Trouble In Gordon Brown's Paradise

Could a no confidence vote be on the near horizon?

EU treaty won't work, says Labour MP
The new EU constitution treaty "won't work", the government is warned today, as ministers prepare for a bitter Commons showdown over the controversial document.

Gisela Stuart, one of the "wise men" that drew up the original EU Constitution, said the Lisbon treaty lacked the necessary legitimacy to work across Europe.

The Labour MP has signed an amendment to the Bill, which returns to the floor of the Commons on Monday, calling for a referendum on the treaty.

Stuart believes the UK's Europe minister should be a cabinet-level post, akin to a deputy prime minister, and should be directly accountable to the Westminster parliament.

She also wants an assurance that any future changes to qualified majority voting (QMV) in the European parliament would be subject to primary legislation in the House of Commons.

In an interview with Guardian Unlimited, Stuart said: "I think this document pushes to the limits the areas I think I could just about agree with, but I would need further safeguards, so these are the limits and I think that's what this debate is going to be about."

Stuart said the revised document gave the European Union a "toolbox" of powers that would allow it to "interfere in virtually every aspect of our lives".

"There is no longer a question of saying, there are certain things that the union can't touch. Actually the union can touch everything."

Pressed on her objection to the treaty, Stuart said: "I don't think this is going to work."

Asked why, she added: "Because of a lack of legitimacy in the eyes of large swaths of people across Europe ... The crunch will be the environment. If you look at the golden opportunity to tax the little people into oblivion acceleration of climate change, at the moment on the environment we are in a comfort zone of thinking all we need to do is take our bottles to the skip, recycle our newspapers; if you are really daring you say we should put tax on plastic carrier bags. And we think that's enough.

"Well the penny is going to drop that it's not going to be enough, and you will need to make a decision on whether you tax or ration carbon emissions. Of course no one country can sensibly do this on its own, so this will be a classic case of where you need the EU to do this. And the EU will start to ask its citizens to stop doing something they have always comfortably done before. There will be some fairly hard demands.

"People accept hard demands if that's a deal from their own government. But when politicians across Europe start saying, as they have always done, 'it is not us' - it's always been the politician's way of getting out of uncomfortable positions - at that point, it doesn't have that kind of legitimacy." Describing the Lisbon treaty as the same as the failed EU constitution "in substance", Stuart said: "I've been struggling to find analogies of how you compare this. It's like a cookery recipe: all the same ingredients, but you've just rearranged them differently. Or [former French president] Giscard d'Estaing came up with a wonderful phrase: he said, 'it's the same letter; just in a different envelope'.

Stepping up pressure on Gordon Brown to call a referendum, Stuart said: "My view is whether you call it a constitution or whether you call it a treaty, in essence it is something pretty significant, and it's a matter of trust now for the political parties to honour their promise.

"The British people should be given a say, as they were promised by all the major political parties in the 2005 election.

"I certainly will find it difficult to vote for the treaty on Monday unless there is a commitment to have a referendum."

How 'bout dem apples?!? Like Gordon Brown, Gisela Stuart is a member of the Labour Party and she's just thrown down the gauntlet.

Warning of the potential for Europe creep, Stuart said: "I give you one example. Ten years ago everyone said health was [the competence of] national member states. Absolutely no doubt about it. You then started to get court cases where people from one European country were going to another European country for dental treatment. The question was, was that part of the internal market? One of the key things of the European Union.

"So we have the first court decision, the European Court of Justice, that says, 'yes, it is part of the internal market'. And then over a number of years you get more and more decisions because cases come up, until last year when someone in England goes over to France to jump waiting lists and the courts say 'well yes, you can do that, but you need prior permission and all kinds of caveats' - but the principle is established.

"You then at the same time over those 10 years have things like CJD [and] bird flu, so people say, 'well of course, bird flu and CJD don't recognise national boundaries, so public health must be an EU competence.' So we make public health an EU competence; we make health service delivery a court judgment ... so what's the next thing?

"A European commission draws up a proposals for an EU health directive, which it did before Christmas, then decides to withdraw it to consult more. It doesn't say we'll put it back on the table, and as we in the UK are the only ones to have a totally taxpayer-funded [health] system we will have particular problems. But this just illustrates that there is nothing where the EU doesn't have means - whether it's court judgments; whether it's internal market; free movement of labour - the way it makes laws. In every way it now has means, and once it has taken away a UK competence, there is no way you can ever go back."

Stuart called for a strengthening of the prime minister's assurances over QMV.

"The prime minister committed himself to saying, 'no more extension of qualified majority voting or any further powers unless this house agrees to it.' Well, I would like that tightened up," Stuart said. "First of all, the only area where that could happen is in defence and foreign policy, because everything else already has gone to QMV.

"But I would want primary legislation, so it's not just one vote the government can whip through with their majority, but [instead] it would actually have to be a bill and go through the House, and go through [all] the stages.

"The second thing is the way the House itself operates has to change - very, very significantly."

Asked how she would vote in a referendum, Stuart said: "I don't know yet. There are a number of things I would want to hear from our ministers, and assurances in terms of their interpretation, and it will be extremely finely balanced which way I will go.

"My argument is that all the deals struck in Brussels need to be answered at the dispatch box. Create a proper Europe minister, take the Europe minister out of the Foreign Office, but make that person accountable for those negotiations. And that's almost a deputy prime minister post.

"I want them to come to the dispatch box every two weeks and say 'those are the deals we have struck'. I think you would find that that person would probably be responsible for negotiating something like 50% of our legislation, and that would merit a cabinet post."


Via The Guardian

José Manuel Barroso was unavailable for comment.


And hoping to avoid Nigel Farage

See also Reality Confronts European Union.

Also at A Tangled Web