{"id":11795,"date":"2011-10-26T08:43:21","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T12:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=11795"},"modified":"2011-10-26T09:47:51","modified_gmt":"2011-10-26T13:47:51","slug":"when-all-the-party-leaders-agree-its-almost-certainly-a-bad-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/10\/26\/when-all-the-party-leaders-agree-its-almost-certainly-a-bad-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"When all the party leaders agree, it’s almost certainly a bad idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mick Hume<\/a> on the consistent refusal of British politicians to allow the electorate any choice on EU involvement:<\/p>\n

\n

When all of Britain\u2019s elitist, unrepresentative and interchangeable political leaders unite behind an issue in the name of \u2018the national interest\u2019, it is a sure sign that something is amiss. Exhibit A: the united front presented by Tory prime minister David Cameron, his Lib Dem deputy Nick Clegg and opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband against the demand for a referendum on Britain\u2019s relationship with the European Union. When this unappealing triumvirate is being cheered on by many in the high-minded media, alarm bells should really be ringing.<\/p>\n

The official line from the Lib-Con government and the Labour opposition this week, as party leaders sought to marshal their MPs to vote against the parliamentary motion calling for an EU referendum, was that to have a national debate about the UK\u2019s membership of the EU just now would not be in the national interest; it would be \u2018a distraction\u2019 from coping with Europe\u2019s desperate economic and financial problems. As Cameron put in on the day of the vote, \u2018it\u2019s the wrong time to have this debate\u2019 because \u2018we\u2019re in the middle of dealing with a crisis in the Eurozone\u2019. A referendum now would be \u2018rash\u2019.<\/p>\n

Turn that front-bench consensus on its head. It is precisely because of the parlous state of the Euro economy, and the paucity of solutions being offered by our rulers, that now is exactly the right time to have a major public debate on the future of the UK and Europe. The real \u2018distraction\u2019 that the Euro-elites fear today is democracy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mick Hume on the consistent refusal of British politicians to allow the electorate any choice on EU involvement: When all of Britain\u2019s elitist, unrepresentative and interchangeable political leaders unite behind an issue in the name of \u2018the national interest\u2019, it is a sure sign that something is amiss. Exhibit A: the united front presented by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,84,28,53],"tags":[337,477,213,101],"class_list":["post-11795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-government","category-media","category-politics","tag-eu","tag-magazines","tag-newspapers","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-34f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11796,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11795\/revisions\/11796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}