Democrat January-February 2013 (Number 133)
Tory launch gambit to stay in EU
Report by Brian Denny
Tory Prime Minister David Cameron has sought to dampen down growing popular opposition to EU membership by promising a referendum in about five years time after the Europhile party leadership has negotiated a ‘new settlement’.
"And when we have negotiated that new settlement, we will give the British people a referendum with a very simple in or out choice,” he said.
This manoeuvre is meant to garner EU-critical votes at the next election and allow the Tories to campaign alongside the Lib Dems and Labour leaderships to stay locked into the EU permanent austerity machine.
While euro fanatic Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg huffed that EU renegotiation "is not in the national interest” and Labour leader Ed Miliband confirmed that "we don't want an in-out referendum" both know Cameron’s gambit is designed to maintain unity among the political elite.
The Conservative Party has always been a supporter of the creation of an undemocratic European superstate dominated by corporate capital. Cameron, John Mayor and even Margaret Thatcher all enthusiastically signed the various treaties designed to bring this about.
When Thatcher belatedly tried to reverse this long-held policy and opposed Britain’s membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and the Euro she was removed in 1990.
The reality today is that Cameron cannot make any meaningful changes to EU structures without the support of all 27 member state, a deliberately impossible task.
Miliband’s craven support for the EU will also further alienate working class voters as Labour is losing votes to UKIP as much as the Tories are and it is not good the labour movement sticking its head in the sand.
Utopian dreams about the EU and the cargo cult known as social Europe will not prevent the damage done by EU treaties that remove real democracy from voters and hands power to rapacious corporate capitalism.
It’s time the TUC stopped hiding behind Tory Europhiles like Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine in support of the EU and realised that EU rules only inflict permanent austerity at home and continual imperialist war abroad.