It should not, but evidently it does, require the statute law for this one.
It should not, but evidently it does, require the statute law for this one. Assuming the relevant qualifications and experience, first should come British citizens, who may of course be of any ethnic background. Then Irish citizens (a bit prodigal, but undoubtedly part of the family), citizens of countries (four fifths of them wholly or predominantly non-white) having the same Head of State as the United Kingdom, Fijians for as long as the same person is both our monarch and their Paramount Chief, and the persons and families of British Armed Forces personnel such as the Gurkhas. Then other Commonwealth citizens. And finally, everyone else. No exceptions. Prosecution for non-compliance. If necessary, to hell with the EU.
The only possible change to these arrangements would be if a new body were created parallel to the Commonwealth, also ceremonially headed by the monarch and having his or her Realms and territories as the core members, but open to anywhere, regardless of any connection or otherwise to the British Empire, that wanted to make a (basically Christian) stand against European federalism, American military-industrial hegemony (which the Americans themselves have now rejected at the polls), globalisation, and the rise of China.
Italy probably wouldn’t join, but Portugal (and Poland) probably would. And member-states’ citizens should at least have parity with those of Commonwealth countries not headed by the Queen.
If necessary, to hell with the EU. And anyway, giving priority to domestic workers (and produce) is normal in many other EU countries, possibly in all of them.
Before anyone tries it, it is quite likely that these Italians are not practising Catholics these days, and if the Portuguese are anything like the Poles then they will be very Catholic indeed at home but barely at all over here. In any case, it is beside the point. Catholic Social Teaching does not permit the deliberate driving down of wages and working conditions. Quite the reverse, in fact.
Note that the workers of all four parts of the United Kingdom have risen as one. For one they are.
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One they are. Yes.
ReplyDeleteIndeed so.
ReplyDeleteAnd note the strong affinity among industrial workers throught the United Kingdom. The same sort of thing among agricultural workers and smallholders would do wonders.
It really isn't going to happen. Anyone who denounces the European Union is himself routinely denounced as a racist. The only mainstream poltical party formerly thought of (albeit briefly) as vaguely Euro-sceptical now has Kenneth Clarke as its business spokesman. There is now no likelihood whatsoever that any of these angry "workers" will switch parties, except possibly to the BNP.
ReplyDeleteI think that the EU is just going to fall apart over this. Economic patriotism is on the rise everywhere, and not before time.
ReplyDeleteTraditional Labour voters are the most Eurosceptical (and immigration-restrictive) section of the electorate.
After all, it is the Tories who are the party of the Treaty of Rome, the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, eighteen consecutive annual votes to approve the Common Agricultural Policy (with only the tiniest handful of rebels, towards the very hand), eighteen consecutive annual votes to approve the Common Fisheries Policy (likewise), the withdrawal of the whip from an infinitesimal number of MPs who had merely abstained on increased British funding of the EU, the deselection of a Maastricht rebel (George Gardiner) and of no other MP ever on the European issue, the fake call for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty rather than for its simple rejection by Parliament, and the refusal to promise to campaign for a No vote in the extremely unlikely event of any such referendum.
Even the vague promise to revisit the CFP, an old Major hand like Michael Howard's nod to Euroscepticism, has been ditched by Cameron, Michael Heseltine's mini-me. The Tories have not left the European People's Party, and they never will. Ken Clarke is back.
Turnout in 2005 was as low as one in three in some old heartlands of the party of working-class patriots and social conscience toffs, of temperance Methodists and traditional Catholics. Why? Because, of course, that party is no longer on the ballot paper.
The party, among so much else, of the Attlee Government's rejection of the ECSC as "the blueprint for a federal state" which "the Durham miners would never wear", and of Gaitskell's denunciation of European federalism as "the end of a thousand years of history" and liable to destroy the Commonwealth.
No Tory Leader - not one - has ever said anything remotely like that.
And none ever will.
Why the Irish?
ReplyDeleteThey may be a bit prodigal, but they are part of the family.
ReplyDelete