The British People Stage A Counter-Coup

Eleven years ago, Labor staged a coup against the British people with the Lisbon Treaty.  Three year ago, the Brits voted to leave the EU.  Yesterday, the Brits said, “we bloody well mean it!!!”

What a great day for Britain!  They are going to be a sovereign country again.

The only issue in yesterday’s election was Brexit, i.e., whether to leave the EU in toto.  The results were overwhelming.  It was the biggest election win for the Tories since Attila the Hen, Britain’s last anti-EU leader, and Labor’s worst defeat since before WWII.  Moreover, every single Tory-in-name-only who, over the last two years, tried to keep Britain functionally in the EU was voted out of office.

Twelve years ago, on this date in 2007, the EU staged a coup against democracy in Europe — and no, that is not hyperbole. As I wrote in the history post for today:

The European Union grew out of several treaties during the 1940’s and 50’s that were meant to tie European nations closer together and to bring an end to a millennium of incessant warfare between them. But the EU grew far beyond its initial mandate. By the year 2000, the EU had become a giant experiment in non-democratic socialist bureaucracy with only the camouflage of meaningless local elections; it threatened to overtake all of Europe.

The EU drew up a Constitution to make of the EU a supra-national government run by bureaucrats with plenary power over the individual nation states. The norm for such Constitutions is that they are submitted to a referendum of the people in the individual states or countries, just as was done with the U.S. Constitution. The problem for the EU soon turned out to be that, while the left wing socialist leaders of the European countries thought the EU just dandy, their citizens did not. Referendums on the Constitution failed in both France and the Netherlands, and the EU withdrew the Constitution.

What the EU – and the individual European governments – did next was nothing less than conduct a coup against its citizens. The EU took all of the provisions of the Constitution and rewrote them as a treaty. You see, under the provisions of the EU, while the people had to approve the Constitution, the governments themselves, without a referendum, could approve any treaty. And that is what the bastards did. They rewrote the Constitution as the Lisbon Treaty. And on this date in 2007, the socialist governments from Britain, Germany, France and 19 other nations, signed away their national sovereignty to the EU. It was horrendous.

On March 5, 2008, Labor PM Gordon Brown, who had promised the British people a referendum on the EU, reneged on the promise and ratified the Lisbon Treaty on behalf of Britain.  As I wrote at the time:

Today marks a major landmark along the road to Britain’s internal dissolution. In December [2007], socialist Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown signed the Lisbon Treaty – the EU’s new Constitution – transferring the majority of Britain’s sovereign powers to the EU, subject to domestic ratification. Brits At Their Best puts this in perspective:

For American readers, imagine the US giving up its independence and sovereignty, abandoning its constitutional protections and joining a conglomeration of Canada, Mexico, Central and South American countries under new laws dictated to it by bureaucrats in Buenos Aires. That is what we are talking about with the EU.

As characterized in today’s Telegraph, the “EU is profoundly anti-democratic, secretive and hungry for power.” It is a grand experiment in socialism, running against British traditions of democracy, capitalism, and individual rights. Life as a citizen in a province in the EU portends to be quite costly to the average British citizen, and EU law is working an irrevocable change to the make-up of Britain by mandating an open borders type of immigration that is out of control.

In 2005, the Labour government campaigned on a promise to the people of Britain that they would be allowed a referendum on whether to take this huge step of transferring sovereignty to an EU super-state. It turned out to be unnecessary then as the EU Constitution was rejected by other countries when put to a vote of the people.

But in late 2006, the EU Constitution was dusted off and relabled the “Lisbon Treaty”. The EU strong-armed its members not to allow any referendums by the electorate on the treaty. PM Gordon Brown acquiesced to this highly undemocractic strategem. And yesterday, efforts in Britain’s House of Commons to force such a referendum failed. EU Referendum explains:

The Daily Mail puts it somewhat luridly, with the headline, “Day they betrayed British democracy”, then declaring, “Yesterday will go down in history as the day our politicians surrendered most of what was left of Britain’s sovereignty and trusted the nation’s future to a European superstate.”

We would prefer to say that the these politicians have surrendered another tranche of their powers to a super government, rather than state. But that – in this particular context – is pedantry. The term “surrender” is perfectly adequate, and it truly represents the tawdry performance of that motley lot we watched today.

For that reason, we concur with the Mail’s view that:

“What we witnessed last night was the political class ganging up against the voters who gave them power… Is it any wonder that more and more Britons are losing their faith in the political process? . . .”

Read the post here. The matter will now go to the House of Lords, but no different result is expected.

What happens with Britain is of vital importance to America for several reasons, not the least of which is that Britain is both the closest natural ally of the U.S. and has historically been the bridge between the U.S. and Europe. But Britain is also important in another respect.

It was Britain that bequeathed the anglo-saxon traditions of democracy and individual rights that define America and, indeed, all of the world’s most free and prosperous countries today. The Bill of Rights is essentially an amalgam of the rights of Englishmen that existed by common law and solemn compact with the crown at the time of the American Revolution. Britain has since moved beyond those traditions. And in that regards, what we can observe in Britian today is a kind of laboratory experiment demonstrating what happens when a nation leaves behind the natural rights theories of Locke in favor of the socialist theories of Rousseau. . . .

When the Tories next regained power under David Cameron, a significant number of his party demanded he hold a referendum on the EU.  Cameron and many members of the Tory party were happy riding the EU gravy train while the EU governed Britain and, living in a bubble like so many politicians, Cameron thought the rank and file of Britain were as well.  He put the question of whether to remain or leave the EU up for a vote of the British people in July 2016.

Money poured in from the EU and the left to push Brits to vote remain.  Virtually every British left-wing celebrity came out to accuse any who did not vote to remain of being a racist.  And even President Barack Obama showed up in England to threaten the Brits if they did not vote to remain.  Despite all of that, in 2016, a small majority of Brits, 51.89% to 48.11%, voted to leave EU.  The time since then has been one long attempt to nullify that vote both externally by the EU and, within Britain, by those Brits who wanted to stay in the EU, from rogue Tories to socialists to the media and the British Courts.  And last night, the British people gave their answer as loudly and as clearly as could possibly be made.