[Closed] cameron and europe

The Czechs have helped him out by ratifying it so that it will all happen before the next UK election - if they hadn't there could well of been a bit of Tory in-fighting [to say the least]

[i]what snappy pun on daves name can be used [/i]

****

Gutted!

Was really hoping the Czechs would scupper it; no benefit to us whatsoever.

We'll get ridden roughshod now.

I don't think we the public should be given the power to decide / influence these things anyway.

i'm educated, i have a boring sensible degree, i pay attention to the news, i listen to radio4 (93.7 / 94.4 fm), and i haven't got a bl00dy clue what the lisbon treaty is about.

(i've even tried reading the thing, i fell asleep before i got past the first page)

shoot me for being patronising, but i'm guessing that the majority of the british public out there in Radio1-Xfactor land heve even less of an understanding than i do.

i don't want to give morons like me and the other millions of great unwashed the power to funk things up by voting for/against important decisions based on very little understanding of the implications.

Anyway, call-me-Dave can hardly give us a referendum on the Lisbon treaty that will already be law by the time he gets carried over the threshold by oliver letwin.

I am fuming. Absolutly fuming.

I want to vote on the lisbon treaty, and now none of the major parties are going to offer me that choice. So as well as having a leader of this country that no one voted for, we're going to lose a massive amount of our rights to govern ourself without being asked our opinion on it.

😡

ok, tree-magnet, you seem to feel strongly about the lisbon treaty. what's it all about then? - i haven't a clue...

whether or not it's right that the lisbon treaty is in place, there's nothing that Cameron could have done about it once ratified by all the EU countries including the UK under Gordon's signature.

It was a foolish promise to make without qualifying it in respect to legal timing. The only way to unwind our commitment to the treaty would be to walk away from the EU completely, which would be a travesty.

As for the Eurosceptic dinosaurs in the Tory party, they are fortunately a dying breed and the sooner they belt up the sooner the next government can get on with the day job. Lafarge will make hay out of it all, and UKIP will gain some votes at the Tory's expense.

ahwiles - I've heard people who's business it is to study European politics say the same thing - that they personally don't feel its something they feel informed to vote on issue like this either way.

The only thing the public would be able to do with a referendum on something like this is express their prejudice one way or another.

Mind you, you could argue that the public and even politicians make any democratic decision that way, on the strength of perception rather than information.

The position Cameron is having to put himself in is that he needs the large number of votes to the left of him, but its the very small number of votes to the right of him (his own party, the party faithful, UKIP and the press) that make all the noise. Its almost at the very moment that he's been credited managing to shut these people up (and therefore make the Torys someone you can talk about voting for without being embarrassed - I never met anyone in the 90's who would say the voted Tory even though around half the people I would meet must have been) that the party has revealed itself to be the same squabbling barking shambles that its always been.

and the sooner they belt up

....but you just know they're not going to do that

United States of Europe, let's go! The only way is forward.

Far from a dying breed Stoner...plenty of influential "younger" PP members, who with the support of a largely anti-regulation, pro-corporate right wing press, will press for call-me-Dave to try and re-negotiate with Brussels. Of course cmD and his allies know he can't seriously do it. It's going to be fun, that's for sure.

dd - I dont know of many anti-european companies.

Sure there's the constant background grumble about petty EU bureaucratic regulation, but I think most companies recognise that being part of the EU as a common market and political organisation is far more lucrative than going it alone and facing the threats of tariffs and import limits.

I dont know of many anti-european companies

Well bearing in mind that most companies are not philanthropic ventures which are motivated by a deep sense of social responsibility, but are in fact organisations committed to squeezing every last drop of profit out of people, and which hunger for unrestricted access to markets with the total freedom to move operations and people around to satisfy their insatiable lust for ever increasing profits, with complete disregard for the social consequences and the individual human costs involved, then that's hardly surprising ....... is it ?

ahwiles - Member
ok, tree-magnet, you seem to feel strongly about the lisbon treaty. what's it all about then? - i haven't a clue...

The majority of the treaty is pretty ineffectual. Renaming of some organisations and acts, official adoption of the euro as a currency for Europe, that kind of thing. However, there are a few parts of it that are more controversial.

As it stands, we have the option to veto a propsal that we dissagree with, and it then has to be reworked or scrapped. Under the lisbon treaty, a qualified majority of 55% is all that's required. So potentially, something that we disagree with can be pushed through by the Germans and French. Say fishing rights or quotas etc.

The European Council will have a greater say over police and justice planning, foreign policy and constitutional matters, and as before, only 55% of the EU would need to vote for this. We could have no say in it.

That's my 2 major concerns to be honest, there are a few more ropey areas, like the Council moving from unanimous voting to QMV.

ahwiles - Member
I don't think we the public should be given the power to decide / influence these things anyway.

i'm educated, i have a boring sensible degree, i pay attention to the news, i listen to radio4 (93.7 / 94.4 fm), and i haven't got a bl00dy clue what the lisbon treaty is about

That's precisely the point. Nothing should be foisted on us that we do not understand. What we do not understand should be rejected.

What I do understand about the Lisbon Treaty is that I have no democratic say in its surrender of some of this country's sovereign rights, and therefore it should be opposed.

