Sir,
Now the main parties’ conference season is over their offerings to the electorate are laid out, prior to next year’s general election, to help us all decide which candidates to vote for.
What not one of the main parties has told us is that, if the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified, as seems inevitable, they will not have the power to implement their promises.
As it is our elected ministers are powerless to protect our farmers or fishermen, our rural Post Offices, our hospital doctors from the Working Time Directive, our boat builders from the Recreation Craft Directive and on and on.
After Lisbon we will be subjected to a totally alien form of justice, sweeping away our thousand year protections of Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury. Our seat at the UN will be given to the European Union as will our seat at the International Monetary Fund. We will no longer make our own foreign policy or defence decisions.
In a word our government at Westminster will have its power reduced, to use the words of Kenneth Clarke, to “That of a County Council”. As we will under Lisbon be no more than a series of Regions directly ruled from Brussels this is a fair analogy.
When in future we vote for a party we will be voting for an elected Assembly whose only real power will be to, in their turn, elect our representatives to the EU Council of Ministers, in effect the Cabinet of the new EU government, and he or she will be charged with a prime commitment to the EU.
We will have lost our Constitution and any pretence of self government.
If you are disturbed with such a future there is one chance left at the next general election and that is to refuse to vote for any party that does not honour their original promise of giving us a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. This referendum will have to be retrospective but remember the ONLY referendum we have ever been given way back in 1975 on our freedom to govern ourselves was a retrospective referendum. We were told the results would be binding so a precedent has been set.
Bill Woodhouse, Mappowder, Dorset