How the UK Government cheated on Brexit
The EU States are bigger cheats on money and sovereignty! How to get out of the Mess!
Hold on to your hats! When you deal with cheats you have to keep a clear head to observe each step. You need to watch how you are being tricked. At stake is a multi-trillion euro prize of who controls the EU. And Sovereignty. Do the British now have their sovereignty back? Do the Europeans have their own sovereignty?
First follow the money. Then check for lost sovereignty. Who is sovereign?
All the money is from your pockets. Wonder why Europe is in economic decline? A fair and just society will encourage profitable commerce and a contented population. Something is seriously wrong today. And the problem lies deep down in the cheating mentality that now reigns across the European Union on all sides.
Who is to blame? Short answer: crooks. Or if I am a little kinder, deceivers and dishonest politicians.
First question: Whose money is it anyway? The EU is funded from public money and taxes. Some EU money comes from trade and tariffs, although the EU today is a little confused about whether it should have any. So any major decision involves both a massive amount of money and political in-fighting. Wars destroy inter-European trade. Peace propels it. Who are the peace-makers?
British Constitutional Law
Let’s start on firm ground. The public has to acquiesce to any new political arrangement. The European Community is designed to ‘make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.’
The British did give maximum consent to join the European Communities. In 1975, the UK referendum returned an overwhelming vote in favor of membership. The rapid increase in the economy and in trade indicated it was a positive decision. The public has spoken in favor of peace and retaining commercial trade with the Communities as the best framework.
What next? If the Community is so positive, it should be protected, its patrimony not stolen, nor its wealth squandered away by cheaters.
The Referendum is now established as a means to confirm popular approval for a constitutional and governmental arrangement involving the Communities. According to British legal principles the referendum is now an integral part of the constitution. The voice of the people is required for such momentous decisions. Thus legally only a further referendum can authorise any radical change to the Community relationship or abolish it. The political and legal framework cannot be changed by an unrepresentative section of the public or by an individual such as a prime minister meeting in private with other leaders.
A fair, well-organised referendum is the highest form of democracy. It is the expression of a people who are ‘free to choose’ as it says in the great charter of the European Community. These principles also underpin the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, recognized by all European States.
It is a firm principle of international law. It reflects what the French constitution says about the referendum and sovereignty.
Article 3 French Constitution 5th Republic
National sovereignty belongs to the people, which shall exercise this sovereignty through its representatives and by means of referendums.
No section of the people, nor any individual, may attribute to themselves or himself the exercise thereof.
Sovereignty belongs to the People
The referendum actually returns the constitution to the polity that existed way back before the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain. (The Anglo-Saxons had a top-down, autocratic system of war-lordship. They absorbed these Common Law principles later).
A referendum system is recorded in ancient British law. Universal justice is constructed on three interconnected floors that interlock the interests of the nation, the rulers and the individual:
a legislative level of representatives who can make law;
a referendum that confirms law for the whole country, and
a court of justice with a jury that decides if an individual or group is being mal-treated by this law of the majority, or by the ruling representatives.
Free choice assures that dishonest practice is eliminated.
These are general principles of good government: it should involve the consent of the whole country; it should be established by law after a debate in parliament; and the individual or groups should be protected by a Court of Law where the highest authority is a Jury. An alternative would be an all-wise ruler who never makes mistakes, but I haven’t found an historical example of this.
So with these principles in mind, let us examine Britain’s relation to the European Communities.
UK’s entry into the European community was first decided by Parliament and confirmed by a strong 67% majority in a referendum in 1975. It was not overturned by any subsequent Court action. That year Ireland voted 83 % in favor of membership, Denmark 63%.
Brussels Rabbit Trick
What happened next? Leaders in Brussels pulled a rabid rabbit out of a hat. In 1986 they changed the very nature of (a) the Communities and (b) how it was to be governed. Although the early treaties require elections to the Assembly and the Committees, these were blocked by Continental leaders. Both the British and Continental ‘leaders’ are responsible for surrendering public rights. This negative turn of events encouraged closed-door, bureaucratic committees and no oversight for fair elections of one person, one vote as required by law.
