EU: A quiet revolution is taking place

A superb posting from Buda Nevey in the Telegraph:

A quiet revolution is taking place. For years we were reassured that the Lisbon Treaty would preclude financial transfers to Member States in difficulty. When the Debt Bubble burst, a proverbial 'coach and horses' was driven through this guarantee, before the ink was even dry, with a huge 450 billion taxpayer-funded bailout secretly intended for European banks who had recklessly financed the borrowings of Greece and other basket-case EU Member-States, who had in turn lied about national debts and tax receipts in the first place to get into the Euro with the connivance of our political 'representatives'.

The UK taxpayer, despite being out of the Eurozone, was also forced to stump up billions disguised under a separate Mutual Aid clause, the wording of which was originally intended only to assist countries suffering natural disasters or similar emergencies. The abuse of that clause (in which the UK has no veto) saw the dying Labour Government shamefully give £8 billion in its final hours, just this year. No legal objection was raised against any of these shenanigans by our Establishment (so much for fighting for British interests), but in Germany, where it is recognised that the much bigger Banker-bound 450 billion Eurozone bailout is undoubtedly illegal under the Lisbon Treaty, the politician-banksters have realised the need for an urgent new Treaty amendment to make their dishonest actions retrospectively lawful.

Which brings us to the present day, where our discomfited 'eurosceptic' Prime Minister has accepted this state of affairs, under the cover of a Budget announcement, overturning ten years of reassurances given to Parliament, whilst simultaneously betraying a recent promise to give taxpayers a Referendum. He says that a minor Treaty change, which will legalise a permanent mechanism for the transfer of the burden of billions in debt to northern Eurozone taxpayers, will not affect us, but if British taxpayers are affected by the fallout of debt from our own banks, then burdening German, Dutch and other consumers and businesses with the debts of failing Member States is bound eventually to depress demand for our goods and services, tourism, investment and job creation, inevitably leading to further demands for tax and spending increases from the European budget.

If Europe is so important to us economically (as the British Establishment always says when it argues against leaving the EU), then it is preposterous to claim that we will not be greatly affected by a new Treaty sharing the problems of Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain with taxpayers in Germany, France and Holland as well as the UK, under the spurious heading of 'natural disaster' emergency assistance. Our Prime Minister curiously had nothing to say about this of course, merely dissembling that a new Treaty is in our interest so that the Euro succeeds, but if he honestly believes that there is such a thing as a successful Euro, then why doesn't he want Britain to be in it? Why exactly is it in our interests to make British workers and businesses suffer the consequences of a flawed single currency by having a new Treaty which legalises a mechanism for spreading financial misery across European markets? If he has principled objections to the Euro, then it must surely be in our interest not to support it. His position is illogical (but mostly, I suspect, just dishonest). He should be arguing for the PIGS to leave the Eurozone or sort out their dodgy finances on their own.

For ten years the Labour Government (yes, even our negotiator Peter Hain) objected to the inclusion of mutual financial aid provisions in the Lisbon Constitutional Treaty, even though they were only proposed for Eurozone Members. They knew and we suspect rightly that Britain would have been substantially, if indirectly, affected by the political and economic fallout of such transfers leading to more direct consequences, later on, with demands for Budget increases and surrendering Budget rebates, as well as the inevitable proposed single economic and fiscal governance of the new United Europe.

The shabby piece of theatre we saw today in Brussels, which was evidently decided weeks ago, along with Hague's new narrative on 'transfers within existing areas', belying the posturing of the Government about its Referendum pledge, budget cuts or freezes, proves at the very least that the new Government is no more honest on Europe than the one it replaced. The significance of today's planned and deliberate underhandedness though is much greater. Years of objection to large inter-State financial transfers in the proposed European Constitution/Lisbon Treaty was based on the expectation that, if allowed, the EU would necessarily demand full Federal economic and fiscal governance of the Member States, eventually leading to full Federal political governance. Like its ambition for a President, Foreign Service and single Armed Forces we know where the Federalists are taking us without our consent. The British Government, with an allegedly Conservative Eurosceptic Prime Minister, has today paved the way for another significant move in this direction. Plus ca change...