Blair's Presidency Dreams Dashed!

Britons will be saddled with the huge economic costs of Tony Blair's EU Presidency ambitions for decades, the loss of democracy and sovereignty may never be recovered. My blogs have been warning of the consequences of this pathetic little charlatan's dreams and squalid manipulations for many years. I could link to scores of postings warning of the dangers to come if I so chose.

As it now seems generally accepted that his ambitions will never now come to anything, Britain should start to count the cost. Perhaps the clear warning signs in Blair's Cardiff speech in 2002 should be carefully considered if they can now be fully unburied. I blogged on the contents of that speech and its strange disappearance from the worldwide web in early 2003 as follows on Ironies, linked here:

Tony Blair's Keynote Cardiff Speech on Europe 28th November 2002

The above was an extremely significant landmark speech, notable not least for the fact that it was made outside of Parliament in a provincial capital. It was difficult to access in full even immediately after it was presented by the Prime Minister. Now several months later I could only trace it after much searching on Google at the British Embassy site from Berlin. I have therefore put a link here so that for the moment I can continue to use it as a reference source. As Blair's view of Europe has changed following the disagreements over Iraq I anticipate the speech might become practically invisible as the months go by. This would be a great shame as it is very well thought through and is in fact remarkably prescient in light of subsequent events.

The killer passage and most significant portion, other than the clear aim of the PM in throwing his hat into the ring for the job of first European President, is this portion I quote below :-

The basic ideology should be described in this way. Europe is the voluntary coming together of sovereign nations. Their will is to combine together in the institutions of Europe in order to further their common interests. In so far as it is necessary to achieve these interests, they therefore pool their sovereignty in Europe. There is no arbitrary or fixed limit as to what they do collectively; but whether they do it depends on their decision as a group of nations. So whilst the origin of European power is the will of sovereign nations, European power nonetheless exists and has its own authority and capability to act.

The negation of any democracy comes at the end, the sting in the tail as it were:-

It should be democratic; greater integration, rooted in the freely given decisions of the nations that make up Europe; with greater openness and transparency of decision-making; greater participation and interaction of National Parliaments; greater connection between the European Parliament and the decisions of Europe; and with the independence of the Commission guaranteeing that the interests of smaller nations do not weigh any less than the large.

None of the items listed of course, do anything to give the people the power to periodically remove from power those who rule them, which is the only thing that democracy is really about!

Speech

posted by Martin at 5/01/2003 01:01:00 PM

Now it cannot be found at all, but the quotes I chose set the tone - Totalitarianism!