One thing would convince the average person that
Britain must leave the European Union; being a fly on the wall for a couple of
weeks in the European Parliament and seeing the squalid, elitist nonsense of how
laws are made.
I’ve written before about how debate is stifled,
and this week in Strasbourg is no exception.
I had submitted my request to speak in the steel
industry ‘debate’; the Deputy Speaker had five spots to allocate. My request was
acknowledged. They took just three speakers, looked across at me, smiled, and
closed down the debate.
Redcar, in my constituency, had been mentioned more than once in the
debate, but the message was clear: they’d do their best to stifle any mention of
the EU’s responsibility in some (not all) of the factors behind the loss of
jobs. You see, us eurosceptics are dangerous. We must be gagged in case a moment
of common sense breaks out in all the ridiculousness.
And it really is nonsense on stilts. My North East
Labour colleagues seem to think that despite the millions fleeing Syria and the
EU’s redefinition of the word ‘refugee’ causing a mass exodus from countries
like Bangladesh towards Europe, there just aren’t enough people arriving at our
shores – so they voted to invent a new type of refugee, a ‘climate refugee’.
Fortunately, the measure was defeated, but it was worryingly
close.
The EU is now pushing for a seat at the United
Nations’ Security Council. I spoke out against it, and voted against it. The EU
is not a nation. Labour happily voted in favour. But when UKIP asked other
parties’ MEPs to join with us and demand that our British seat on the Security
Council be protected, not one Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat MEP
anywhere in the country bothered to respond. By being in the EU we’ve already
lost our voting rights at the World Trade Organisation, of course - typical of
how we lose influence as members of the EU.
We voted on a bizarre report supposedly about child
poverty, which ranged from far-left to outright communism and included talk of
wealth redistribution, income redistribution, anti-privatisation and universal
benefits. By all means believe in those things, but this was a report about
child poverty being used as a political football.
The Labour Party weighed in on the act, lambasting
anyone who voted against an EU-wide ‘child guarantee’ – we all want to end
poverty, but you won’t do it with an unfunded, uncosted, back-of-envelope idea
across 28 different countries at once.
All of the above happened in just one day - on
Tuesday. It’s a system utterly divorced from reality, and it’s sickening to see
just how quickly MEPs can ‘go native’.
I refuse to attend the daily champagne receptions
of lobbyists in Brussels (the only city in the world with more lobbyists than
Washington DC).
I scoff at the blue carpet laid out for MEPs to
walk into the Parliament on, whilst mere mortals must tread the solid granite
floor.
I hate the system where I, as an MEP, am expected
to waltz to the front of any queue anywhere in the Parliament – and get funny
looks if I wait my turn.
The list of things that can actually be done better
at European Union level than 28 different countries would be quite a short
list.
The list becomes even shorter when you consider
that issues which span different countries might be better discussed in the
United Nations.
It becomes shorter still when it’s painfully
obvious that the European Union lacks the ability to produce good legislation,
thanks to an unelected Commission, weak Parliament and a massively bureaucratic
decision-making process.
The European Union juggernaut’s stated aim is
‘ever-closer union’. Once power has been given to the EU by the UK, under the
‘acquis communautaire’ principle it can never be given back unless we leave the
European Union. Power after power is ceded to Brussels, with few people out
there pausing to consider whether the power should be there in the first
place.
As the proverb goes, a tyrannical king once asked a
wise man what he could do for the betterment of humanity. The wise man told the
king “Stay in bed until midday, so that for this brief period you may not
afflict mankind”.
If the European Union didn’t legislate at all, the
world would be a better place.
If readers could only see what MEPs deal with on a
daily basis, they’d vote to leave the European Union and put me out of a job. I
truly hope they do.
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/news-opinion/readers-could-only-see-what-10501353