The Single European Act of 1986 marked a step-change away from democratic, public control towards secretive government-led bodies. Closed door political entities were added. None of the elections in the previous treaties were carried out. The treaty requirement for open government was ignored — as if openness was all right for small fry like parish councils but not for Big Fish of the new power elite.
Of course no referendums were allowed. It was a Diktat of a text from Brussels. ‘Single’ in the title meant it could not be amended by parliaments. However when a large Danish group opposed it and voted saying the text should be revised, the government was forced to hold an ‘informal’ referendum that they could ignore if it went wrong. The Irish said they needed a referendum in spite of the political smoke and haze to stop it.
SEA was a failure for the democratic path of the treaties. It introduced the antidemocratic trick that the constitution of Europe could changed without recourse to the people. The UK Conservatives were among those who sold out. They were given gilded promises of a Single Market for the future to cover rusting democracy. Fool’s gold without democratic accountability leads to economic decline and autocracy. Autocracy undermines free trade.
It got worse. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty with its monetary innovations did not come under any UK referendum scrutiny. The result was a forgone conclusion. The British public’s view was already clear. It spelt doom.
Maastricht further deformed the Community structure, adding closed bureaucratic ‘pillars’ to an opaque structure. It made an inflationary currency mandatory. Other innovations raised red warnings. Defiance of basic principles of justice and democracy, transparency and accountability, makes economic decline a sure bet.
The subsequent treaties of Amsterdam, Nice culminated with the Constitutional Treaty of 2004. This was top-to-bottom change. The public wanted its voice heard. Referendums were then declared necessary in nearly all States.
Was the public mesmerised and befuddled by the elite’s impressively secret meetings, the black limousines, police motorcycles and helicopter surveillance as the elite entered their conclaves followed by pursuing, attentive press? Is the public impressed at their powers when the European Council announces the president (speaker) of the European Parliament before the Parliament has had a chance to vote?
The public understands that an open democracy works better for the economy than secret senates and podium pronouncements. The public do not want to see their leaders emerge from conclave with the new laws in their hot hands for them. They do not want government by press release. They want the television cameras to record the debates between leaders as laid out in the treaties and the Charter.
And the new Constitutional Treaty? Horror of Horrors! France voted 55% No, the Netherlands 61% No. All the remaining referendums were cancelled because Czech, Danes, Irish, Poles, Portuguese and the UK looked like they were heading for an even bigger No.
The Second Rabbit
Was the political elite embarrassed? Not one bit. The Constitutional Treaty sank like a lead Zeppelin. No matter! The elite revisers said they could inflate anything. What was needed, they said, was to take all the failed treaty Articles and write them into the existing treaty.
It is shocking even today to realise what despicable depths of betrayal of European democracy and justice the politicians sank to to steal authority from the people.
They merely took individual Articles of a totally rejected treaty and distributed them as amendments to the previous Nice Treaty as a list. They did not even fit the amendments into comprehensive sentences.
It became the Lisbon Treaty. It was the same despised treaty the public had roundly rejected. The elite leaders also took the opportunity to add a few more power-grifting Articles.
How did they get away with it? They refused to allow any referendums on treaties — far too dangerous. But they didn’t reckon with the Irish. Their constitution required a referendum on constitutional change. The Irish rejected the Lisbon Treaty as they were prepared to do so for the Constitutional Treaty. They were told to think again and vote again the right way! Is that how Europeans will build a democratic basis for trust and prosperity? Wouldn’t the same politician condemn foreigners for doing the same double-dealing?
Was there a failure of the original Community treaties? No. The key document of the founding Treaty of Paris, 1951, contained the Charter of the Community. It provided means for all citizens and associations to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg against such crimes. But it was never sent by the French Foreign Ministry with the other sections of the treaty to be made into law by the national governments.
