John Redwood writes -
Very often people write in to ask what is the point of all these words? The point is to help and hasten change for the better. Sometimes that happens.
The Chancellor is now more exercised about dear and scarce energy, as we have discussed here.
The regulatory authorities have recently announced a relaxation of the ever tougher cash and capital rules for the time being, to allow more money to be lent to the private sector. Bank balance sheets are much stronger than in 2008. The banks need permission to make a bigger contribution to recovery, and now seem to be getting some of what is needed.
The Prime Minister is now talking of the need for a new relationship with the EU. I regard this as good progress. It is not yet coupled with the referendum many want, nor is there an immediate agenda for talks with the EU over how that might develop. It is however significant that for the first time since Margatet Thatcher got the rebate on our contributions, the UK is formulating requirements for us which will be very different from the rules and requirements on Euro zone countries. The Euro is bound to force change. The UK needs to be clear we wish to move in the opposite direction to the centralisers out to create a political as well as monetary union. Mrs May has agreed to opt us out of all the criminal justice measures, reflecting MP pressure to do just that.
The fresh start group of MPs has worked with the Foreign Office on the wide range of powers currently held by the EU which do not suit many of us in the UK. There are over 100 Conservative MPs now likely to vote for a referendum, and far more who agree we need a new relationship with the EU which would look very different to the current impositions of full membership. Many also now accept across the political spectrum that the UK cannnot join the Euro, nor the emerging political union. That should force a rethink. Over the weeks ahead I will set out how the Uk might play its hand from here, to move to a relationship based on trade and political co-operation, instead of one based on being part of the emerging governemnt of a centralised Europe.
TAP - Is there an election in the offing? It's over half way through this Parliament. If I was a Conservative strategist I would be filling the airwaves with talk of renegotiation, change of heart, withdrawal, referendum, anything in fact to build up hopes of an independent Britain. UKIP will wipe the floor with the C's otherwise. Will any of these promises come to fruition? Of course not. Unless steps are actually taken, you can be sure the rest is window dressing. Unless Cameron goes and is replaced with a Redwood, he will play the game of false promises all over again. A Mossad agent is always a Mossad agent.
Hitchens
EXTRACT -
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2220782/Out-Europe-No-Daves-just-leading-garden-path.html#ixzz29zThobz6
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TAP - Is there an election in the offing? It's over half way through this Parliament. If I was a Conservative strategist I would be filling the airwaves with talk of renegotiation, change of heart, withdrawal, referendum, anything in fact to build up hopes of an independent Britain. UKIP will wipe the floor with the C's otherwise. Will any of these promises come to fruition? Of course not. Unless steps are actually taken, you can be sure the rest is window dressing. Unless Cameron goes and is replaced with a Redwood, he will play the game of false promises all over again. A Mossad agent is always a Mossad agent.
Hitchens
EXTRACT -
Out of Europe? No, Dave's just leading us up the garden path
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The Tory Party will not take this country out of the EU. They are playing a cruel game by pretending that they might.
As our Prime Minister, Mr Slippery, told a Brazilian newspaper only the other day: ‘I believe that Britain should be in the EU.’
He says something like this every few months. On July 19 he also said, quite clearly: ‘I don’t think we should leave the EU.’ For once, nobody could accuse him of keeping his real views a secret.
Mr Slippery: David Cameron will not take this country out of the EU
True, he hides his shameful love of Brussels behind a wall of piffle about access to the single market. Any fool knows that we would keep this access if we left, and pay less for it than we do now. Why would the EU stop selling us its goods?
Even so, he loves to promise referendums, like the ‘cast-iron’ guarantee of a vote on the Lisbon Treaty. Cast-iron, as sensible people know, is a brittle material, easily broken by unprincipled persons.
But hardly any of the referendums promised by British leaders over the past few decades ever seem to happen. The Scots can have them. The Welsh can have them. Northern Ireland can have them (and you haven’t heard the last of that).
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But somehow or other, the British people as a whole get referendums tomorrow, but not today.
Not that I care much. I promise you that if we ever do get another vote on the EU, most of you will be scared and bamboozled into voting to stay in, as happened in 1975.
Then there’s the strange delusion that we can somehow win back lost powers from the EU. This is a straightforward lie.
With the one startling exception of the law and justice changes, which we were given special permission to exit at Lisbon – an offer which the Coalition isn’t all that keen to take up – the EU never gives back anything it takes away. That is what ‘ever-closer union’ means. It means ever-closer union. It’s always seemed quite clear to me.
As Roy Jenkins, who knew more about the EU than any other British politician, said back in 1999: ‘There are only two coherent British attitudes to Europe. One is to participate fully, and to endeavour to exercise as much influence and gain as much benefit as possible from the inside.
‘The other is to recognise that Britain’s history, national psychology and political culture may be such that we can never be anything but a foot-dragging and constantly complaining member, and that it would be better, and would certainly produce less friction, to accept this and to move towards an orderly, and if possible, reasonably amicable separation.’
This is quite right. Threats to leave ‘if’ the EU doesn’t make concessions (which it won’t make) are posturing for a gullible domestic audience.
So I think Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, is being even more cynical than his chief by ‘letting it be known’ that he would vote to leave the EU in a referendum.
Point one: there is no referendum in which he can vote. Point two: Mr Gove has never actually said this in public, but slipped it into the open through the weird semaphore system politicians use to advance their careers and sniff the air for danger. If pressed, he can say he was misunderstood, or simply deny it.
I challenge him to make a televised speech in which he declares that he thinks we should leave.
As he knows, if he dared to say this in public he would be destroyed for ever within a few months, as Margaret Thatcher was destroyed as soon as she finally woke up to what the EU really is.
The fact that his off-the-record rebellion has not been met with an off-the-record rebuke tells you that nobody in the Cabinet takes it seriously.
Nor should you. Mr Slippery is trying to save his flank from attack by the dogged Dad’s Army that is UKIP. Mr Gove increasingly fancies Mr Slippery’s job. That is all.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2220782/Out-Europe-No-Daves-just-leading-garden-path.html#ixzz29zThobz6
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