Europe Day

Oooops, nearly forgot. I expect all my readers will be half way through their celebrations already, popping the champagne corks and brushing up their Belgian folk dancing. Today is Europe Day, when we celebrate the EU.

In fact 9th May is the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration in 1950, which gave rise to the European Coal and Steel Community and all the bossy, self-perpetuating elitist apparat that has gone on since.

In fact Schuman received the declaration drafted for him at the railway station as he went off to his country estate and signed it, as he was told to, on his return. It had been written by Jean Monnet, a bureaucrat who had all his life believed in supranational bodies. During the First World War Monnet proposed, in order to facilitate the movement of weaponry across borders, that a supranational body be set up which would tell individual nations what to do, when and how. Naturally the Americans told him to go boil his head, although they seem in favour of it now (that is a body to rule over others, not over them).

It has been clear for many years that we would be better off without all this baggage, better off democratically and financially. It is now clear that even the free trade provisions come hedged around with so much bureaucracy and regulation that we would be better off out of it completely. Furthermore it is clear that the British people think that, too. But our politicians are never going to get rid of a self appointed elite. As the shark said, when he ignored the investment banker who had fallen off his yacht, professional etiquette.

We are therefore stuck in a mire of having to belong to an anti-democratic, impoverishing system, knowing we would be better off out, but without the balls to leave it.

In the absence of Mr Cameron being able to specify from which areas of Europe he would repatriate powers to parliament, we must, regrettably, presume it was just talk. This blog therefore supports UKIP for the European Elections.

Happy Europe Day.