This failure needs to be remedied. The consequences are dire. It means that leaders meeting in private can decide for themselves what is right. They think they are sovereign.
The Rabbit is Dead!
For any normal person, it is fraudulent and criminal practice
to take publicly rejected Articles from the Constitutional Treaty and put the same duff articles into the Lisbon Treaty,
for politicians to oppose the public so vehemently when they reject their works in referendums, that they decide to ban all future referendums, (thus they refuse public accountability),
for politicians to make make sure there would be no need for referendums ever again by making the Lisbon Treaty amendable by their vote at their will behind closed doors. (Thus the European population is held hostage in a legal cage of their making).
In legal reality the Articles are dead. They cannot be used. Treaty writers must start again or better put the democratic principles of the very first treaties into effect. This logic does not apply apparently to many in the self-selecting elite. Human Rights law and Fundamental Freedoms will eventually opine differently. A Court awaits.
Schuman and the Founding Fathers ensured that the Charter of the Community provides a link so that such criminal abuse can be examined in public in the Court of Human Rights. The French Foreign Ministry has begun — 70 years late — to send legal copies of the Charter to Member States.
Did the British leave legally?
What about the British? Didn’t they have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty?
No they didn’t.
The Conservative government of David Cameron promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty because the previous Labour government of Tony Blair had failed to have the referendum he had twice promised on the Constitutional Treaty.
Mr Cameron said:
‘Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations.’
He didn’t.
He did another trick. This time it was with a dead rabbit. Sure, the British had a referendum in 2016. But it wasn’t on any treaty. It was on a treaty article that did not exist in law. That’s like getting people to try to claim on an insurance contract they haven’t signed. In fact an insurance contract they said they would never sign up to or pay for. Is it surprising that they got diddled?
The referendum of 23 June 2016 is based on Article 50 of a treaty that the British never agreed to. British public opinion was solidly against both the Constitutional and the Lisbon treaties. French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, whose team produced the Constitutional Treaty, acknowledged that on both treaties and especially Lisbon:
{I}n Britain … a referendum would obviously lead to a ‘No’ vote.
The title of his article in the Independent of 30 October 2007 was:
The EU {Lisbon} Treaty is the same as the Constitution
And France voted against it. Not only the British but nearly all the people who were free to do so in Europe were against the original and the regurgitated treaty. You cannot hold a referendum on the basis of a treaty article that the people not only did not agree to but rejected across Europe.
No people voted on the Lisbon Treaty except the Irish. They voted No. After they ‘inducements’ they voted Yes. That outcome is highly dubious.
Governments wanted it passed. They had the means. All prime ministers sitting in the European Council had majorities in parliament. The Lisbon Treaty was passed only by parliaments under extreme pressure. Some passed it without even reading it. It was just a list of amendments. The European Parliament refused to produced a comprehendible treaty with the articles in order and proper sentences and paragraphs. No one could make any sense of what was passed because a list of amendments was incomprehensible.
Giscard wrote: ‘It is unpenetrable for the public. … Why? Above all, to head off any threat of referenda.’
So if the Lisbon Treaty does not have any support of the people, what does? Certainly not Article 50 that was the basis for the British referendum. The Lisbon Treaty’s Article 50 is reproduced word for word from Article 59 of the totally rejected Constitutional Treaty. Thus Article 50 was rejected by all. Anything based on it is null and void.
No matter how you slice it, the British referendum is invalid. You cannot base a legal conclusion — like leaving an economic community — on an article that the British has never voted for. That is like being prosecuted according to a law that has been declared null and void by the High Court. The British and any other European people cannot and should not conform to a law that they have decisively rejected in referendums.
What do these colluding governments tell us? ‘I’ve stolen your wallet (and all your wealth). Get over it. No law applies to me.’
The public needs to tell them:
‘Your day in Court is coming!’