Biased BBC contributor Alan asks..” David Owen says we should leave the EU if it finally decides to integrate politically and financially…..but did the high fliers of the BBC’s top political programme notice?
The Today programme quizzed David Owen but failed to draw out the essential facts about his real views on European integration….although he did in fact say quietly about staying in the EU…‘personally I wouldn’t do that’……but Naughty completely ignored that rather important revelation……or didn’t realise its significance…which isn’t good for an exalted and revered political reporter.
David Owen has always been pro European but anti-federal Europe…..wanting a single market without a single government. His recent thinking on a referendum seems muddled and confusing to me…neither one nor the other….the questions he offers up for a referendum are vague and open to interpretation and later evasion and reinterpretation….
1. Do you want the UK to be part of the single market in a wider European Community? Yes/No
2. Do you want the UK to remain in the European Union, keeping open the option of joining the more integrated eurozone? Yes/No
Surely you could join the EU at anytime regardless of your current status within or without Europe….as he says non-EU member Turkey could join….so there is no need to remain in the EU solely to ‘keep a foot in the door’ for future integration….as it would always be open anyway.
The New Statesman certainly seems to think he is proposing closer ties to Europe.
Owen is very keen for Turkey to join the EU….however he reveals this……
‘The Agreement on the European Economic Area, which entered into force on 1 January 1994, covers a single market, referred to as the ‘Internal Market’, and when a country becomes a member of the European Union, it also applies to become party to the EEA Agreement, thus leading to an enlargement of the EEA. The EEA Agreement provides for the inclusion of EU legislation covering the ‘four freedoms’ – the free movement of goods, services, persons and capital.’
Note the ‘freedom of movement for persons’…….in other words if Turkey joins the EU her borders will be open and the clash of civilisations will really begin.
So would Turkey be merely a member of a ‘common market’ or a full EU member with these four freedoms?
But David Owen has also revealed something else…on 5Live on which Sheila Fogarty (starting at 13 mins 40 secs) winkled out of him an admission that we should leave the EU (at 18 mins) if it were to become a single financial and political block under one government as is now proposed.
Fogarty, the only genuinely impartial senior presenter on the radio, gets to the heart of his thinking which the ‘Today’ programme, the BBC’s prime political current affairs programme failed to do:
SF: ‘Do you view this moment as a kind of Geronimo moment in terms of the UK’s relationship with Europe?
DO: ‘Yes…if the button is pressed for a fully integrated Europe we must only be part of a single market….in a referendum we can ask if the public want to stay in the EU but once it moves towards this integrated model I would be prepared to say something I’ve never said before…that we should never join that.’
SF: ‘You’re saying more than we shouldn’t join, you’re saying we should leave it.’
DO: ‘Yes, alright….I see it as a new structure that we didn’t sign up to and much more integrated.’
Leave the EU? Perhaps Naughtie did hear him say it but his subconscious kicked in and steam rollered over the thought with the old mantra…’Keep calm and carry on…regardless’.
So there it is, either Naughtie is not a very good interviewer, missing the most significant part of Owen’s case, or he is so pro European that he can’t bring himself to contemplate even saying the words ‘leave the EU’.
My money’s on ….well both actually.
Of course, INBBC, along with Labour, Tories and Lib Dems, all campaign for the entry of 80 millionTurks into the E.U. so that the Islamisation of Europe can be speeded up.
Will INBBC report this on Turkey, or might reporting it slow down Turkey’s application?:
“Greatest Church Soon To Be Mega Mosque?”
by Raymond Ibrahim
http://www.raymondibrahim.com/11824/greatest-church-soon-to-be-mega-mosque
“David Owen has always been pro European but anti-federal Europe…..wanting a single market without a single government.”
Careful now. You’re falling into the leftist trap of equating Europe with the EU. I’ve got nothing against Europe but I despise everything about what the EU actually is and, more importantly, what it would like to be.
+1
When did it stop being a common “MARKET”…which is what we voted for in 1975 apparently…and when did it become a conspiracy against the ordinary people of Europe?
Got to be a decent timeline with guilty men named along the way.
Got a grudging respect for Owen, but would not expect him to be honest about the direction of travel since 1975…any thought?
Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece. Why are they even considering Turkey !!! ?
Maybe the good ship EU isn’t sinking fast enough.
The Left/Cultural Marxist what their EUSSR no matter the consequences. Doesn’t matter if Europe ends up a Third world islamic, as long as they get their EUSSR.
‘My money’s on ….well both actually.’
And that of 24,999,999 others.
At £145.50 a pop.
For incompetence and/or tribal bias.
Unique.
I think this is rather more nuanced than that. What (I think) Owen – by adopting the clothes of a disinterested but “sceptical honest broker” – is trying to do is to conceal the way the political class will seek to keep us in the EU. Whatever occurs and whatever Owen or Osborne imply, there will never be a clear unequivocal statement concerning – let alone EU-wide referenda on – the next stage of EU integration. Remember, the most recent significant move to a federal EU started out as a more or less formal constitution which, in the event, proved a step too far. Accordingly, exactly the same arrangements were smuggled in as a mere “treaty” (the Lisbon Treaty). This avoided any referendum here despite any number of commitments from our rulers.
So it will be next time round: there will be no formal adoption of – or proposal for – a formal federal constitution. Rather the arrangements will take the form, first of a financial settlement whereby those in the eurozone will surrender what remains of their financial sovereignty to a supra-national body in Brussels (or, maybe Frankfurt) and then a process by which the “outsiders” will be outvoted, on every other issue, by the eurozone bloc vote. We have already surrendered most of our “competences” to the EU and/or to an EU majoritarian regime. There is thus no need for a new “constitution” or even a new treaty: the USE will be in operation having been created by the back door. Yes, in years to come there might be a formal constitutional “tidying up” referendum but that will be a “yes or no” to an existing constitution, not an “in or out”.
It’s very clever of Owen to open what appears, on the surface, to be a Eurosceptic front but he’s as much a Eurosceptic as Heath was or Ken Clarke is. This way (together with Osborne’s unconvincing mumbling on the side) the eurosceptic case will be put in the hands of an ur-member of the political class (and the BBC will be happy to play along with the deception). On the evidence, the political class is keen on, not only a USE, but Turkey’s accession to the USE. That way, if it happens – analogously to what happened in Britain from 1997 onwards – the EU nomenklatura will have changed the EU electorate to one more amenable (it reckons) to its ambitions. IMHO the resulting electorate will have other things on its mind: the construction of a mosque on the site of St Stephen’s Cathedral (350 years after the Turkish defeat at the gates of Vienna) will be the least of Europe’s worries.
I think he’s also playing politics wrt the British public’s views on the EU – also some euroskeptics say it is a simple question of in or out of the EU, he’s saying we should be clear that the market is good for us, EZ-integration is not.
Perhaps his point is that we are in a decent position (while still the UK) to negotiate for the best deal for Britain, and deflect attention from the “either in or out of the EU” false dichotomy.