coming to the fore. At least we should all be wary of Labour speak these days; IMF is an anagram of MFI and we know what happened to the latter. It always seems to happen under Labour. WHY DO PEOPLE FORGET?
There seems to be a sudden outbreak of Tory honesty all over the internet.
Iain Dale
Idle
Capitalists@work
@Tony E –
Tony and Shaun
I have come back to this thread rather late in the day – I’m sorry for not responding earlier. Thank you both for your insights into the legal ramifications of the LisbonConstiTreaty.
My personal position on the EU is clear: I will accept the Will of the British electorate but not a decision taken by a Prime Minister/Government on my behalf without consulting the British people. I simply do not believe that a Prime Minister has the right to make a decision of such constitutional significance without first acquiring the agreement of the nation. A General Election is not sufficient because a GE involves and revolves around so many other domestic issues which can obscure the importance of the international perspective.
If, in a fair Referendum, the British people voted to accept the LisbonConstiTreaty and full membership of the EUSSR then so be it. What I don’t accept is a refusal by the mainstream political parties to put the question of the UK’s future and Sovereignty to the electorate to decide.
To be told that a foreign electorate (ie the Irish) have the power to decide the future path of the UK is abhorrent to me. We should have the right and the strength of purpose to decide our own future. The fact that our politicians have systematically denied us that right is a disgrace. I had really hoped that with Cameron that we had someone who would understand the history of these islands and give us our right to decide our destiny. It seems I was wrong – he is just another EU apologist. He’ll talk the talk on national sovereignty, but not walk the walk.
Time to emigrate I think…. I have been telling my sons for years that the UK has nothing to offer them and I hope they will now take note. If they go in the next few years, I should be able to sell the house and investments and follow them out.
Boudicca, we don’t really know for certain what Cameron will do. Whether he is being honest with us now about his intentions is yet to be seen. My hope is that he is keeping his powder dry until the election campaign begins.
What is clear is that if Ireland (and the others yet to ratify) vote yes to Lisbon, the only referendum which can legally be asked of us is the big one: do we wish to be a party to the Treaty of Rome or not.
There may be many possible ramifications in leaving for trade, defence, energy, which we as the general public do not yet know about. And here we come back to honesty, the original theme of LFAT’s quote. If the current government told us the sky was blue and the grass green, we would have to check. Likewise when they say to us, outside the EU we would struggle, we find it almost impossible to believe.
The problem then presents itself, that if Cameron were elected, and were to hold that referendum, would we really be able to believe anything which was told to us as part of the campaign? We have been lied to for so long, I think we would find it hard to accept anything, even if it were true, if it came from the EU.
It doesn’t really matter if the Tories get a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty or not. The whole point of the EU is “ever closer union” and if we vote no against it in a referendum they will be back with another treaty until we say yes.
In the 80’s when Thatcher was being castigated for being anti EU everyone talked about missing the EU train. I remember asking if anyone had bothered to wander to the front to see where the train was going; they hadn’t.
I’ve no idea where this will end, but I sure as hell don’t like the direction of travel and would leave tomorrow given half a chance.