PrintAugust 2, 2007
Gordon Brown, Blairite?
Tony Blair's successor as British prime minister has now signaled very clearly that he intends to follow Blair's dual foreign policy: First, pursue the alliance with America in the war on terror, and at the same time surrender more British sovereignty to the European Union.
Gordon Brown just praised President Bush for his vigorous actions against the terror threat. Fox News reported that:
"the new British leader said the world is indebted to the United States for taking the lead in the fight against terrorism. Brown said he would use his visit to strengthen what Britain considers its 'most important bilateral relationship'
"London and Washington are focused on 'the biggest single and immediate challenge the world has to defeat: global terrorism,' Brown told reporters traveling with him."
That is positive news for the Atlantic alliance, which has been in deep trouble because of the past Franco-German effort to drive a wedge between America and Britain under Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, surely the most treacherous "allies" America has ever had.
The British PM just signalled that he would not walk out on the alliance with America. A politician's words are not deeds, and it is still possible that Brown will order a British retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan, as his own left wing has been madly urging him to do. But it is less likely.
Yet as Eureferendum points out, Brown is promoting the same lie (let's be frank) that Tony Blair left office with: Namely, that Britain isn't really surrendering sovereignty to Paris and Berlin in executive, foreign and military affairs. In fact, the EU elite has now re-packaged the Glorious European Constitution, which voters defeated in France and the Netherlands, and called it something else. Coca Cola is now the Un-Cola, but the ingredients are the same. That act of deception in plain light of day, with various politicians and Eurocrats actually celebrating how well they are lying, is a clear lesson in how the EU works. Democratic legitimacy is their last worry. Only centralized control drives their actions. And they get away with it.
This is astonishing by American political standards, since the US actually has a Constitution that is a constitution: That is, it is a set of legislative ground rules that, once adopted, are difficult to change. It is deliberately simple, understandable, and brief. Courts of law constantly refer to it in making their decisions.
That's not true for most of the world (except for Switzerland and Japan, perhaps). In Europe, constitutions are made to be broken or changed, as the French do every few decades. Britain has no constitution as Americans understand it. Rather, the "British Constitution" is a set of historical decisions that together provide broad guidance. But the prime minister of a majority party is so powerful in practice that he or she could literally sell out the nation's sovereignty, and if no one really objects, simply get away with it. Concerted national suicide is a practical possibility, because there are no inviolable ground rules to prevent it.
That is also why Gordon Brown and Tony Blair can practice a self-contradictory foreign policy. All Brown has to do is to define the EU Constitution as a "treaty". Treaties require no wide public consent, and perhaps not even a Parliamentary vote. So Mr. Brown is hoping to get away with daylight robbery, by American standards.
There is a movement afoot to require a referendum on the EU Un-Constitution, but no one knows if it will succeed. Chances are that the Brits will vote the fake Constitution down once they slough off their habitual intellectual torpor and are asked to actually pay attention to what's going on. (Don't ask). So the Labour strategy is to avoid a referendum at all.
Given the total fuzziness of the British constitutional system, Gordon Brown could even argue that none of it means anything at all. After all, even five or ten years from now, when the British military is slated to become part of the EU Army and British foreign policy becomes subordinate to the EU Foreign Ministry, and all the bureaucracies are thoroughly integrated, it would still be possible, in theory, for a British PM to pronounce EU integration dead and buried. After all, Britain never agreed to change its Constitution... it just signed a treaty. It could walk away, any time it wants to.
So if you still think Europolitics are a model for America, just ponder those facts.
James Lewis blogs at http://www.dangeroustimes.wordpress.com
