Guido Fawkes Calls Me A Muppet

Guido Fawkes, a blogger of some self-importance, has taken it upon himself to label me a "Muppet" on Twitter. My crime? Merely to point out that Cameron's apparent veto in 2011 was nonsense on stilts.

I had the temerity to question the following sentence in a blog piece by Guido today, he writes (my emphasis throughout):

Despite Downing Street getting to choose the candidate for EU Commissioner, the European Parliament has to approve their pick. Guido understands Number 10 is preparing for the possibility that the PM’s first choice will be spiked by MEPs as revenge for the British vetoing the 2011 treaty. So Dave faces a dilemma. Does he put forward his first choice as normal and risk seeing them vetoed, or does he hold back who he actually wants at the risk of a decoy first nomination scraping through?:

And that apparently passes for a stunning piece of political analysis. Of course we shouldn't expect much better given Guido has previously campaigned for the return of capital punishment without acknowledging that it is against our EU membership or that he once said this:

We are briefed that Blair is the official unofficial candidate of the FCO for permanent President of the Council of Europe.

As regular readers know, and has been well rehearsed, there was no veto. Nor could there have been as it's extremely difficult to veto a Treaty which does not exist and the power of a veto is not available.

It's worth remembering that David Cameron only initially confirmed that he "effectively vetoed". Ah the word 'effectively'? It’s rather like running a mile every day for 26 days and then declaring "I effectively ran a marathon". Not a lie essentially but crucially neither is it the truth. Newspapers of course don't pander to such nuances or subtleties - remove the word 'effectively' and there is your headline.

Interestingly when Cameron gave his report to the House of Commons on 12th December 2011 he did not use the word “veto” once – that would be “Lying In the House”. With this in mind we note Jack Straw’s question to Cameron:

Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab): There was no draft treaty before the European Council last Thursday and Friday; there was a set of draft conclusions. Will the Prime Minister set out the paragraph numbers that he thinks would have damaged Britain’s interests had we agreed to them? Will he also confirm that we had a veto on a financial transactions tax before the Council and that we still have one; and that financial services regulation was subject to qualified majority voting before last Thursday and still is?

And then to David Milliband:

“This is the first veto in history not to stop something. The plans are going right ahead. It was a phantom veto against a phantom threat".

But I guess pointing out the facts make me a "Muppet" - Guido with his head so far up the arse of the establishment is no different to the rest of the media where reporting the details is far beyond their comprehension.

And how ironic, and rather odd, that to make his case on Twitter to me Guido links to the Guardian – a newspaper he frequently derides. 

Revolution?

With membership of the EU comes the free movement of people. This is a fundamental principle of the EU. So when we see apparent regrets over immigration from former Labour Minister Jack Straw, who like many in Labour supports membership, we can only conclude his real regret was not to delay the influx for seven years which would have conveniently dumped the problem on Cameron’s lap:

"Other existing EU members, notably France and Germany, decided to stick to the general rule which prevented migrants from these new states from working until 2011. But we thought that it would be good for Britain if these folk could come and work here from 2004”.

This 'blame the Tories' mentality is illustrated neatly by David Blunkett:

[Blunkett] also accused the government of "burying their head in the sand" over the scale of Roma settlement in the UK.

It’s irrelevant whether they came here in 2004 or in 2011. It’s just a question of time, it doesn’t alter the fact we have lost control of our borders, which is completely in line with EU law. Losing control of borders is both Labour and Tory policy. (Incidentally one notes the more sympathetic treatment Blunkett gets over potentially inflammatory language in contrast with Farage on the issue of immigration).

Thus with the opening of our borders in a few weeks time to Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants (the EU seven year limit expires) we get small-minded Westminster squabbling trying desperately to hide the EU elephant in the room. But squabbling is all it is, nothing will be done, no action taken. Our impotency laid bare. Whether we as a country agree with mass immigration or multi-culturalism is not relevant, the crucial point is we weren’t asked.

But that politicians can get away with this is because our so-called fourth estate fails to scrutinise our Parliament properly. Nothing illustrates this better than Peter Oborne in the Telegraph who writes one of the most stupid bone-headed comments I've read in a long time. A man who has been privately educated, went to Cambridge and gloated over his “predictions” of the failure of the Euro in his "Guilty Men" pamphlet writes the following without any sense of irony: 

The decision will be enforced by anonymous officials and jurists. Without intending to, the European Union is turning into the enemy of democracy

Without intending to? How can such stupidity exist? From a paid journalist? One is inclined to bash the bloke over the head with a copy of the Treaty of Rome or better still batter him with a hardback copy of the Great Deception.

What the immigration question highlights though with great clarity is those at the coal face of everyday life have to suffer the consequences of decisions made by those with the money and means to make themselves immune from those very same consequences.

Our system is broken, it's in desperate need of repair.

The Ramifications Continue

From the Independent:

Senior lawyers at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) were handed detailed analysis of the police cover-up of the Hillsborough disaster 14 years ago but decided to take no action against any officers involved, the senior lawyer who led a private prosecution on behalf of the families says today.

In a withering attack on the criminal-justice system in The Independent, Alun Jones, QC says the Director of Public Prosecutions needs to explain why his office did "absolutely nothing" in 1998 after considering a line-by-line analysis of tampered reports by South Yorkshire police.

Successive Home Secretaries also did "absolutely nothing" when requested to open the Hillsborough case, including Jack Straw in 1998, who responded, as follows, to the accusations of amended statements by South Yorkshire Police:

"There are bound to be questions, however, about whether anything in this process might amount to misconduct of a criminal or disciplinary nature. Lord Justice Stuart-Smith considers it would not. It would in theory be possible to instigate a further police investigation to confirm this conclusively, but I think the outcome would be a foregone conclusion, and I do not consider that such an investigation should be instigated."

That Jack Straw did nothing in the face of the evidence, and now having been caught out, must surely account for this childish and cynical outburst in order to deflect attention away from himself.

What is clear, though, is the cover-up and corruption went right to the top.