CHRIS PATTEN, AGAIN [Andrew Stuttaford] - NRO
Tony Blair has, finally, conceded that the British people are to have a vote on the EU bureaucracy’s monstrous new ‘constitution’. That’s progress, but if EU Commissioner Patten’s latest comments are anything to go by, the constitution’s advocates are going to try and cast the referendum as a vote on the EU itself. A ‘no’ vote, they argue, will force the UK out of the EU. That’s nonsense. In a way, one can’t blame Patten. Having lost the intellectual debate, the only thing left to him is scare tactics.
Notice too the haughty and dismissive way in which Patten, an overpaid mandarin, a failed politician, a puffed-up sycophant always searching for a new boot to lick, a grubby piece of second-rate eurotrash who disgraces the Conservative party of which he is, incredibly, still a member, refers to British efforts to defend its national interest as ‘truculently making trouble’. Oh, we’re so sorry, Commissioner.
The only people ‘making trouble’ are those politicians trying to foist an unworkable and profoundly authoritarian rulebook on the luckless inhabitants of their ghastly union. And if, I’m wrong, and it’s the Brits, and not Patten, who are out of step with ‘European opinion,’ could Patten explain why so many EU governments are unwilling to let their people vote on this supposedly popular document. |
