European Commission efforts to keep Britain in the EU and coercive control

It's interesting yet unsurprising to see reports of the European Commission setting plans in motion to keep Britain in the EU.

It was always going to happen.

Despite the reports, no one in the British media is asking the obvious questions that would make people think about the issues and help inform their thinking about how to vote in the referendum:

1. Who benefits from European Commission efforts to keep Britain inside the EU?
    
2. Are they doing it for the British people, or EU self interest?

If EU membership is such a benefit to the British people, then should it not follow that our membership must somehow be a burden to the EU? That being the case wouldn't a Brexit relax that burden on our hard pressed European neighbours? Britain leaving the EU would be a relief, wouldn't it? The reality of course is that British membership disproportionately benefits the EU.

The EU needs Britain. We are a big net contributor to the EU budget, and among other things we have many crucial things that a political construct needs, such as a comparatively strong military, an advanced science and technology sector, and huge diplomatic reach in the world. The European Commission has a vested interest in assimilating what Britain has and using it for its own ends, hence the lengths to which it will go in order to keep us in the EU, perversely using our own money on propaganda to convince us to remain.

If Britain being part of the EU could be described as a relationship then it's a parasitic one. The EU feeds off Britain and in return infects us with debilitating rules, such as the Water Framework Directive, which is contributing to the flooding in England which is having such a devastating effect on people. Not having control over how this country is run and what we can do on our own land to protect homes and businesses is already having dangerous, traumatic and costly consequences. Britain having to implement EU rules that cause us harm, an affront to democracy, is a powerful reason why we should vote to leave and completely exit the union for good.

In addition to this, something that is incredibly ironic is that the British government is enthusiastically about to put into effect new domestic abuse laws regarding coercive and controlling behaviour.

We are told by the Grimsby Telegraph that domestic abuse can take many forms, in particular domineering and dictatorial control. Most of the examples the piece gives to explain what coercive control could look like, read like a list of what EU membership and governance entails and results in:

• Unreasonable and non-negotiable demands
• Surveillance and unwanted contact
• Cruelty
• Destroying the partners other relationships and isolating her/him from friends, family members, co-workers and others
• Restricting daily activities
• Combination of demands, threats of negative consequences
• Manipulation through minimisation, denial, lies, promises, etc
• Threats and intimidation
• Excuses, rationalisations and blame
• Stifling the partner's independence
• Controlling partner's access to information and services
• Financial control and exploitation
• Demanding obedience
• Treating their partner and children as objects
• Extreme jealousy, possessiveness and ridiculous accusations of cheating
• Punishing the partner and children for breaking one of their rules
• Ignoring their partner's needs, opinions and feelings, and the harm that their behaviour does to her/him

Behaviour of a kind so unacceptable it could result in an individual being imprisoned for up to five years, is somehow considered desirable and necessary by our government when it happens politically to this country at a national level. That is what David Cameron and his cronies want us to vote to continue putting up with. The double standards and hypocrisy are breathtaking.

Increasingly we are seeing that being in the EU is not only sub-optimal, it is anti democratic and too often it is damaging to this country. This is not something that can be repaired by reforms that keep the EU as our supreme government.

The only way to resolve this is to leave the EU completely and for good. We can co-operate in programmes and in areas of common interest, but we should be self governing to best serve the needs of the British people. We must vote to leave the EU.

Merry Christmas

Wishing you the peace and joy of Christmas. May this festive time

bring you and your loved ones happiness and good cheer.

Why is anyone surprised at William Hague's EUphilia?

It seems many Tories, pundits and members of the media have been left stunned by William Hague's endorsement of remaining in the EU.

'Oh, but he was always such a committed Eurosceptic' they bleat.

No, he wasn't. You judge a person not by their mood music words alone, but by their actions too. Hague's actions defined him as a typical, deceitful High Tory establishment figure of the type that so adores being part of the EU.

People in the Westminster village, and the time servers who 'report' on politics there, are only surprised at Hague's words because they ignore everyone and everything outside of their incestuous bubble. One former blogger I remember was ruthlessly exposing Hague's true position years ago, but the media ignored it because he wasn't part of the gang and had no 'prestige'.

All that happened this week is that the media demonstrated it is incompetent in its role of keeping the public informed.

The media were surprised about Hague as they will be surprised about Vote Leave's Brexit deception. They will also be surprised about the deal on associate EU membership when it comes, even though bloggers have set out the evidence of its creation in spades. They really are useless.

Cameron's 'negotiation' destination is clear, associate EU membership

While catching up from my recent blogging break, I spotted recent article penned by the arch EU federalist, Andrew Duff.

In a previous post I described Duff as the best ally Brexiteers have in the fight against David Cameron, and with good reason. On 10th December he reinforced that description with an open letter to Cameron on his Blogactiv page.

There are a few things worthy of coverage, but in this post we'll focus only on one, Associate Membership.

On the topic of 'ever closer union', Duff helpfully reminds us previous British governments have not only accepted the commitment to ever closer union but have elevated it in terms of primary law.

