6-09-08, 9:20 am

Original source: Morning Star

No Vote for Us

The people of Ireland go to the polls this week to vote on the acceptance or otherwise of the European Union's Lisbon Treaty in a referendum required by the country's constitution.

The people of Britain, in stark contrast, do not.

Our Prime Minister has decreed, in all his magisterial wisdom, that the Lisbon Treaty is substantially different from the abortive EU constitution, which was rejected by several countries and thus foundered in 2005.

In this judgment, Gordon Brown has not only misrepresented the nature of the treaty, he has committed the biggest electoral fiddle since the saga of George W Bush's 'hanging chads' in the last US presidential elections.

In almost every detail, the Lisbon Treaty parrots the failed constitution and it is almost certain that, given referendums across Europe, it would have been rejected as a transparent attempt to foist the constitution in another guise onto electorates that, quite rightly, are reluctant to hand over their country's sovereignty, and thus huge chunks of their democratic rights, to the Brussels monolith.

Unsurprisingly, the EU-fixated governments of Europe have backed away from any exercise in direct democracy that they are certain that they can't win.

Denmark had been planning to run a referendum, but Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen insisted, like Mr Brown, that it would not be necessary to have a vote on the treaty because 'no transfer of sovereignty was involved.'

But tell that to the German labor movement, which found out in the recent Ruffert judgment of the EU court that the state of Lower Saxony could not insist that German rates of pay were available to the staff of visiting Polish contractors, despite union agreements.

Or the Irish Ferries workers who were sacked because they could be replaced by Latvian workers who were not covered by Irish pay agreements.

And don't try and go on strike if this treaty becomes law, because, if your action breaches big business's freedom to exploit you as it sees fit, you could well find that your right to strike is curtailed by the European Court of Justice which, in several recent cases, has made clear that the EU rights given to bosses override rights that you hold under domestic law.

And if that lot isn't a breach of sovereignty, we really don't know what is.

But new Labour is following its normal course of insisting that black is white and assuming that it will get away with it.

As millionaire Tory backer Stuart Wheeler, who is taking the government to court this week over its refusal to hold a referendum, said: 'Leaders across Europe, including Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the author of the EU constitution, have acknowledged, indeed almost gloated about the fact, that the treaty is the constitution in all but name.'

It is rare, if not entirely unprecedented, for this newspaper to wish Tory millionaires anything but prolonged and agonizing failure but, in this case, all that can be said is that it is good to see something positive from one of his ilk – while reminding him who actually took us into Europe in the first place – it certainly wasn't a Labour government.

And we must extend our greetings to all the Irish voters who hold in their hands the power to stop this pernicious and fraudulent treaty dead in its tracks and hope that their No campaign will prevail.

They, and we, would do well to note who benefits from this bosses' Europe and to act accordingly.

From Morning Star