Friday, 16th October 2009
Speech to Berwick Upon Tweed Conservatives
George W. Bush once said "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure!" I think that might be a good theme for my talk today.
We had the European elections in June and let me firstly thank all of you who helped us in those elections. The Conservatives won the Euro elections right across the UK and indeed right across Europe. Based on our results in Scotland, we would have won six seats at a Westminster election. That is the opinion poll that counts....not the nonsense that you see published in the tabloids who claim we will only gain one extra MP at the next General Election.
I fact we did spectacularly well, despite the backdrop of the Westminster expenses scandal, which dominated the entire election. Gordon Brewer even introduced me on a BBC TV hustings as "the man from the Duck House Party!" It was a miserable experience and not one I'd like to repeat. It was particularly painful as we had started to publish every penny of our expenses online way back in September 2008. But it was a European election, so we were an easy target for the press and public to have a kick at!
Anyhow we won. Labour was trounced. We swept the board in England and came top of the poll in Wales for the first time in almost a century! A brilliant result.
In the European Parliament we have formed our new ECR Group. We have a total of 54 MEPs from the UK, Poland, the Czech Republic and a smattering of other countries. We are robustly anti-federalist. That was the purpose of setting up our new group. That is why we left the centrist EPP-ED Group, because, always dominated by the Germans, they were too keen to do deals with the socialists and to pursue their dream of a United States of Europe. That is one dream we have never shared. Indeed we regard it as more of a nightmare.
But even although we have left the EPP Group, the combined forces of our former EPP colleagues and ourselves, together with the other non-aligned centre-right MEPs, gives us an overall majority in the House, able to defeat the combined leftist ranks of socialists, liberals, greens and communists.
We were able to demonstrate the new power of the centre right over the question of Jose Manuel Barroso. Barroso was seeking the approval of the European Parliament to secure a second 5 year term as Commission President. The very first political group he came to ask for support was the ECR. In the end, even although Barroso had promised the socialists all sorts of things, like a new social policy for Europe and tough new regulations on the financial sector, they refused to support him, choosing instead to abstain.
Typically, the Liberals were all over the place. At first they were dead against Barroso, and then they split down the middle with some against and some in favour. Only the lefty Greens stuck to their guns. They told Barroso they were against his re-election and they voted against him in the subsequent ballot. However, when the votes were cast and the Parliament's President announced the result...Barroso had won by a margin of only 45 votes across the entire 736 MEPs. So, as the SUN would say "It was the ECR what won it"....there are 54 MEPs in our new group and together with the 280 MEPs in the EPP, we helped Barroso back for a second term as a Conservative President of the European Commission and an Atlantacist to boot.
I must tell you about the scenes that followed the announcement of the votes. Unbelievably, Danny Cohn Bendit, the infamous Danny the Red of yesteryear, who now leads the Greens in the European Parliament, and who had just led his group in voting solidly against Barroso's re-election, rushed forward with a huge parcel, tied extravagantly with pink ribbons, presenting it to Barroso and kissing him on each cheek! What hypocrisy!
The co-leader of the Greens then followed suit, producing a huge bunch of flowers which had remained hidden under her desk while the votes were underway. Presumably they would have been given to someone else if Barroso had lost! Don't the Greens just make you sick....the whole lot of them voted against Barroso's re-election, while their leaders buy gifts and bouquets of flowers to present to him when he won! And this is the group the SNP sits in!
Anyway, we've now told Barroso that he owes nothing to any of the left wing political groups in the European Parliament. The centre right are the ones to whom he owes his job and he should never forget it. No concessions to the left!
But now we have a new dilemma. The Irish voted YES in their second referendum! No wonder! The poor Irish were bullied and cajoled into voting YES. Having decisively rejected the Lisbon Treaty less than a year ago in their first referendum, they were now brow-beaten into holding a second referendum, to give them a chance to give the right answer. It is interesting to note that when Spain voted YES to the Constitution in a country-wide referendum, they were not required to vote a second time! Indeed, when the French and Dutch rejected the original Constitution they were not even given the chance to vote again on the Lisbon Treaty, because it was obvious they would have voted with a resounding NO.
The Eurocrats like to put it about that the Irish saw sense and voted YES because they had been re-assured on issues like Ireland's neutrality and abortion and promised that they would always keep their Irish Commissioner. In fact that was only half the story. The Irish economy was hit for six during the recent economic recession. The country was bankrupt and the European Central Bank pumped 92 billion Euros into the Irish banks to prop them up and save them from collapse. The Irish were told in no uncertain terms that if they voted NO, the ECB would seek to claw back that money without delay, leaving Ireland destitute. Another potato famine loomed! It was pure blackmail. That's the real reason why Ireland voted YES. They were scared into doing so. They were told that they had to vote YES for the economy and YES for jobs, when in fact Lisbon will not create a single job...it will probably cost jobs.
