Our attention lately has necessarily been focused on Cameron's long-promised & as-yet-undelivered EU referendum speech. Meanwhile, however, a high-level group - tasked by EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes with looking at media freedom and pluralism across the EU - has argued that the “insufficient Europeanisation of national politics” risks undermining democracy, and that both the EU institutions and member states ought to “promote increased media coverage of EU affairs”...
See: http://ec.europa.eu/info...lg/hlg_final_report.pdf
Especially its Section 5.2 on pages 39 & 40.

With such thinking as this gaining ground in the EU, as it continues its relentless integrationalist process towards ever closer union, the need to escape from the EU's madness becomes daily more urgent.

Watchet

In fact, Neelie Kroes is right. How can the europarliament elections make any claim to democratic legitimacy while they are in fact merely popularity contests between national parties. Tories stand as tories, they never even mention what deals they will be doing with other parties in the EP or what the policies of the grouping are. The papers only see it through the prism of national politics. The people only vote their protest vote at euro polls anyway. If there were any chance at all of a future as a single euro entity that is not how things would happen. So, dangerous as it may be, and futile though the EP is, Kroes is not incorrect. Wrong, wrong as all hell, but not incorrect.

From the telegraph






Never mind Im sure we can rely on Dave Cameron negotiating an opt out for us


http://blogs.telegraph.c...romotes-european-values/

Edited by user 22 January 2013 17:50:49(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

"If Cameron comes up with a credible referendum promise, people who are committed to decoupling from EU political integration will most probably see the Conservatives as their best hope. Support for UKIP at the general election will wither on the vine. "

- Little chance of the former. Most commenting readers of the Mail and Express who don't reveal UKIP sympathies regard Cameron as untrustworthy on Europe.

People I know who are essentially non-political regard Cameron as false and untrustworthy period. It doesn't take very much political nous to see promises made for 2018/9 at the earliest as jam tomorrow, particularly if Cameron looks set not to win the 2015 general election.

There is a general Conservative charm offensive starting at the moment; the party is used to a two year run-in for a general election. One of last year's hot potatoes, road pricing, has definitely been put out of sight, but work goes on to introduce it for lorries UK wide. Procurement documents for the Dartford Crossing tolls specify 'scalability', which means the ability to be adapted to larger tolling projects. Great news for the European Commission that wants road pricing for all vehicles on all roads after 2015 to aid the stricken Galileo project.

The EU (or at least its stooge Sir Roger Carr of the CBI) seems to want us to think that the euro problems have calmed down, but there are several dark horses that could make the EU unpopular and push up the UKIP vote. I am thinking of an influx of Rumanians and Bulgarians, HS2, power cuts, the imposition of wind turbines and smart meters towards renewables obligations. And that's just the immediate ones with some EU connection.

Whilst I agree with you about Article 50 etc, how would you sell it to those people who are more concerned with "Celebrity Ice Skating" or whatever it is called? People are bored enough with politics as it is and it would be difficult to get them more interested in Article 50 than in what the mass media says to them. Don't forget the vast majority of people only get their news from the likes of the BBC who are still trusted!!

The truth of the matter is that, in a five-year campaign, the mass of people only come into it at the last stage ... the last six months of so with increasing intensity. Before that, the job is to get the intellectual base right, and then build agreement amongst the activists as to the correct strategy to adopt.

I work on the basic premise that good ideas will spread under their own steam, spreading like a virus, so that you rely on the self-propagating power of the idea. A few months ago, for instance, it seemed as if no one had ever heard of Art 50 - very few people were talking about it. Now it is part of the debate.

Next point, we take on the "magic wand" option of an instant repeal of the ECA. That is going to be less easy, as we are undoing ideas, rather than creating them, and the hard core are going to stick to the last to their fantasy.

Then we have to look in detail at euro-FUD - actual and expected - and draw up counters for people to use. If you like, we are in a re-armament stage, fashioning our weapons and devising our strategy. But the hardest part of the battle is going to be to get our own "side" to abandon ideas that are certain losers, and think strategically. There, I am not at all hopeful.

Cameron was taken on as a token eurosceptic. He promised to leave the EP grouping they were in, and botched it. He quietly ditched the fisheries Green Paper. He excluded members of BOO from front bench positions. He showed every sign of walking the Tory EU tightrope.

He made a serious mistake by calling a party the rank and file were not hostile to and probably voted for in the Euro elections, "fruitcakes and loonies". It would have been wiser to ignore them or damn them with faint praise.

He and Hague badly misjudged the LT business and overplayed the Cast Iron Promise. That was Cameron's most serious mistake. It has given him the Cast Iron tag and robs his current strategy of any possibility of acceptance.

They went on to the Referendum Lock, which strained credulity and the elastic limits of bullshit.

Now Cameron is a liability, they can't get rid of him and he's costing them.

But really, this is not so much to do with Cameron as the Conservative Party having to state its position with regard to the EU when their position has always been calculated dishonesty.



This is too soon for a serious offensive and most of this has been in support of, or hoping to influence, Cameron's speech. That speech is another botch in the making.

I agree that some of the deciding factors in this will be external to the UK and probably completely blind side.