Tuesday 23 July 2013

Balance of Competences, Indeed




Or this?

No, of course not.

The only people ever permitted to voice the slightest criticism of the EU are extremely late converts to the cause and do not in fact disagree with anything that the EU does, but only (allegedly) with the fact that it is the EU doing these things.

But they are colourful eccentrics, so they make better television. Serious politicians can go hang. A generation after 66 Labour opponents of Maastricht were ignored completely by the media in preference for Tony Marlow and Teresa Gorman (two of only 22 Tory opponents, one third of the Labour number), when are we going to see any coverage of figures other than the likes of Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg?

When every Labour MP, every single one, voted for that real-terms cut in the British contribution to the EU Budget which Cameron then entirely failed to deliver, they were joined by fewer Tory rebels than there were Lib Dem MPs. Not some referendum when we are all dead. A real-terms cut right now.

And then there are the 40 Tory MPs of avowedly Eurofederalist views, effectively a British parliamentary branch of the European People's Party. The true figure, stretching deep into the Cabinet, will be at least 60, and probably 80. But of media attention to this fact, there is absolutely none. Of course.

2 comments:

  1. The stuff those articles reveal is horrifying.

    But there's no conspiracy of silence here-there's a very simple , obvious reason this Left- wing eurosceptic case gets no publicity.

    Because the popular, widely-read Left-wing papers in Britain (the Indie, Guardian, New Statesman etc) are all the most pro-EU papers in Britain.

    The London Progressive Journal and Morning Star (bless them) simply aren't very popular or widely-read.

    You can blame the BBC for that- or you can blame the British buying public.

    But the only mainstream newspapers who regularly and consistently attack the EU are the right-wing ones.

    And to suggest that Christopher Booker, Daniel Hannan and co don't "object to anything the EU does" is utterly stupid.

    Try reading them sometime, and get your head out if the Star.

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  2. The Guardian is not left-wing, as I shall be coming back to in a future post.

    Nor are the right-wing papers, as such, anti-EU. Not really. I might come back to that one at some point.

    The left-wingers among The Independent's ideologically very broad range of commentators are highly critical of the EU, though.

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