I love this argument about surrender of sovereignty. Its pooling of sovereignty as in "together we are stronger"

That's precisely the point. Nothing should be foisted on us that we do not understand. What we do not understand should be rejected.

Valerie Giscard d'Estaing;

Thus public opinion would be led to accept, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly

The Lisbon Treaty itself cannot be understood by ordinary citizens since it can be understood only by also reading the treaties which it amends. . . What is the purpose of this subtle manoeuvre? First and above all to escape from the constraint of having to hold a referendum by dispersing the articles and by renouncing the constitutional vocabulary

Karel de Gucht, Belgian Foreign Minister

The aim of the Constitutional treaty was to be more readable; the aim of this treaty is to be unreadable...The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this treaty had to be unclear. It is a success.”

Jean Claude Juncker - Prime Minister of Luxembourg

Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?

****s the lot of them. Surely the key question here is why we were not granted the referendum which was an election manifesto promise of the Labour party? Could it be because they'd have got a result they didn't want?

Teej, when there are such fundemental differences in attitudes between ourselves and some of the other members of the EU, the pooling of sovereignty is a silly thing to do. France, Germany, Italy, Spain and ourselves hold enough of a majority that only 2 nations would need to agree to ratify a law within the EU. How is that democracy???

I still don't understand how certain parts of the UK are trying so desperatly to achieve independance through devolution, and yet we are running head long into the same situation in Europe.

'cos Labour did not promise a referendum on this treaty [b]as you well know[/b] but on the constitution that got dropped.

anyway with the eurosceptic press all dead set against it yes a vote would have failed.

There is no point on having a referendum on this at all. IMO. The issues are to arcane.

Tree - I am not sure you are quite right in your interpretation of how the QMV works - I don't think just France and Germany can steamroller things.

Devolution is not incompatible with the EU - I would like to see many powers devolved down to regional levels and other s shared at supranational levels thus reducing the need for national parliaments. If the EU does macroeconomic and defense and sets a baseline for regulation and everything lses is devolved to regions then the UK parliament becomes redundant.

It's pooling of decision making processes across a huge number of distinctly different peoples. Individual governments struggle to make individual countries function well in the eyes of their electors, how the hell can one over-ruling bunch hope to do right by the people of many more with individual needs and wants?

While I don't have the time to invest in reading the thing an determining what is a good idea and what isnt, a current majority of the public (by polls) don't trust the current elected government, who made these decisions for us without questioning us directly. Not a great position to be in really. And while at the time the decision was made the gov might have been in favour, this essentially is a reduction in power of our own governmental processes which affects all future governments, and as such should have been voted on by the people. They should have taken the time to explain the details to us so we could make a choice. You couldn't remove the voting rights for gay people without public referendum, so how come we can reduce our entire countrys voting rights on a european scale without asking anyone?

question

what snappy pun on daves name can be used?

Cpt's answer

Surely the key question here is why we were not granted the referendum which was an election manifesto promise of the Labour party? Could it be because they'd have got a result they didn't want?

Clearly neither labour nor the Tories look good in this but perhaps you couls just answer the question cpt?

Clearly you are better informed than most on here about Tory policies and thinking it is a shame you refuse to participate in these debates - as you did with TJ's thread.

France, Germany, Italy, Spain and ourselves hold enough of a majority that only 2 nations would need to agree to ratify a law within the EU

so any of these two together = 55% excellent glad that collectively we are giving [at least]110% to Europe bound to be a sucess innit 😆

Check out QMV on [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_Majority_Voting ]wiki[/url]. Apparently it would be a bit hard for france and germany to gang up on us, but equally it would be a bit hard for us to exhert any pressure at all:

Country Pop Vote Weight
Germany 82m 9.3%
France 63m 8.2%
UK 60m 8.2%
Italy 59m 8.2%
Spain 44m 7.2%
Poland 38m 6.2%
Romania 22m 5.2%
Netherlands 16m 4.1%
Greece 11m 3.1%
Portugal 11m 3.1%
Belgium 11m 3.1%
Czech Rep. 10m 3.1%

Unless you get the old eurovision voting going on...

we need to get breeding

or adopt more immigrants that way we get more votes

[i]I love this argument about surrender of sovereignty. Its pooling of sovereignty as in "together we are stronger" [/i]

Unless you're talking about Scotland and England eh. 🙂

IanMunro - its not completely incompatible - see my post above for the argument.

I don't know the ins and outs of this issue, but looking at Europe as a whole I really can't see the problem in us becoming a more unified body.

The UK will always have it's own distinct character as will every other EU member State, just as each US State has its own character. It makes sense to centralise some functions on a European level and to have a figure head to represent our interests on a global level.

The UK has had a parochial attitude to Europe for far too long and yet thousands of us are happy to head over there on holiday every year.....why if we hate it so much?

Plus if shifting military decisions to Europe prevents misjudged adventures like Iraq, there are clearly benefits. For me a unified Europe is progress and it is a necessary pain.

But that's just my opinion, having spent eight years living in Europe.....

It's pooling of decision making processes across a huge number of distinctly different peoples

I think you exaggerate the differences, and completly ignore the similarities. The Spanish I know have basically the same hopes and worries as the English - mortgages, kids, education, etc. etc. etc.

yeah but its foreigners innit, theyre not the same as us