EU politicians booted up with whips in hand.

Europe’s political classes are intent on doing what Hitler and Napoleon only dream of -- having total control of Europe.

There is much about the European Union that is good and much that is bad. It is good that they have basically pulled down the borders and allow the free movement of capital, labour and goods. The creation of this sort of free trade zone is beneficial to the individual nations and the European economy as a whole.

But the EU bureaucrats are not satisfied with doing a few good things. They wish to meddle across Europe and control every product, every laborer, every business and every euro that is earned. They want a political body which has complete control over the European continent.

The first set of measures I discuss encourage competition and wealth creation. But the rules and regulations that the political class wish to impose destroy both competition and wealth. In reality the good from the first set of measures will be wholly undone by the pernicious effects of the second kind of measures.

These are morons who want to impose European-wide regulation regarding such unimportant issues as the length of sausages. The political classes are obsessed with control and with their own alleged ability to centrally plan every aspect of human existence. And they don’t want anything to get in the way of their aspirations to achieve power. This includes their flagrant disregard for democratic processes.

Consider that the EU treaty, what is supposed to be a constitution fo Europe, was actually put to a vote of the public in France and the Netherlands. This “constitution,” that is hundreds of pages long and is a monument to dirigistic attitudes of the petty bureaucracy, was turned down by the French voters and by the Dutch voters.

So what did the political classes do? They simply said “thank you” to the voters and then said their approval or disapproval doesn’t matter. After both France and the Netherlands rejected this monstrosity of a constitution the EU political elite announced that future votes were not needed. They also said that they would tinker with the document a bit here and there and that was all that needed be done.

As for the voters having a say as to whether or not they approve of the new tinkering, well the bureaucratic elite says that is no longer necessary. In other words they told the voters in both those nations: “Screw you, we intend to go ahead with this no matter what you think.”

Ireland had to put the popularity of the EU treaty to a vote. Signing the EU treaty requires Ireland to change its own constitution and that requires approval from the electorate. The Irish voters turned out to vote on the matter in larger numbers than expected and the EU was handily rejected by them.

So here is a third time when the actual voters are allowed to speak on the matter and the third time that they have said, “No, thanks.” And once again the EU political elite it making it clear that they don’t give a damn what the people actually want. All that matters is what the political elite want. One wire service reports: “European leaders vowed Saturday to press ahead with a major EU reform treaty despite Ireland’s shock rejection....”

Actually the polls showed the measure going to defeat. The only people “shocked” by the rejection were the political classes who are used to the voters obeying their orders. Jose Manuel Barros, the president of the European Commission, “insists the Lisbon Treaty is still ‘alive’ and has urged other countries to continue ratifying it, as 18 EU members have already done.” Now not that the other EU members ratified the treaty by avoiding allowing their voters to have any say in the matter. In each case the political ruling classes have forced the measure through the local parliaments and refused to allow any public expression of approval on the matter.

Jean-Pierre Jouyet, a petty French government official, said that there is “no other solution” to this rejection problem than to force the matter to another vote. This sounds like a promise to keep bringing the matter up, again and again, until the voters relent and give the politicians what they are demanding. But Irish politicians are saying such a move is politically impossible for them. They are saying there is no chance of a second vote and that a second vote could be worse. In this election the turnout was high and the margin of defeat significant enough not to ignore.

The left-of-center Guardian newspaper says that German and French politicians are moving “to isolate Ireland...after the Irish dealt the architects of the union’s new regime a crushing defeat.” As they note these bureaucrats are: “refusing to take ireland’s no for an answer... by trying to ringfence the Irish, while demanding that the reform treaty be ratified by the rest of the EU.”

The original promise was that every EU nation would have to approve the treaty for it to come into force. French and German politicians say that those promises should be ignored -- after all what are political promises for, if not to be broken. They demand the “other EU states ratify the treaty as soon as possible to quarantine the Irish, and then come up with some legal manoeuvre enabling the treaty to go ahead.” German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said: “We’re sticking firmly to our goal of putting this treaty into effect. So the process of ratification must continue.”

Angela Merkel, the great sell-out of German politics, said, “We must carry on.”

What we have is a stand-off. The political elite of Europe are lusting after the power that the EU treaty offers them. The people of Europe like the free movement of labor, capital and goods but don’t want brainless bureaucrats in Brussels ordering them about on every niggling matter. The politicians are telling the people that they should shut up and that their wishes really aren’t important. Certainly those few nations that allowed the matter to go to a vote faced the embarrassment of rejection so, for the most part, the political classes simply never allowed the public to have any say in the matter.

The Guardian says that it appears that the EU politicians want to offer some “soothing words” on various issues to the Irish and then “stage the vote again”.

All we can say for sure is that the European power elite in the various governments are livid that the people had any say over who shall rule them. The assumption of most such politicians is that the voters are utter fools with no rights but those granted by the beneficent, and superior, political classes. While, now and then, some pretence of concern for “democratic processes” has to be made, the reality is that the public is a horse and the politicians are the riders, booted up, spurs attached, with whip in hand.