financeguy
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EU referendum: no means no : June 2008 : Daniel Hannan : Politics : Telegraph Blogs
They really don’t get it, these Eurocrats. I’ve just watched Margot Wallström, the Commission Vice-President, trying to explain away the results. It was important, she said, to work out what the Irish people had really been voting against.
Let me help you there, Margot. My guess is that they were voting against the Lisbon Treaty. The giveaway was the ballot paper, which asked whether people agreed to amend the Irish constitution so as to, you know, approve the Lisbon Treaty.
Now I don’t want to pick on Margot who, as I’ve mentioned before, I rather like. She’s certainly improved since the days when she used to warn that “No” voters would trigger a second Holocaust. (Yup, she really said that: see here for the full quotation.) Having just come back from a joyful production of The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe – to say nothing of picking up my winnings from Paddy Power – I am in the mood to be generous.
But how much longer can Euro-Commissioners keep pretending that people have misunderstood the question? When the French voted “No”, it was argued that they were really voting against Chirac. When the Dutch voted “No”, it was claimed that they were really voting against Turkish accession. Do try and get it through your skulls, chaps, that people are voting against the proposition actually before them. They’ve had enough of “ever-closer union”. They’ve had enough of directives and regulations. They’ve had enough of being pushed around.
And – I’m sorry to have to say this, Margot – they’ve had enough of you. They’ve had enough of the EU’s politburo, with its lies and its arrogance, its corrupt expenses system, its disdain for democracy, its contempt for its own rules.