Lisbon Treaty Exposes EU Anti-Democracy

Isn’t it nice to have a government that ignores its people? Isn’t it nice that Gordon Brown, heading quite possibly the most unpopular government Britain has known in modern times, goes off and ratifies the Lisbon Treaty when it is as obvious as can be the treaty would be overwhelmingly rejected by the British people, were they given the opportunity?

Should it take effect, the treaty enables the transfer of yet more powers from Parliament to the EU. In practice the powers would be transferred to the 27 heads of government of the EU’s constituent states who, acting collectively as the European Council, would be able to draw down and exercise those powers without further reference to the member state Parliaments (i.e. with one bound they are free of their peoples, and the checks and balances of their national constitutions). Especially where majority voting applies - and the Lisbon Treaty considerably extends majority voting - there is thereafter no possibility that individual Parliaments can have any meaningful influence over what transpires.

The whole process by which the Lisbon Treaty has come into existence and is being ratified, deliberately avoiding obtaining popular consent - and now following the Irish No vote nevertheless trying to force the treaty through, is itself evidence of the extent to which the EU’s various Presidents and Prime Ministers have assumed a loyalty to EU institutions above and beyond anything shown to their native countries.

When you consider that Brown (and his predecessor Blair) has proceeded without regard to public opinion, indeed by studiously avoiding ever engaging with the British public on the matter, and that at the last election the Labour party were afraid to seek a mandate to carry through a new EU treaty, and instead preferred to defer the issue by promising a referendum on the outcome, Brown is clearly behaving undemocratically.

Brown has contrived to act despite the wants, interests, desires, and aspirations of the British people. He has made no effort to persuade the British people of the rightness of what he is doing, and he has wholly failed to solicit their agreement.

When you further consider that the changes the treaty brings about are not just to do with the country’s internal constitutional arrangements (which would leave open the possibility of their future reversal by Parliament), but are changes that make Britain subservient to a superior judicial, legislative, political, and constitutional regime located elsewhere (thereby making any unilateral reversal impossible), it is quite unforgivable. I guess Brown has too much hubris and sense of personal historical destiny to feel any shame, but he should. He may have the political power, but what makes him think he has any moral entitlement to do such a thing? The guy is a thug.

It is true Brown has run his ratification through Parliament, but no election was ever fought on the issues raised by the treaty, and the promise of a referendum buried the then impending treaty as an issue when the election was fought. Now Brown has avoided a referendum by claiming that the document he has ratified was not the document the government had in mind when it promised a referendum.

In the light of the Irish referendum no vote, there are many treaty proponents claiming that referenda are not the way to decide such important matters. The treaty is obviously far too complicated to be pronounced upon by ordinary, and for the most part ignorant, people in a referendum. In any case, the range of issues rolled up into the treaty is far too wide for a crude yes or no answer. Or so they say.

Too complicated? The treaty’s proponents are being disingenuous. There are very few MPs who have read the treaty, let alone properly understood it - to do so means considerable study and analytical work. This is because the treaty was deliberately cast in the form of a lot of amendments to the pre-existing treaties, both to hide the fact that its content is pretty much the content of the failed Constitutional treaty; and to add credence to the argument that ordinary people would not understand the treaty and so should not be given the power of decision over it.

So if the political establishment - including the Irish Prime Minister, it seems - have not read the treaty, and take their understanding of it second-hand, there can be little force in the argument that the treaty is too complicated for the public to decide upon.

Referendums are too crude? Well Parliament itself cannot amend the treaty, but only say yes or no to it, so the idea that the treaty comprises too many pieces to be susceptible to a simple yes or no by the people is also revealed to be empty: yes or no is all anyone, however grand, can say to the treaty.

Why should we assume ordinary people are not fit to be consulted on the treaty? It is after all the general public in whose name and for whose benefit the treaty is being incorporated into law, and who will have to live with the consequences, good or bad, so they certainly have an interest in the matter.

The questions raised will be about ends, values, and mechanisms (and their efficacy): whether we support ever closer union; or the loss of our country’s independence; or a cross-border power of arrest by foreign police; or the loss of veto powers by our government; or free movement across borders; or whatever? What is so difficult? What makes these questions so much less tractable for the public than for politicians? Is it that the politicians are whipped?

People vote as they do knowing the treaty stands or falls in its entirety. Just as yes voters may swallow hard and sacrifice things they hold dear, so no voters find themselves unable to compromise, possibly losing some elements they favour. But in this there is no difference between them and their elected (and sometimes unelected) politicians. The main difference I can see is that ratification opens up new career games for the politicians.

What strikes me in writing this piece is that I find myself having to explain and justify the benefits of popular consent and democratic accountability. There is something profoundly disturbing in the fact I have to do this, and that intelligent people seriously doubt the need for popular consent: something harking back to the communist and fascist regimes of the twentieth century. I can only hope it does not portend another Dark Age.