Europe: Who's Telling The Truth?
by Simon Heffer

Yesterday, Mr Blair's Mr Fixit described the EU constitution as a mere 'tidying up' exercise. Here, a Mail writer offers his own vision of what life will be like as a citizen in the United States of Europe….

Even now, I still can't get used to the fact that my postal address ends 'Eastern Region, Province of England, United States of Europe'. It symbolises nicely what we have lost since that ghastly day just before the 2005 General Election when Tony Blair used the Parliament Acts to overturn the House of Lords' rejection of the European constitution.

The peers, like many MPs in the Commons, were appalled that Britain's independence and centuries of history should be signed away using Labour's massive majority.

There was no referendum: Blair knew he could never win one. Even though the final surrender of sovereignty had not figured in Labour's election manifesto, it was steam-rollered through and 1,000 years of self-determination were at an end.

The change of name to 'Province of England, United States of Europe' was just the first sign. Almost as soon, we were all instructed to attend local identification centers to be photographed and be issued with our new United States of Europe (U.S.E.) identity cards - visible proof that Brussels law took precedence over our own.

The new Europol, whose officers roamed throughout the 25 former states, now have formidable powers. They can stop people at random and ask them to produce an ID card. In the early days, when a few criminals chose to fight back, there were unpleasant scenes. As a result, Europol agents now only ever try to stop those who look middle-class and respectable.

All of us know someone who has fallen foul of the new criminal code. Inevitably, those who have are not remotely the type of person that anyone would think of as criminals. It is especially dangerous to go abroad - or to what we must now call another 'province' of the U.S.E.

There are many tales of people who had just returned from a happy holiday in the Algarve having the early morning knock from Europol, and being carted off to Faro to be dumped in a sweaty cell for an offence they swore they had not committed.

'The trouble with the English on holiday,' the U.S.E. High Representative for Foreign Affairs had quipped in a celebrated aside, "is that they all look the same."

However, it could take months or years for a case of mistaken identity to be proven. And in any case, since the U.S.E. criminal code has no habeas corpus, you could not only be removed from Britain to face charges without a right of appeal, you could spend two years in jail before any charges were preferred.

It wasn't that much better, of course, if you committed an offence at home. Trial by jury was abolished, not least because it was dangerously democratic, but also because it interfered with the new Europe-wide code of guilt until proved innocent.

With travels across the Channel so perilous, we started instead to go to the English seaside for our holidays again, only to find that once genteel resorts like Rock, Lyme Regis or Brancaster were under a dusk till dawn curfew because of their new role as official reception centers for the U.S.E.'s illegal immigrants.

Reserving the right to interfere in member states social policies, the U.S.E Politburo had decided that, given England's massive experience at welcoming illegals, it would be used to process all those who came into the new superstate.

By the 2009 General Election, feelings were running high about this.

However, once it was made clear that the purpose of the 'provincial' British Government would now be merely to execute orders given by the Politburo, rather than to initiate any laws the people of Britain might want, turnout slumped.

Since what now passes for the British parliament in Westminster was allowed only to pass laws approved by the Politburo, it could not even debate repealing the various Acts of Parliament that had got us into this mess.

The General Election turnout was 19 per cent and was taken by Brussels as proof that the people of Britain were so happy with the new order that they saw no need to vote.

Incidentally, the new laws which allow anyone from any part of the U.S.E. to stand in elections anywhere in the superstate also led to some confusion. For example, voters in one constituency faced a choice between a Finn, a German, a Maltese and a Slovenian.

With each month that passed, the loss of power was brought ever more cruelly home to us. First, with the European law now overriding British law, the U.S.E. forced the people of the 'British regions' to start using the euro, in view of the Politburo's call for 'ever closer economic co-operation'.

Since we had already lost control over so much else, we accepted this with sullen resignation. It was, though, only the beginning of our economic horrors.

Suddenly our mortgage rate was set from Frankfurt, of course. Because of rampant inflation caused by a glut of money in the new, small Eastern European countries that were being heavily subsidized to join the U.S.E., it had to be set considerably higher than conditions in the regions of Britain required. The people, of course, could do nothing about it.

The need to finance 'cohesion' in the more economically backward countries proved expensive. VAT was harmonized first at 20, then at 25 per cent. The basic rate of income tax was harmonized at 30 per cent, with new50, 60 and 70 per cent bands for higher earners.

By now, the Second Cold War - -this one between Europe and America - is entering its fifth year. Britain is no longer allowed a foreign policy, and the U.S.E. has decidedly rocky diplomatic relations with the U.S.

Not a day passes without America's superior wealth, military power and freedoms being mocked by eurocrats - in truth because their universal superiority is so feared.

Many in Britain, recognizing that our traditional values are similar to those found in America, feel that we have ended up on the wrong side of this great divide.

Foreign policy in the U.S.E. exists largely to secure French commercial power in some of the world's more unsavoury regions - which is, of course, merely a formalisation of what already existed.

What remained of our historic ties with the Commonwealth has gone. Australia, New Zealand and Canada became republics. Such great nations felt they could not have a head of state who now solely rules over a 'Province'.

The Queen herself has been deeply troubled by the U.S.E. constitution, which she regarded as a breach of her Coronation Oath to rule her people in accordance with their laws and customs. A woman of impeccable honour, she felt that since her country's sovereignty had now ended, she could not be its sovereign - so she abdicated.

She had noted that Mr Blair ha gone more regularly for audiences at the presidential palace in Brussels than to her at Buckingham Palace. The Queen realized that she, like her Government, had become an irrelevance in the new order.

Our great military tradition has all but crumbled too. British soldiers disliked swearing an oath to the U.S.E. and being commanded by the French and Italian generals in the new Euro-army.

Then there are the minor irritations. People are still being killed in road accidents because motorists have not got used to the directive that everyone must drive on the right.

Since compulsory metrication, several shopkeepers have been in jail for three years, without trial, for daring to sell potatoes by the pound.

Had the British people had a say, of course we would not be in this position. Many have taken drastic action and left this country for America or Australia, or for the Costa de Sol. If you have to live under the European jackboot, they argue, it might as well be in a decent climate.

One individual, of course, has done well out of it: the current President.

They toyed with the idea of electing Tony Blair when the vacancy arose a couple of years back but, in consideration of his scant regard for democratic processes, decided that would set an awkward precedent: so he was simply appointed instead.

He always enjoyed hobnobbing with people who ran superpowers. Now, he thinks he has one of his own. But, as with America and the Soviet Union in the first Cold War, one draws its strength from the freedom and consent of its people, the other from the sheer might of the state machine. The second of those power bases is always unsustainable, for it suppresses the human spirit.

If Blair knew anything about history he might know that sometimes it does repeat itself. Our only hope now is that it will.
Daily Mail, 14th May 2003

RESOURCES
Ten Minutes to Midnight
Vigilance
Available through www.credence.org