View From The House - 24th June 2004

Reprinted From The Lichfield Mercury

So we have elections. In Tamworth, where there were local elections, the town council becomes Conservative. And across the west midlands the Conservatives win 3 out of the 7 European seats and UKIP wins one. Does that say something to Tony Blair?

Yet Tony Blair seems deaf to those who are concerned about the direction the European Union is travelling. He hails a victory for negotiation over the Constitution claiming his ‘red lines’ are intact. What nonsense! He conceded the important red lines months ago giving them up to the French and Germans.

On the day the Constitution was agreed to, Europe's top judge said that the Constitution would give European judges major new powers over our daily lives: on how businesses are run, civil liberties, criminal sentences and British courts. Europe will now have more control over these and more. And it gets worse. Only a nation can have a foreign minister. Yet while Tony Blair claims that the European Union is no superstate, guess what? The Constitution gives the EU its very own foreign minister and a common foreign policy.

Why should we be worried in Staffordshire? Do you recall the truck driver from Lichfield who was wrongfully arrested in France 10 years or so back? He was held in solitary confinement for 11 weeks, he was never charged with any crime, and for a while he didn’t know whether his wife and family had any idea where he was. This could not happen in the UK. It can and does happen in France and on much of continental Europe where you are guilty until you can prove your innocence and the Napoleonic law is supreme. And now the EU is talking about having a common legal system here too.

Britain is a global trading nation not confined just to Europe. With the net cost of membership of the EU rising to more than £1,000 per family per year in Britain, no wonder more and more people are asking “Why aren’t we calling the shots?” and “Wouldn’t this money be better spent on British schools, British pensions, and British hospitals?”