TEAM is the acronym for The European Alliance of EU-Critical Movements. For many years the British media assumed that anyone opposed to the EU was simply a nasty person who hated foreigners. I thought about this quite successful Big Lie, as I looked around the room of good natured, civilized colleagues from other EU countries, gathered in London on 1st October.
Another assumption is that EU opponents are “right wing”. A trade unionist told us of the agreement which the EU is negotiating with India. It will compel the acceptance of more immigrants and facilitate the export of capital to boost Indian businesses. Our Parliament will have no say.
Independent Norway was also represented. Their 30,000-strong association, called “No to EU”, includes people of all political parties. Proportionate to the size of the UK population, their membership would be 360,000 – twice as big as any of our mainstream parties. Young people are prominent. Their speaker was No to EU Board member Sigrid Helberg who said that in Norway there was now strong opposition to EU membership by a majority of 70% across all sections of society.
This could lead to complacency, said Sigrid, which could be dangerous, as some in the leaderships of the main Norwegian parties still hankered after strutting on the EU stage. With low unemployment and steady growth, Norway could see the pitfalls of the failing EU model and there were moves to end the automatic introduction of EU Directives, as part of the “Common Market” with the EU. These are only a small fraction of the total of EU laws affecting Britain.
All the conference delegates spoke excellent English. Yet our last government reduced foreign language teaching in British schools. Many leading British Europhiles are monoglot. Edward Heath's French was excruciating! It is an advantage to the EU that British people get their most trusted news through the BBC, a committed EU propagandist since the Seventies.
A common concern of all the TEAM delegates was the loss of democracy in their respective countries. You can vote for different parties but the same EU-decided policies will always be enforced.
A few years ago, a parliamentary question in the Bundestag revealed that 84% of the laws being passed for Germany were required by EU Diktat. Even a former Federal President questioned whether Germany could properly be called a democracy. No mention on the BBC!
But, as the EU makes yet another power grab to shore up the euro, even 16% democracy is too much. A book entitled “Dare less Democracy”, published by the influential Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and written by Laszlo Trankovits, the bureau chief of Deutsche Presse Agentur in South Africa demands just that. He calls for fewer elections and longer periods of office and more careful selection of candidates. A bit of dictatorship will make for more efficiency, he believes.
Peter Mandelson once wrote,“The era of pure, representative democracy is coming to an end.” He proposed that the state should engage in focus groups and consultative referenda on safe subjects. But the EU was not amongst those. As soon as an EU referendum was mentioned, Lord Mandelson became a stern upholder of parliamentary sovereignty – just like David Cameron. But a parliament subject to the EU is not sovereign and is no true parliament.
