Nov 4
Letter to America
Letter to America
Guest post: Tony Sharp
If President Obama and Hillary Clinton are to be believed, America feels concern that a UK political party and some of its politicians appear unwilling to accept wholesale the cosy consensus that is membership of the European Union (EU).
America we are told (well, the President and Mrs Clinton at any rate) supports a strong and united Europe. Fair enough. But in encouraging that strong and united Europe, America seems perfectly comfortable in expecting EU member states, such as Britain, to abandon core democratic principles and be subsumed into a political entity of a type no American politician would want or dare recommend to his or her own people.
It should not be a surprise that many Britons feel justified in thinking that President Obama and Mrs Clinton are being rather hypocritical in pushing for a political landscape in Europe of a type the American people would never tolerate being imposed on the US.
But perhaps the problem is President Obama and Mrs Clinton (and any American who shares their view) just don’t get why many Britons oppose their vision of Britain within the EU. So by way of a quick but by no means exhaustive illustration, here are some questions for Americans to consider:
Q. How would you feel about 80% of Federal Law in the US being made by an unelected commission sitting in Mexico City and rubber stamped by representatives drawn from Canada and all South American countries, elected in polls where only about 30% of people vote?
Q. How would you like to see American court cases decided in the Supreme Court, and then sit by powerless as legally binding appeals are made to an Americas Court of Justice sitting in Caracas, made up of judges from Bolivia, Chile, El Salvador and Honduras?
Q. How would you like to pay billions of US tax dollars into an American Union pot each year, and have no control over the money as unelected officials (whose book keeping is so poor their accounts have not been signed off for over 13 years) give you back only a fraction of that sum, the rest being spent on projects in other countries around South America, with huge sums going missing through fraud?
Q. How would you like unelected bureaucrats from Canada, Brazil and Argentina imposing fines on you because the way you distribute the allowance the American Union gives you (and insists you should be grateful for) does not fit with their rules and regulations?
Q. How would you like to have citizens of foreign countries having unlimited access to move to the US to live, work and claim benefits in your towns and cities without any right to refuse them at your border and without requiring them to have a visa, sponsorship or even a job to go to?
Q. How would you like American foreign policy to be decided for you by other countries who make up an American Union, with America’s interests being represented on the world stage, perhaps even in the UN, by your official American Union ‘foreign minister’ who you’ve never voted for and hails from Paraguay?
Q. How would you like the flag of an alien entity to be flown alongside the stars and stripes from your public buildings?
Maybe when put in this context, President Obama and Mrs Clinton and other American citizens would understand why such a large proportion of a proud and independent people don’t like it.
British people are not alone in resenting this subversion of democracy. Whenever the idea of extended EU power and control over member states has been put to a democratic vote (such as in France and the Netherlands - and Ireland too, until she was told to vote again and give the ‘right’ answer) the people have rejected it. To get around this the EU changed the rules of the game to deny people a say.
Somehow I suspect most Americans wouldn’t like it happening to them in the Land of the Free. So why should Britain be pressured to accept it by the Obama White House?
This analysis begs one final question. Does the Democrat White House actually believe in democracy? I think I know what most people would say in response to that.