As Duff points out, the Tories Edward Heath and John Major have been two of the most zealous Prime Ministers in their determination to advance along the path of ever reduced democratic control and accountability. But what Duff then does is again raise his brainchild of a formalised two-speed Europe, exactly of the type demanded by the Westminster insider, establishment figure and Vote Leave chief executive, Matthew Elliott...

A more elegant way of settling your European dilemma would be to craft a new form of affiliate membership, short of full membership. Some are surprised that you have rejected that option. You are criticised for not spelling out your own concept of Britain’s ultimate destination. But you can justly demand of your EU partners that they also make more of an effort to specify their own concept of fiscal and eventual political union.

Whether you call it associate membership, the 'British option', two-speed Europe, or affiliate membership, the outcome is the same...

• Britain would remain part of the EU and our supreme government will continue to be the EU
• foreign courts will still have primacy over our own
• the Commission will still generate laws we cannot reject to be enacted here
• our terms of trade, tariffs and customs rules will continue to be decided for us
• we will have no direct involvement in deciding the global rules made at the top tables 
• Britain would not return to being an independent nation, responsible for governing itself

What Duff is doing is preparing the way for a reform destination that has already been decided in the corridors of real power, in Brussels.

The EU needs this solution to enable the push for ever closer union among Eurozone countries. Cameron needs it so it can be passed off as British-forced reform that supposedly resolves all the concerns of  eurosceptics and other British voters. The drama played out in the media is all part of the theatre.

Duff is merely playing along in pretending Cameron has rejected the very two-speed construct he will eventually present as a hard won deal, wrested from what will be painted as a kicking, screaming and defeated Eurocracy.

The media will plant the flag as usual, fawn and lap it up as a glorious victory over the EU. But the only change will be that Eurozone countries will have the freedom to push further integration without having to navigate approval from non-Eurozone countries. It's important to recognise and understand this plan, because when it comes to pass it will be possible to be ready to counter the arguments and claims that it represents a solid solution to British discontent with the EU.

The only outcome of David Cameron's faux negotiation will be a form of associate membership. The destination is illuminated with halogen floodlights, if only people choose to look up and see what is in front of them.

Festive humour... Matthew Elliott pretends he is not an establishment figure

It's interesting to see that Matthew Elliott has broken cover to provide comments to his mate, Robert Colville, who has penned a puff piece for Vote Leave in Politico.

If it is objective journalism and impartial assessment you hope for from such publications, then abandon that hope because it should be a contender for Private Eye's 'Order of the Brown Nose'.

What makes the piece so amusing is Elliott's effort to make the hideously establishment Vote Leave group claim its enemy is the 'British establishment'. This from a man described thus by Isabel Oakeshott in Conservative Home (h/t Lost Leonardo):

A brilliant networker and consummate professional, Elliott is part of the Westminster establishment and lives and breathes political campaigns. Some years ago, he came within a whisker of taking a job in Downing Street, so much so that he was given a guided tour of Number Ten and shown his future desk.

It isn't the only example of saying black is white either, as Robert Oxley denies the dismissive insults made against Leave.EU and Arron Banks in particular.

The piece also underlines Elliott's role in Vote Leave, where he controls 'the money, the finances, liaising with the board, liaising with the parliamentary parties'. This enables him to furnish his friends (Staines, Singh and Whitehurst) with lucrative contracts, while harvesting political data about millions of voters that can be sold for a huge sum to one of the very political parties he claims to fighting at the referendum.

Rather than take on each point raised by the piece, I left the comment shown below to add to the record. It's reproduced here in case is should be mislaid from the comment thread later...

EU demands that dishonest David Cameron has abandoned

David Cameron talks a good game.

He pulls that face of confected grave sincerity as he delivers his sermons to the people. But the words he utters are meaningless because no matter what promises and assurances he offers, he rarely keeps them.

Some examples of this Cameronian habit of casual untruthfulness surfaced in the Telegraph on Thursday, regarding various pledges he has made about the demands he would make of the EU. It's by no means an exhaustive list and some of the items on there are somewhat irrelevant in the overall scheme of things.

The real value of the piece is how it demonstrates Cameron's rank dishonesty.

In Cameron we have a man who has initiated a UK negotiation with the EU, on exclusively personal terms, that deliberately ignore the fundamental problem with EU membership (democracy and accountability), and who will not even stick to the pledges he has made to the public.

David Cameron is a pathological liar who cannot be trusted.

As the piece shows, his public pronouncements are a ramshackle hut built on quicksand. They are mood music pledges that he never has any intention of keeping. It is all part of his effort to carry people along in the drama of the moment to mute opposition and get his own way.

In the referendum campaign it isn't the EU that is our opponent, it is David Cameron, a man who will do and say anything to keep Britain firmly anchored in the EU. The way people vote will largely be determined by whether or not they believe what Cameron tells them about the deal he eventually presents. We should continually remind people they would be making a judgement based on the words of a liar.

Still here...

Apologies for the radio silence of the last month.

Everything is fine, but it's been a hectic time with work and I've needed to recharge the batteries too.

The work to secure a real and permanent Brexit continues, and it's great to see while I've been away that more bloggers have rallied to the rational campaign to make a sensible case for leaving the European Union, without any of the conspiratorial and xenophobic baggage that drags our side down. The blogroll will be updated to include our new colleagues.

Onwards!