Lisbon Treaty: “Fundamental Change” in Britain’s Relationship with EU

Whilst the Labour Government’s winning of a second reading on the EU (Amendment) Bill with a comfortable 138 majority in the Commons on Monday night was only to be expected – given the massive Government majority – the pursuit of the Lisbon Treaty typifies Gordon Brown and David Miliband’s stupefying approach to managing UK affairs. The denial of the referendum will be Labour’s great mistake. It is of some consolation that the grilling from the Tories over the Lisbon Treaty is yet to come.

The Labour Government have massively failed the British people and as the people realise that the ability to manage their everyday affairs, their economy, their legislation and indeed their own Parliament in Westminster as a decision-making body has been given over to a swarm of faceless cowards in Brussels, they will first be boiling with anger and second, abandoning their trust in salvaging a workable politics through Westminster. Brown’s Government has abandoned the very trust in Parliament it said it would restore.

In Britain’s last general election, of the 44 million people who were eligible to vote, only 27 million people actually did so, and of the sector of society that has grown up with Europe as an unchallengeable facet of modern government – those between 18 to 25 – only one third bothered to vote at all. The people have witnessed the surrender of their country and responded appropriately.

The Lisbon Treaty states Articles with immense constitutional significance amounting to a “fundamental change” to the way in which the United Kingdom is governed. As Conservative MP, Bill Cash (Chairman of the European Foundation) said to the Foreign Secretary in the Commons yesterday: “The Foreign Secretary says that there is no fundamental change. How can he claim that there is no fundamental change in the structure of the United Kingdom in relation to the European Union by virtue of the Bill and this treaty? It is absolutely clear from the Government’s own statement that there is a merger of the existing treaties, the abolition of the European Community in favour of a European Union and a legal personality, and that the structure of the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union is absolutely and totally changed by virtue of these proposals.”