Sunday, January 04, 2004

Evil Right-Winger Detected


Remember how the BBC likes to claim opponents of the EU are crazed, ignorant, xenophobic, right-wing extremists ? Well, guess who's just come out and said the Government should end the "creeping intrusion of Brussels into national life" ?

Try Giselle Stuart, Labour MP, representative to the EU's constitutional convention and Munich born and bred. Her charge sheet against the EU holds no surprises for those of who were always eurosceptic, but the source of these complaints is refreshing, and not only because it's fun to visualise the Beeb's staff desperately grasping at any straw to smear her.

Giselle Stuart never quite follows her complaints to their logical conclusion. She is after all a socialist and so, as a disciple of big government, she questions this particular implementation rather than the central concept of the EU. Stuart is still too much in love with the chimera of 'democratic socialism' to see that any european union would inevitably become the EU. Nevertheless, Stuart's breaking of ranks hints at a profound movement in the political biosphere. The Left is finally waking up to the fact that the EU is not merely a political issue. To discuss the EU in terms of its effect on inflation, unemployment or the environment is to debate the merits of Mussolini with respect to train times. As with Iraq, we are seeing the first hints of the rebirth of a species previously thought to be extinct: the decent left.

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