Once again a thoughtful article from Peter Saunders. It will be interesting to see what happens should David Cameron and the Conservatives win the next UK general election. Cameron is not shackled, as Margaret Thatcher was, with a large group of supporters of Europe in his party. In fact, he might well lead the most EU sceptical government in recent British history. Should this occur, one wonders how both the EU and the British government might react if the Lisbon treaty is forced through without further referenda in member countries.

I was visiting Ireland in the run up to the Lisbon Treaty and was amazed at what was being asked of voters. Nobody actually understood what the treaty meant, though nonetheless the Yes camp were urging people to vote for it. I read the treaty explanation booklet and couldn't actually tell what was going on either. The major parties supported it, with opposition coming from some fringe organisations and Sinn Fein.
Sensibly, the No vote won out, but its a sad day when you find yourself in agreement with Sinn Fein!!

Now let me see.

Peter was the head honcho at the CIS which is a propaganda factory, or really "church", based on the "gospel" of "freedom" as preached by Hayek and Milton Friedman, and others. It also promotes the interests of big business, that is transnational corporations----or the elites that really rule the world and determine our fate at their periodic talk-fests----who to plunder next and what propaganda shall we use to accomplish this.

Check out David Korten: When Corporations Ruled the World and George Monbiot: The Captive State

The toxic ideology promoted by these two benighted crackpots resulted in the phenomena of the Chicago Boys (really Boyz---that is eternal adolscents and their doctrine of never-ending "creative" destruction). And what did the Boyz create---or rather destroy.

Entire countries and their traditional ways of doing things. Millions of peoples live-lihoods were destroyed, and the collective wealth of these unfortunate countries was plundered (really stolen) by Peter's corporate friends---who conveniently forced new "restructuring" laws onto these countries to make their whole-sale theft "legal".

All of this was/is described in The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. A book with copious well researched sources and references. Naomi specifically employed fact and source checkers.

Of course this book was given a negative review in the CIS Policy Journal---and in the IPA Review.

So I find it monstrously ironic that Peter complains about how the "elites" have ignored or over-ridden the will of the people in Europe.

It was wonderful to see the entire legal, business and political elite of Ireland overruled by the people in the Lisbon Treaty referendum. Surely this is the latest political fight, not left versus right, but the elite versus the people. We had a foretaste of it here in 1999, when the people vetoed the elite's model of a republic.

I believe there is a small error in the article concerning the Irish referendum. As I understand it, the only reason a referendum was held is that the treaty would constitute an amendment to the Irish constitution, and for that a referendum is mandatory, as in Australia. This did not apply in the UK, where the parliament has unlimited powers, but it does in Ireland.

The EU is now really in a fix. If it admits new members, it will simply increase the number of states that have to agree unanimously for anything to be changed. With David Cameron, the likely next UK PM, stating that his government would hold a referendum on any such treaty and recommend a NO vote, we have a real chance that the UK's membership in the EU could be clarified. With the EU's political legitimacy already shredded, as indicated by the number of people in other EU states who indicated that they would like to have a vote on the treaty, its bureaucracy must tread very carefully to avoid a split-up of the union.