WHY SHOULD THE AGED EAGLE STRETCH ITS WINGS? (via Mike Daley):

While we liberate Iraq, Europe is busy planning to enslave us (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 03/04/2003, Daily Telegraph)

By the time the Iraqi crisis is over, it may already be too late for the Government to stop a political disaster in Europe. The European Union's first constitution will be a done deal, and, from what we have seen of the text so far, it will usher in a new order that overturns the governing basis of British parliamentary democracy for ever.

The EU will no longer be a treaty organisation in which member states agree to lend power to Brussels for certain purposes, on the understanding that they can take it back again. The EU itself will become the fount of power, with its own legal personality, delegating functions back to Britain. Draft Article 9 puts Brussels at the top of the pyramid. "The Constitution will have primacy over the law of Member States," it says.

The new order may also be irreversible. Article 46 stipulates that the terms of secession from the EU must be agreed by two thirds of the member states. In other words, one third can impose intolerable conditions [report, 3 April].

A number of fresh articles trickled out two weeks ago, just as the Iraq conflict was erupting, to create what amounts to an EU interior and justice ministry, known as Eurojust, in charge of a proto-FBI - Europol - with the power to launch raids across the EU [report, 19 March]. An EU attorney-general will be able to prosecute "cross-border crime" in British courts, a catch-all term that gives Brussels wider jurisdiction than the US Justice Department currently enjoys after 200 years of encroachment on state power.

Under a new notion called "shared competence", Brussels takes charge of virtually all areas of national life. Unless the EU chooses to waive its primacy, Westminster will be prohibited from legislating in public health, social policy, transport, justice, agriculture, energy, economic and social cohesion, the environment, internal and external trade, and consumer protection.

The EU will have the power to "co-ordinate the economic policies of the member states" and - showing some chutzpah given what happened over Iraq - "define and implement a common foreign and security policy, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy". [...]

Tony Blair was slow to see the threat. Downing Street at first dismissed the convention as a talking shop, but woke up when the French, Spanish, German and Italian governments gave it irresistible authority by appointing to it their foreign or deputy prime ministers.

The Government then fell back to a second self-deception, imagining that France and Spain would join Britain in blocking any major assault on national prerogatives. Peter Hain, Downing Street's man on the forum, confidently told reporters that the East Europeans would not give away freedoms so recently wrested from the Soviet Union.

None of this has happened. France has abandoned Britain, and her own historical attachment to a Europe where national capitals always have the whip hand over Brussels. They seem to be accepting federalism as the price of relaunching the broken Franco-German axis. As for the Spanish, they are silent.

So are the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and others, who still have a gun pointed to their head. They know that Jacques Chirac could still try to sabotage their admission next year by calling a referendum in France. Those on the convention will soon become MEPs or Eurocrats themselves, and their salaries will jump by as much as 12 times, which concentrates the mind.

It is almost pitiful to read through the long list of amendments put up by Mr Hain. Britain is alone, supported by just a handful of lonely Euro-sceptics.

Ash-Wednesday (T S Eliot)

I
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 3, 2003 8:11 PM