Letting them decide...

An MP, whom I do not recognise, today uttered these words in the House of Commons...
"It is not just about the trust that we should show in the British people by letting them decide but about restoring trust in this place (Westminster)"

That the commons should "trust the British people" in the exercise of power implies that it is they who hold the power. That they should "let" us decide is an admission that in this decision they are temporarily relinquishing power to the people. Being that the word democracy is derived from the term "people power", by his very inference, we the people do not hold the power, thus it cannot be said that we live in a democracy. It is a dictatorship in which we get to elect our dictators, the majority of whom hold very little collective power over the actual government, which does not even reside in London.

What is more disturbing, Labour has said that it does not believe that a vote on our membership of the EU is in the national interest. How can it be said that membership of the EU, a supranational project which seeks to abolish Britain as a nation state, is in our national interest? And how can it be said that a referendum to leave is not in our national interest? This is because our politicians have never fully understood what the EU actually is. They still speak of it as though it were a trade association related only to the exchange of goods on which jobs depend. It is an entity with its own flag, currency, parliament, passport, foreign policy and soon an army of it's own - and we have been taken into this without ever being consulted - and it has happened without our consent. And they wonder why we don't trust them.

And then in the Telegraph we find this... The European Union must offer Britain “meaty and substantial” reforms, the Foreign Secretary told MPs this morning, as he said the Government is “lighting a fire under the European Union” Addressing the Commons at the introduction of Conservative Bill for a referendum on EU membership, Philip Hammond said public consent on Europe is “fragile”. He said the EU had “morphed” into a “putative superstate” that has encroached on the power of national parliaments since Britain last held a referendum on membership. Whether to remain is the “most important strategic question facing the country today,” he said.

You would think a foreign secretary would have bothered to familiarise himself with what the EU is before taking up such a role. The EU has not “morphed” into a “putative superstate”. That was the intent of the project from the outset. The EU has always said so. And the very nature of the EU means that "meaty and substantial reform" cannot occur without a treaty change, which cannot happen prior to an IGC and cannot happen without unanimous agreement from member states. So here we have a government minister responsible for foreign affairs who does not know what the EU is or how it works - and expects us to believe that any kind of meaningful "renegotiation" can happen. Not surprising then that we get the likes of Ukip on the rise when our government clearly takes us for fools.