Well, of course Jeremy Clarkson regards Brexit as one of the biggest mistakes of his lifetime, finds that it makes him want to sit in the gutter and weep, and cannot be friends with anyone who voted for it.
Made rich and famous by the BBC, Clarkson was a close friend and strong supporter of David Cameron, and used his newspaper columns to argue vociferously for Remain. He is now prominent in a farmers’ campaign that has the Liberal Democrats speaking from its platforms while denying any official role to anyone from Reform UK.
Along with both of their wives, Clarkson was recently spotted drinking in his pub with Ellen DeGeneres, who has moved to the Cotswolds. She is part of a trend, with American liberal moneybags either fleeing to Britain, or planning to do so. Treat them like any other asylum seekers.
And five years after Brexit, give thanks that we are no longer subject to the legislative will, routinely and increasingly in the European Council of Ministers, and permanently in the European Parliament, of the Patriots for Europe, who rallied in Madrid yesterday.
The likes of the French National Rally and the Austrian Freedom Party, of Fidesz and Vox, that is the third largest Group in the European Parliament, with 86 MEPs. A further 26 are in the Europe of Sovereign Nations Group, including 14 from the Alternative für Deutschland. Another AfD member sits among the non-inscrits, alongside Niki, the Confederation of the Polish Crown, and S.O.S. Romania.
Now to end the potential or actual subordination of our Armed Forces to officers who were ultimately subject to members of most of those parties, and of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s, by Brexiting NATO as well. That would also free our Forces at least from the direct influence of the Trump Administration, and specifically from that of the network of Far Right British émigrés in and around it.
“ we are no longer subject to the legislative will, routinely and increasingly in the European Council of Ministers, and permanently in the European Parliament, of the Patriots for Europe”
ReplyDeleteAnybody who knows anything about the EU knows that (unlike our democratic system where it is Parliament that makes and amends the laws) the European Parliament has no power to enact its “legislative will” at all. All EU law comes from the unelected Commission, and the EU Parliament doesn’t even have the power to propose amendments to legislation!
If you didn’t know that, you know nothing about the EU.
Don't. Just don't. I know more than is quite healthy about things like the ordinary legislative procedure. Based on that comment, you have never even heard of that one. Never mind the others. On one level, lucky you. But in that case, you should not pass comment on such matters.
DeleteThis boy is illiterate.
DeleteMaastricht was before he was born, so he has never read anything that had been written in his own lifetime.
DeleteOh dear, much more of this and we shall be down such rabbit holes as the former third pillar.
"The EU Parliament doesn’t even have the power to propose amendments to legislation" would have been bad enough but that exclamation mark is unforgivable.
DeleteWe were all young once.
DeleteNothing can pass the Commons without Executive approval either and almost all of it comes from there in the first place, Tony Benn's six tests applied to the EU but their main target was the system he worked in.
DeleteAs he once told me to my face, in fact.
DeleteTears of laughter that anyone really thinks being in the EU means being subject “to the legislative will” of the European Parliament-as if the EU Parliament has any actual power. The whole point of the EU is that, in contrast to our democratic adversarial system where laws can only be made and passed by our elected House, there is a government and an Opposition and Prime Ministers can only govern as long as they command the confidence of that elected House, the EU Parliament can’t make any laws or even amend some of them, and is the only parliament in the world that has no government and no Opposition.
ReplyDeleteI mean, if you seriously didn’t know that it’s the unelected Commission that makes EU laws, you actually know nothing.
No, the Commission does not "make laws". It does have the sole right of initiative, and that was always a problem, but as a comment above sets out, that does not differentiate it much from Westminster. "Adversarial"? If only.
Delete“The European Commission is responsible for planning, preparing and proposing new European laws. It has the right to do this on its own initiative.“ https://commission.europa.eu/about/role/law_en#:~:text=The%20European%20Commission%20is%20responsible,its%20citizens%20as%20a%20whole.
ReplyDeleteI rest my case. You’re pig-ignorant if you think the EU members are subject to the “legislative will” of its Parliament.
I honestly do not know where to begin.
DeleteYou'd be wasting your time, Mr. L. These things have to be true to them, their lives make no sense otherwise.
DeleteQuite.
DeleteAll the mess around Brexit comes from letting them anywhere near it. They thought that there was nothing wrong with the EU until the last days of Margaret Thatcher, and they have no idea how it works. Their idea of the problems with it is the opposite of the real ones.
“Nothing can pass the Commons without Executive approval either and almost all of it comes from there in the first place”
ReplyDeleteYou constitutional illiterate: in Britain’s democratic system “the executive” is the elected government and can only be the executive so long as they command a parliamentary majority and the PM commands the confidence of the House-that is therefore a democratic system.
By contrast, the “executive” in the EU is the unelected Commission which makes laws in secret (it publishes no minutes of its meetings) and cannot be removed by the EU Parliament while that Parliament has no lawmaking powers, no government and no opposition.
I feel like I’m teaching schoolkids.
Some of whom are older than you.
DeleteThe Government controls parliamentary time, most of which is therefore taken up with its legislation. Nothing can pass without that time, which is what kills off most Private Members' Bills.
The worst that the European Commission can do is object so strongly to the European Parliament's amended version of its original proposal that the Council would have to pass it unanimously for it to come into effect. If a British Government does not like what the House of Commons has done to a Bill, or never liked the Bill in the first place, then it can just kill the Bill procedurally. And it does.
“that does not differentiate it much from Westminster. "Adversarial"? If only.”
