Nicholas Sarkozy's remarks during his visit to London included a statement of heartfelt thanks to Great Britain for their courage and sacrifice on France's behalf in two world wars, going to lengths rare among post-war French heads of state. The ironies abound in Sarkozy's visit and message, according to Michael Huntsman at Brussels Journal . Among them is Sarkozy's praise for a hard-won parliamentary system that Great Britain has now all but given away. (Sarkozy's remarks in italics)
…it is an exceptional honour to address members of both Houses of the British Parliament. It is indeed here, within these walls, that modern political life was born. Without this Parliament, would parliamentary democracy have ever existed in the world? Hasn’t this parliamentary practice, begun in this place, become the best guarantee against tyranny?I wonder if he realised quite what he was saying. If we contemplate two facts: (1) that 70-80% of the laws which now enter into force in the United Kingdom every year emanate not from the elected representatives of the British people but from an unelected and wholly unrepresentative coterie of foreign civil servants; and (2) that with the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon Britain shall yield up almost all that remains of its sovereignty to that same group who will thus acquire almost unlimited power to impose the Brussels Diktat upon British laws, is it not then right to assert that the ‘best guarantee against tyranny’ of which he spoke has been recklessly and casually thrown away? And has not thus Parliamentary Democracy, so long in the evolution, been in a few short years ruthlessly stifled?
For we should be under no illusion but that what we understand by Parliamentary Democracy, which is indeed a formidable (though not impervious) bulwark against tyranny and which we have now effectively abandoned, has been replaced by a formidable Euro-theocracy. And from them tyranny we shall have, the tyranny of laws to which neither Her Majesty’s Government nor the British Parliament has assented as more and more ‘competences’ are given up to the thrall of Qualified Majority Voting.---
...how ironic that a foreign President should come to praise Britian at the very moment of its eclipse.
Lots more.
Posted by dan at April 7, 2008 11:44 PM