Now we have the spectacle of only Poland and the Czech Republic still withholding their respective signatures from the Treaty. Lech Kaczynski, the President of Poland, has promised that he will sign the Lisbon Treaty shortly, stating that he was only waiting for the outcome of the Irish referendum. However, the situation in the Czech Republic is an entirely different kettle of fish.
President Vaclav Klaus is an arch Euro-sceptic and a man of great determination. He came to address us in Strasbourg and proudly told a packed chamber that he will be President for another 3 years and his signature would "never go on that piece of paper", despite the fact that both Houses of the Czech Parliament have approved the Treaty. As you can imagine, his declaration was met with a cacophony of boos and catcalls and a mass walkout by the socialists. We were clapping and cheering like mad!
But now Vaclav Klaus faces huge pressure. The Germans have warned him that they will ensure that the Czech Republic loses its Commissioner when the new Commission is set up in November. They have done the same as they did in Ireland, threatening to claw back all of the money the ECB pumped into propping up the Czech banks. But President Klaus is a proud and courageous man. He has seen his country crushed by Germany once before and he won't take kindly to German bullying again.
Meanwhile, a dozen Czech senators have raised an action in the Czech constitutional court, calling for a ruling by their country's senior judges on whether the Treaty is compatible with Czech law. The experts say that this ruling could take up to 6 months to emerge. That, of course, is far too slow for the Eurocrats who want the whole Lisbon Treaty done and dusted and brought into full force on 1st January 2010.They are alarmed that a delay of six months could take the whole matter perilously close to the UK elections and they know that David Cameron has pledged a referendum in Britain, if all 27 Member States have not yet ratified Lisbon by the time we form a Tory Government.
This is why the pressure on President Klaus is intense and why many pundits say that they fear he is almost certain to sign, rather than see his beloved country suffer. If he does, then there will be a mad rush to implement the Treaty lock, stock and barrel and no point at all in David Cameron calling for a referendum, because the deed will have been done. 63 extra areas of UK sovereignty will have been lost to Brussels. The prospect of Tony Blair emerging as President of Europe will be looming large!
The tabloids are already referring to him as BONEY BLAIR after Napoleon Bonaparte and to his wife as CHERIE ANTOINETTE. This is not quite as fanciful as you might think. Already they are putting the finishing touches to a grandiose palace in the heart of Brussels' Euroland, where Boney Blair and Cherie Antoinette will be ensconced, together with his twenty personal staff. On the floor below will be the new EU Foreign Minister with his army of staff. Presumably somewhere in the building an entire marbled block of offices will have been set aside for Peter Mandelson, who sees himself as President Blair's future Chef de Cabinet and looks forward to becoming the most powerful mandarin in Europe for the next five years...if not longer.
Never underestimate Mandelson. He is the great Houdini of British politics. He has survived multiple scandals and sackings from the UK Cabinet, only to re-emerge each time, stronger and more powerful than before. He has been an arch supporter of the Lisbon Treaty, actively hoping to see the final vestiges of sovereignty drained away from the UK Government, so that when David Cameron takes over as Prime Minister, the real centre of power will have moved to Brussels. He has kept Gordon Brown on life support for the past 6 months with this objective in mind. Can you imagine the horror of a European Superstate with Blair striding across the world stage as its President and Mandelson at his side as Europe's most senior civil servant? A vision of hell!
It would only be a matter of weeks before we could be certain to see the re-emergence of French plans for an EU-wide system of harmonised Euro-taxation, designed to underpin the Euro, in the same way the dollar is underpinned by Federal taxes in the US. These would be the final trappings of power for the federalists. They already have their single currency, their central bank, their European Army, their supreme court, their flag and their anthem. All that is missing in their master-plan for a Federal United States of Europe is democracy!
Do you know how Tony Blair will become President? I think we all know how they elect the president of the United States? Even a five year old child will know that they hold a series of tortuous primaries and finally a presidential election in which every citizen of voting age has the opportunity to cast their ballot. That's not how it works in Europe. Despite the fact that we have 27 Member States and 500 million citizens (almost twice the size of America), President Blair will never have to face a public vote.
In fact, the 27 Prime Ministers will probably be invited to a lavish banquet at the Elysée Palace, hosted by Tony's old pal Nicolas Sarkozy. Over cigars and cognac at the end of the evening, Sarko will ask for a show of hands to elect Tony Blair as Europe's new President. The next morning, a press communiqué will announce that the unanimous decision (whether it was unanimous or not) of the 27 Prime Ministers was for Mr Blair to assume the new role. That is democracy EU-style. A travesty!
