I've covered this before, but today a funny thing happened today in the Chamber (we’re down in Strasbourg worse luck, but more of that another time). For the first time ever I actually felt embarrassed about how I voted.
We were voting on a report giving the view of the Parliament on the Lisbon Treaty, and the various amendments to the report put all manner of options to us: delete it entirely, best thing since sliced bread, etc etc. The SNP’s position on the Treaty is that it is not the Treaty we want to see. It extends EU competence by cutting the amount of national vetoes; it brings into effect new ways of working we’re wary of; it also puts the Common Fisheries Policy onto the level of primary treaty law, so only “amendable “ by unanimity, which the Spanish amongst others would be unlikely to ever give. See how it looks a bit odd? In a document that does away with 40-odd national vetoes, it creates a new one over a policy area of significance to some of us (Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal) but zero interest to others (Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia) and entrenches a policy that has been an unmitigated disaster where we should rip it up and start again.
But that is for another day. Debate on the Lisbon Treaty is not over yet, though today in the European Parliament we started to sketch out the line we will draw under it. The report passed, by a big majority. But look at this lot above, taken on my own camera phone in the Chamber (which I’m hoping is not a breach of our rules).
We were voting on a report giving the view of the Parliament on the Lisbon Treaty, and the various amendments to the report put all manner of options to us: delete it entirely, best thing since sliced bread, etc etc. The SNP’s position on the Treaty is that it is not the Treaty we want to see. It extends EU competence by cutting the amount of national vetoes; it brings into effect new ways of working we’re wary of; it also puts the Common Fisheries Policy onto the level of primary treaty law, so only “amendable “ by unanimity, which the Spanish amongst others would be unlikely to ever give. See how it looks a bit odd? In a document that does away with 40-odd national vetoes, it creates a new one over a policy area of significance to some of us (Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal) but zero interest to others (Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia) and entrenches a policy that has been an unmitigated disaster where we should rip it up and start again.
But that is for another day. Debate on the Lisbon Treaty is not over yet, though today in the European Parliament we started to sketch out the line we will draw under it. The report passed, by a big majority. But look at this lot above, taken on my own camera phone in the Chamber (which I’m hoping is not a breach of our rules).
Yes, the United Kingdom Independence Party had come for a party. The yellow jumpers had a chicken on saying “chicken of a referendum?” or somesuch rubbish, they shouted in loud braying voices across the Chamber, were so busy holding their banners they forgot to vote umpteen times, and generally made fools of themselves. After the vote went through, one of the MEPs down the front got out from somewhere an EU flag, and cheerily waved it back at them. This caught the mood of the Chamber, and he got a near standing ovation with the Chamber almost as one laughing at the yellow jumpers.
So there you have it, a complex legal debate over an even more complex legal text reduced to goodies and baddies.
I explained above that the SNP (and me personally) spent weeks ploughing through this text, we have carefully looked at it from all angles and we do not think it is the way to go. The Labour UK government promised a referendum on the Constitution, which the Lisbon Treaty replaces, and given this text does pretty well the same we want to see a referendum on this as well.
So I voted with the baddies, and it irritates me more than I can say just how bad their impact on the debate actually is. Their antics make it pretty well impossible to partly disagree; everything is either all good or all bad. Of course, the anti-europeans do not care, the sillier they, and the whole process look the better. But that leaves those of us trying to do a decent shift and stand up for what we believe in with an almost impossible shift. And in the saddest irony of all, all the folk in England who voted for them will never see just how futile they really are, and just what damage they actually do to any sceptical argument. If anything they, jumpers and all (paid for by your tax euros incidentally), will get tomorrow’s headlines and be able to pretend they achieved something. Funny old game.
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