Whose Country is it Anyway?

WHOSE COUNTRY IS IT ANYWAY?

Mr Blair still tells us that there is no ‘constitutional’ need to have a referendum on whether or not he should sign us up to the European Constitution and thus make ourselves subject to the authority of a European administration. He told us that doing so was just a ‘tidying-up exercise’, that sovereign nations had made treaties like that with each other throughout history, and that this one would do us good.

Funnily enough, although he waxed eloquent and plausible on the imperative, if somewhat unclear, advantages to be gained from our signing up to the said Constitution, for some reason people didn’t seem altogether enthusiastic, even though he had negotiated one or two subjects on which Great Britain would be permitted to retain jurisdiction over its own affairs.

There may be reasons why most people don’t want him to do this.

Might I venture to suggest one or two here?

Firstly, the simple, definitive reason, the one which seems to have been consistently overlooked in the discussions about the advantages or disadvantages of joining.

It is this:-

The country doesn’t belong to Tony Blair. It isn’t his to give away.

What Mr Blair is proposing is not ‘just another treaty between sovereign nations’, it is something completely different. It is a giving away of sovereignty.

We may not have a written Constitution, but, by historical default perhaps, Great Britain is the British people. It is the British people who elect Members of Parliament and pay them to run the country. Members of Parliament may get together into political parties, form governments, choose prime ministers etc., but that in no way alters the fact that they are the servants of the people, not its masters. As such they have a responsible, clearly defined job to do, and the authority to do it. But what they definitely do not have is the authority to hand over any part of their job and their responsibility to somebody else, somewhere else, who is not employed by, and answerable to, the people of this country.

Mr Blair’s intention to do this without asking the permission of the people, calling it ‘just a tidying-up operation’, is a piece of gross arrogance, for which he, as a once-trusted employee, simply deserves to be sacked. If he had been the butler of a Great House and had set up a deal for it to be taken over by the National Trust without the permission of its owners, he would be out on his ear in two wags of a corgi’s tail.

What Mr Blair has now apparently realised is that he isn’t going to get away with it, so he has graciously offered to allow us a referendum, to allow the people of the country to decide whether or not they want to be given away.

That is generous, but it brings me to a second reason why I and, I suspect, many others in the country don’t want to sign up to an agreement if it is to be negotiated by Tony Blair. There may be good reasons for and against our joining Europe, but recent history has shown that there are also good reasons for distrusting any proposals which are made or supported by Tony Blair. It would be discourteous to dwell on these reasons here but, sad to say, I’m afraid people just don’t believe him. The contempt for their common-sense which he has shown in recent times means that any procedure instigated by him would, of itself, in many people’s eyes, become instantly rejectable.

A third reason, or rather an existing gut-feeling, is called ‘not wanting to be buggered about by Brussels’. We fear, I fear, that the ‘harmonisations of regulations’ that are spread in abundance over the entire continent by those committed to regulating our virtue and correctness will tangle us up in even more potty prohibitions and absurd requirements. To be fair, some of these might conceivably be necessary in Grodzk, but they can tend to be less than practical in Scunthorpe. An arithmetical fact, one which the Roman Empire found out some time ago, is that the larger, more distant and impersonal an overall administration grows, the more cumbersome, corrupt and sluggish it becomes.

So, bearing all that in mind, let us certainly ponder the advantages and disadvantages of our committing Great Britain to the European Constitution. Let the cases be made, clearly, truthfully and honestly, but please, by people who are known to be clear, truthful and honest - this is too important and final a subject to play Party Politics with.
Then by all means let us allow our government to have a referendum.

Oliver Postgate

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