Now each MEP has received a letter informing us that the approval of the Lisbon Treaty will require an additional 200 staff to be employed by the European Parliament. I can assume that this will be mirrored by an extra 200 in the European Commission and perhaps another 200 in the European Council of Ministers. So, at a time of austerity and recession, the Lisbon Treaty will provide us with another 600 Eurocrats, at an average salary of around £65,000 per year or a total annual extra staffing bill of £39 million. An entire new regiment of desk jockeys to plan ways of interfering in our lives!
Now I am sure that this is all leading you towards feelings of deepening despondency...but all is not lost. Believe it or not, we may yet owe our salvation to the ruling of Germany's highest constitutional court. The German constitutional court in Karlsruhe took a long hard look at the Lisbon Treaty and back in June, while our attention was diverted by the Westminster expenses scandal and the European elections, they ruled that the German President could not sign the Treaty until the Bundestag had passed a specific act re-affirming German pre-eminence over Europe.
This robust and un-compromising judgement stated unequivocally that the German courts must always take precedence over the European courts, that the German Parliament must always take precedence over the European Parliament and that basically, when it comes to the EU, Germany must always come first. This Karlsruhe interpretation of the Treaty very eloquently demolished the old idea that EU law and EU decision take priority over all the Member States. It was almost like a declaration of war on the Lisbon Treaty.
In fact the German judges went on to explain that in their view the European Parliament is terminally undemocratic and therefore cannot be allowed to take decisions on behalf of the citizens of Europe. Their reasoning was simple. It only takes 67,000 Maltese to elect an MEP, whereas it takes 455,000 Swedes and 857,000 Germans....which is roughly about the same number as it takes to elect an MEP in Scotland, by the way.
All of this, as you can imagine, has come as a bit of a political bombshell to the Euro elite. The last place they expected to have their pet project derailed was Germany. I wrote a lengthy newspaper article about this phenomenon, a copy of which I sent to William Hague and David Cameron, suggesting that they ask Britain's leading constitutional judges to take a close look at the German court's findings. I suggested that in the event the Lisbon Treaty is ratified by all 27 Member States before we come to power, this may be well be the answer to our problems. We could legally challenge the right of the EU institutions to take precedence over decisions taken in our parliament and in our courts. We could even, on that basis, seek to claw back sovereignty and re-negotiate our position in Europe. I understand this idea is being seriously considered.
Our ECR Group is founded on a series of principles set out in what was called THE PRAGE DECLARATION. It was signed by David Cameron and the leaders of the 8 participating political parties in the group. Let me finish by reading the brief text of the Prague Declaration to you.
Conscious of the need to reform the EU on the basis of Euro-realism, openness, accountability and democracy, in a way that respects the sovereignty of our nations and concentrates on economic recovery, growth and competitiveness, the ECR Group share the following principles:
1. Free enterprise, free and fair trade and competition, minimal regulation, lower taxation and small government as the ultimate catalysts for individual freedom and personal and national prosperity.
2. Freedom of the individual, more personal responsibility and greater democratic accountability.
3. Sustainable, clean energy supply with an emphasis on energy security.
4. The importance of the family as the bedrock of society.
5. The sovereign integrity of the nation state, opposition to EU federalism and a renewed respect for true subsidiarity.
6. The over-riding value of the transatlantic security relationship in a revitalised NATO and support for young democracies across Europe.
7. Effectively controlled immigration and an end to abuse of asylum procedures.
8. Efficient and modern public services and sensitivity to the needs of both rural and urban communities.
9. An end to waste and excessive bureaucracy and a commitment to greater transparency and probity in the EU institutions and use of EU funds.
10. Respect and equitable treatment for all EU countries, new and old, large and small.
At long last the anti-federalists in Europe have got a voice. You will be hearing a lot more from us in the months ahead. And remember what I said at the beginning of this speech, quoting George W. Bush: "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure!" The way Labour has fiddled the boundaries over the past 12 years means that they only need to score a draw at the general election to form a government. We need to gain a majority of 2 million votes to form a government. That is the extent of the challenge ahead of us. We need a swing of more than 8% from Labour to Conservative. No Party has achieved a swing of the that magnitude since Clement Attlee in 1945.
So there is no room for even the tiniest morsel of complacency. We have hard work to do. The country has a straightforward choice. We can either have Gordon Brown or David Cameron as our next Prime Minister. Alex Salmond, the SNP, the Lib Dems, the Greens and UKIP are completely irrelevant. A vote for any of them will simply hand victory to Labour. Britain cannot survive another five years of Labour. Let's vote for change.
