Brits should reject EU Constitution

Fire of Liberty

Boris Johnson (Tory MP of Henley) has a great Opinion piece in The Daily Telegraph on the upcoming French vote on the EU Constitution and why the Brits should reject the EU Constitution next year. It's an excellent read by the editor of The London Spectator. Enjoy.

Also, read this Leader in The Daily Telegraph (registration required) on why the Brits and other Europeans should say no to the EU Cnstitution. Here's a sample:

Anyone who thinks that we exaggerate should read the text (available online at www.euabc.com). You need only look at the first dozen or so clauses to get a sense of what the constitution is about: "The Constitution shall have primacy over the law of the Member States" (Article I-6); "The Member States shall exercise their competence to the extent that the Union has not exercised, or has decided to cease exercising, its competence" (Article I-12). Then comes the list of areas where Brussels is to have jurisdiction: transport, energy, agriculture, fisheries, trade competition, asylum, immigration, social policy, employment law, foreign affairs, defence, space exploration, justice and home affairs. No wonder Tony Blair spent the election blathering about schools and hospitals: they're pretty much all he'll have left.

This point is not made flippantly. European integration was a malign if unremarked presence throughout the recent campaign. There it sat like Banquo's ghost, invisible to most voters, but shaking its gory locks at the party leaders, who knew that they had to draw up their manifestos within the parameters allowed by EU law. There was a spectacular illustration of this when Michael Howard pledged that a future Conservative government would set an upper limit for immigrants and a separate quota for refugees, only to be told that such a policy was not compatible with the EU's "Area of Freedom, Security and Justice" (1984-style nomenclature is very much a feature of Brussels life).

Equally, no party could promise to revive our countryside (because of the CAP), rescue our fishing communities (because of the CFP) or deregulate our labour markets (because of the social chapter). No party could take up this newspaper's proposal to replace VAT with a local sales tax.

I couldn't have written anything like this.