All Right, Jack?

With a considerably more Eurosceptical record than any member of the present Cabinet other than Iain Duncan Smith, Jack Straw has called for the European Parliament to be abolished, replaced with a body of appointees of and from the Parliaments of the member-states.

But even that does not go far enough. If the Council of Ministers met in public and published an Official Report akin to Hansard, until which time British Ministers ought to adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy, then there would be no need for a European Parliament or Assembly of any kind.

The sort of characters who turn up in the Council of Ministers would continue to make the most important point made by the European Parliament, namely that our participation in the EU subjects us to the legislative will of Stalinists and Trotskyists, neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura, neoconservatives such as now run France and Germany, people who believe the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, Dutch ultra-Calvinists who will not have women candidates, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Soon to be joined by Turkey’s Islamists, secular ultranationalists, and violent Kurdish Marxist separatists.

There could usefully be in the European Parliament one citizen of each member-state appointed by the Leader of each of the Groups (pretendy EU-wide parties) of elected MEPs, and the same by the representative of the non inscrits on the Conference of Presidents. Or even a whole Senate, a second chamber of such appointees, with each member-state having a number of Senators equal to its number of votes in the Council of Ministers when Qualified Majority Voting was employed.

Confrontation with the fact who among our compatriots were deemed appropriate legislators by several of those would certainly bring home to the British people, among others, the reality of those to whose legislative will we were subject both in the European Parliament and in the Council of Ministers. The Council of Ministers, in which we are now being legislated for by the totally unelected governments of Italy and Greece.

We need legislation with five simple clauses. First, the restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law, and its use to repatriate agricultural policy and to restore our historic fishing rights in accordance with international law. Secondly, the requirement that, in order to have any effect in the United Kingdom, all EU law pass through both Houses of Parliament as if it had originated in one or other of them.

Thirdly, the requirement that British Ministers adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard. Fourthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of any ruling of the European Court of Justice or of the European Court of Human Rights unless confirmed by a resolution of the House of Commons. And fifthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs certified as politically acceptable by one or more seat-taking members of the House of Commons.

Jack Straw, and with him Ed Miliband, over to you. Like everyone else, you can and should buy the book here.