A Victory For Lawlessness

No2EU - Yes To Democracy emails this, from Brian Denny:

Only the European Union could claim that a draw is really a victory. Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty last year. Now, after the most fraudulent, bullying and illegal campaigns in living memory, they have voted ‘Yes’.

But there will be no best-out-of-three or even a penalty shoot-out, just EU elites running away from goal bawling ‘one-nil’! in unison like schoolchildren on a playing field.

Meanwhile the vast majority of the 500 million or so European bystanders look on in resigned disgust.

Yet this is the modus operandi of a post-modern EU which only lives in an increasingly lawless present and denies any inconvenient historical facts.

The Danish electorate did not reject the institutionally monetarist Maastricht treaty in 1992, they just backed it a year later sparking riots in Copenhagen.

Irish voters didn’t reject the centralising Nice treaty in 2001, only backed it in 2002 in another re-run referendum.

Swedish voters didn’t reject euro membership in 2003 – despite the "No" side winning 56 per cent of votes and the "Yes" side 42 per cent – it is just that this inconvenient result hasn’t been reversed yet.

In order to get their latest volte-face through in Ireland, the EU had to resort to unprecedented levels of flagrant law-breaking and fear-mongering. Yet a victory with menaces is a pyrrhic one which does not make it legitimate in either democratic or political terms.

Reports from Ireland make it clear that the referendum was run in a grossly fraudulent and entirely undemocratic manner.

Limitless money was made available to the Yes side, spending at least ten times as much as the No side. This money came from the commission, the Irish Government, Political Parties in the European Parliament and private business firms.

Ryanair’s Michael O Leary openly admitted that he had handed over 250,000 euros to the yes side to increase his chances of buying state airline Aer Lingus. Meanwhile Intel threw in twice as much to avoid being investigated by the European commission over rigging markets in the computer industry.

The European commission spent countless millions of public money to influence Irish opinion, running a web-site and the issuing of statements that sought to counter No-side arguments, and the advocacy of a Yes vote by Commission President Barroso and other Commissioners and their staffs during visits to Ireland.

This is unlawful under European law, as the commission has no function in relation to the ratification of new Treaties, something that is exclusively a matter for the member states under their own constitutional procedures.

The Irish government unlawfully used public funds to circulate a postcard with details of the so-called "assurances" of the European Council, followed by a brochure containing a biased summary of the treaty, all in breach of the 1995 Irish Supreme Court McKenna judgment in that it is unconstitutional to use public funds to seek to obtain a particular result in a referendum.

Perhaps most shocking was the sight of Referendum Commission chairman Judge Frank Clarke, turning the Commission into an arm of government propaganda and promoting the treaty in a good light in the media even though this was way beyond his powers.

Ultimately, Ireland's voters did not vote on the Lisbon treaty but on membership of the EU, on fear of political isolation if they did not say Yes to the same Treaty as they said No to last year, and on the promise of jobs and economic recovery which the Yes-side bullied them into believing they would get if they only voted Yes.

Even supporters of the renamed EU constitution from dissident Tory MEPs to the bizarre fringes of the ultraleft will only be holding muted and private celebrations for fear of facing some awkward questions about the illegal nature of their ‘victory’.

In fact the Lisbon Two referendum has exposed the moral and political bankruptcy of the cartel of political elites in Ireland and across the EU. Indeed there is a vacuum in politics across Europe when "Establishment" political parties line up on one side and so many of the country's citizens are on the other.

Yet this hated treaty, which has still not been ratified by Germany, Poland or the Czech Republic, could be the Achilles heel of the EU.

It is designed to turn the unaccountable Commission and Councils of Ministers into a euro-federalist government answerable to nobody. It is the only constitution in the world which enshrines capitalism as the only economic system permitted at a time when it faces one of its biggest crises in history.

The Constitution would further develop the Single European Market for big capital under the guise of the “free movement of capital, goods, services and people”. This would be policed by the European Court of Justice which has already decreed against trade union and workers’ rights including the right to strike. It is clear that a well-informed electorate would not vote for that.

The EU has been accumulating all the powers of a state slowly, incrementally and invisibly for decades and now it is seeking to assume wider responsibilities in the "high" political areas including foreign policy and military affairs. That is what the constitutional Lisbon treaty is all about.

But, like all empires, it is possible to over-reach itself and, as a result, becomes more exposed and vulnerable. In other words the more power it assumes and the more it seeks to flex its muscles the more illegitimate it becomes.

As popular support fails away the more it is left only to the paid functionaries of the EU to justify its lawlessness. The bruising experience in Ireland has already divided the Irish people for a generation.

For the EU to now foist Tony Blair (despised as a war criminal and architect of the removal of the British chance to vote on the treaty) as our new unelected EU ‘president’ could be just the latest step on the EU’s road to ruin.