Saturday, September 18, 2010

Of bald men and combs


The European Movement is getting terribly worked up about the EU Referendum Campaign, offering a line-by-line fisking of the Campaign's position statement.

The trouble is that the statement is the usual identikit "euroscepticism" which shows that the authors know nothing and have learned nothing about the enemy they confront. Here is a sample:
It's a sad fact that Britain is sleepwalking into the European Super-State and Britain must wake up to the nightmares hiding under the sheets of Brussels. EU laws and directives made without our knowledge or consent, behind locked doors of the most complicated clauses and sub-clauses imaginable.
Equally predictable is the European Movement response, the bores leading the bores, making this very much the fight of the bald men. But the European Movement should know that any campaign which features as its pin-up boy the egregious Dale, gurgling about the "Westminster Village", is going nowhere.

The first and foremost requirement of any campaigner is to "know your enemy" - Wellington's finding out what is on the other side of the hill, and all that. And the most crucial thing you will ever learn about the EU is that it is not a super-state, has no ambitions to become one and will not become one. But it is, increasingly, a super-government - and that is where it intends to go.

Primarily, the EU is a means by which the political élites in each of the member states by-pass the democratic institutions in their own countries, imposing their rule without the inconvenience of people participation. That is why the construct is so popular and enduring. The élites have created their own government without the interference of the pesky people.

In short, the EU is not an external agency imposed on us by foreigners (the UKIP/little Englander paradigm) but a conspiracy in plain sight, so glaring and obvious that it is ignored by all. It is the mechanism by which the political élites of Europe by-pass democracy and keep themselves in power. Thus, the EU is what the power élite in the British establishment impose on their own people - replicated in each country of the Union of Elites.

But, as long as we have the spectacle of bald men fighting over combs, the proles can be kept occupied without ever getting near the truth. The conspiracy goes marching on. The European Movement is part of it, and the EU Referendum Campaign looks like it is joining it.

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