Wednesday 28 July 2010

In Order

You are no doubt as shocked as I am that the European Investigation Order has been accepted by the party of the Treaty of Rome, of Thatcher's Single European Act, of the Maastricht Treaty, and of 18 successive annual votes to approve the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies.

The party that would have taken Britain into the euro if the 1997 Election had not removed Ken Clarke as Chancellor and replaced him with Gordon Brown; had not removed it, and replaced it with the party of the Attlee Government's refusal to join the European Coal and Steel Community on the grounds that it was "the blueprint for a federal state" which "the Durham miners would never wear". Gaitskell's rejection of European federalism as "the end of a thousand years of history" and liable to destroy the Commonwealth. The votes of most Labour MPs against Heath's Treaty of Rome. The Parliamentary Labour Party's unanimous opposition to Thatcher's Single European Act. The 66 Labour MPs who voted against Maastricht, including, in Bryan Gould, the only resignation from either front bench in order to do so, and outnumbering Conservative opponents by three to one. And the votes of every Labour and Liberal Democrat MP, without exception, against the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies annually between 1979 and 1997.

The first of those parties is clearly still going strong. But the second? That will depend on whether or not the Brownite Miliband defeats the Blairite Miliband.

No comments:

Post a Comment