ReplyDeleteYes it does “differentiate it” from Westminster and our Parliament is adversarial (it has both an elected government and an Opposition while the EU Parliament has neither). The comment above was constitutionally illiterate: the executive in Westminster is the democratically elected government and can only be the executive so long as they command a parliamentary majority and the PM commands the confidence of the House-that is therefore a democratic system.
By contrast, the “executive” in the EU is the unelected Commission which makes laws in secret (it publishes no minutes of its meetings) while that Parliament has no lawmaking powers, no government and no opposition.
The Commission does not make laws. You are thinking of the Council, the failure of which to publish an Official Report is indeed a serious problem.
DeleteIf you are taken in by the pantomime adversarialism of the House of Commons, then you need to grow up. Funny how people who believe that it was ever like that are always thinking about the days before it was on radio or television. It does seem to have been more raucous in those days, mostly under heavy alcoholic influence, but that is not the same thing.
Executives don't publish minutes, does the British Cabinet?
DeleteBut they do not make laws, either, although of course it is far more normal than not for them to propose them. He does not know what the words mean. He does not know what he is against. Leaving Brexit to these people has been the whole problem with it.
Delete“”No, the Commission does not "make laws".””
ReplyDeleteThe Commission does “make laws Parliament can’t initiate its own legislation, only review whatever the unelected Commission comes up with (in secret, since it publishes no minutes of its meetings). In our democratic system the executive which initiates legislation is also the elected government that commands a majority in the elected Parliament.
Nobody but an ignoramus would compare the two systems-ours is democratic and adversarial, theirs is not. Their Parliament doesn’t even have an Opposition.
And round and round it goes.
DeleteAs Tony Benn said joining the EU meant “the British are no longer allowed to elect those who make the laws.”
ReplyDeleteThat is precisely because the EU Parliament, unlike ours, is not the lawmaking body.
That was true when he said it, although it has not been in your lifetime. In fact, when he said that, then the European Parliament was not directly elected at all, and everything required unanimity in the Council of Ministers, which would always have included a British Minister. But his point still stood, and in principle it still stands. Just not for the reasons that you imagine.
Delete“The Government controls parliamentary time, most of which is therefore taken up with its legislation. Nothing can pass without that time, which is what kills off most Private Members' Bills”
ReplyDeleteI already answered that when the previous commenter said it: are you unable to read? The “government” in Britain is the elected government that commands a majority in the House and it is therefore perfectly democratic that it “controls parliamentary time.” Who else would control it other than the party that won a majority in the election?
Whereas the “government” in the EU is the unelected Commission. Do you get it now? Or shall I run you through it again?
As someone said earlier, these things have to be true to you. It cannot apply to you personally, but your political tendency will never get over the guilt of having originally been fanatically in favour of the whole thing. By any logical measure, you still should be. But you have convinced yourselves of a fantasy version of ancient history that makes such logic impossible. She still casts a very long shadow.
Delete“If you are taken in by the pantomime adversarialism of the House of Commons, then you need to grow up.”
ReplyDeleteI said the system is adversarial because it is. If the parties don’t fulfil their duty to oppose that means we need to replace them but the system itself (of His Majesty’s government and His Majesty’s Opposition) is adversarial-while the EU Parliament has neither a government nor an opposition, a point you of course haven’t answered either.
Without changing fundamentally, the system itself has been various things even in living memory. But it has never been some forum of Socratic debate.
DeleteIf you’ve ever even been in our Parliament even the very design of it is deliberately adversarial with the opposite benches directly facing within touching distance of each other-in contrast to the weird vast semi circular European Parliaments where MPs sit far apart and facing away from other, a symbol of the lack of any real opposition or debate.
ReplyDeleteThe EU Parliament doesn’t even hide the fact it is just a plasticine parliament since it has no opposition at all.
And there it is. You are even falling for that "two swords' length" business. I mean, it is true, or true enough. But it is completely irrelevant.
Delete"Maastricht was before he was born."
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't, actually. But now you mention it, the EU's own website admits Maastricht was the brainchild of a communist.
"In 1980, together with other federalist-minded MEPs, he founded ‘The Crocodile Club’, whose members tabled a motion for the Parliament to draft a proposal for a new treaty on the European Union. On 14 February 1984, the European Parliament adopted his proposal with an overwhelming majority and approved the ‘Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union’, the ‘Spinelli Plan’."
https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/history-eu/eu-pioneers/altiero-spinelli_en
Having been drifting away from it for years, he made the formal break with the Communist Party in and did not die until 1986. But his life is an interesting and salutary case study.
DeleteHe made the break in 1937 you mean? A Communist who became a "liberal socialist" who became a liberal. But he ended up in the Independent Left where you would have been.
DeleteHeaven forgive me, you may well be right.
DeleteYes, he left the Communist Party in 1937.
Spinelli was in many ways the creator of the EU, both through the Ventotene Manifesto (a manifesto for international socialism) and the Maastricht Treaty he helped draft. Elected a Communist Party MEP he served in the Communist and Allies grouping until 1985 and never renounced his views.
ReplyDelete"And Allies" covered an awful lot. Mind you, by then, so did "Communist", especially in Italy.
DeleteYou would never have caught me signing either of them, but the Ventotene Manifesto and the Maastricht Treaty bore no meaningful resemblance to each other.
Communists and Allies, or people who would have been one or the other in different times and sometimes were, remain perhaps the most consistent opponents of the EU from one end of it to the other.