The EU’s insidious war on the nation state must be halted
Speech by Jesse Norman MP
Author: Jesse Norman MP, in the Daily Telegraph |
Jesse Norman MP set out his views on Britain and Europe in the Daily Telegraph this morning, ahead of a speech to Localis on 14 March.
Over many years, European leaders have frequently compared the creation of the European Union with the founding of the United States of America. The former president of France, Valry Giscard d’Estaing, has a special fondness for the comparison. In an interview in 2003, he even compared himself with Thomas Jefferson, citing Jefferson’s part in the framing of the US constitution. In his words, ?I tried to play a little bit the role that Jefferson played.?
But there’s a small problem here, one tiny fly in the Giscardian ointment. You will look in vain for Jefferson’s signature on the US constitution. Why? Because Jefferson wasn’t within 3,000 miles of the constitutional convention which sat for four hot months in Philadelphia in 1787; he was the American Ambassador to France at the time.
Indeed, it is hard to see any genuine comparison between the two constitutions: one brief and clear with just seven extensively debated articles, the other turgid and opaque with 465 articles which even some of its promoters acknowledged they barely understood. One constitution was built on victory in war; the other was designed to reconcile nations after ruinous defeat. One created a nation state, the other sought to supersede nation states as such.
Yet the real point is not the history or the hubris; it is that Giscard’s words inadvertently highlight what has become known delicately as the EU’s ?democratic deficit?. How legitimate is the EU, and how much does legitimacy matter?
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Jesse Norman’s speech, ‘The Road to EUtopia? Britain and the EU after the Bloomberg Speech’, will be given at 6 pm on Thursday 14th March.