E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 144 Seiten
Reihe: Why Vote
Evans Why Vote UKIP 2015
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-84954-810-6
Verlag: Biteback Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
The Essential Guide
E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 144 Seiten
Reihe: Why Vote
ISBN: 978-1-84954-810-6
Verlag: Biteback Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Will UKIP follow their European election success of 2014 and make unprecedented gains at the next general election? In this concise and accessible guide, UKIP's deputy chairman Suzanne Evans explains what the UK would look like under the leadership of Nigel Farage, and why a vote for UKIP is a vote for Britain. By exploring the party's key policies, agendas and commitments, Why Vote UKIP 2015 will prove invaluable in helping you decide where to place your vote.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
Chapter 1 Leaving the European Union
A vote for UKIP is a vote to remove the United Kingdom from the unaccountable supranational government of the European Union and re-establish Britain as an independent, influential power on the world stage. In May 2014, when the people of Britain voted in the European Parliament elections, UKIP topped the poll and sent twenty-four members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to the headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels, more than any other UK political party. It was as strong a message as there ever has been that Britain is discontented with our continuing membership of the European Union. The EU is a staggeringly expensive club. It costs us £55 million every day to stay in, yet it wastes billions on staffing costs, huge glitzy buildings, vanity projects, foreign junkets for MEPs, advertising, and moving the whole of the parliament to Strasbourg once a month, among other profligacies such as the 140 ‘embassies’ it has set up in non-EU countries (forty-four diplomats in Barbados alone). It forces laws, directives and regulations on us whether we like them or not. It negotiates our trade deals for us and piles red tape on businesses. It controls how our farmers and our fishermen work. It dictates our energy policy, forcing us to add ‘green taxes’ which hike up fuel bills. It tells us we must open our borders to the 450 million people living in the other twenty-seven member states. We are required to submit to the rulings of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, which can fine our businesses for breaching EU regulations and prevent us deporting dangerous foreign criminals. In addition to our membership fees, it makes us stump up further billions to bail out other member countries’ economic failures. Britain does not need any of this. We would be better off out. No wonder UKIP won the European elections. Voters wanted UKIP MEPs to be their eyes and ears in Brussels and expose the truth about the stitch-ups, the profligacy, the posturing and the fundamental anti-democratic machinations behind the institution that would have us become citizens of a United States of Europe. The writing is on the wall; the EU flag, rather than the Union flag is now on our car number plates, driving licences and flying outside public buildings. In due course, the plan is to stamp the EU flag across all tiers of public administration. This includes replacing the royal crest on birth certificates with the circle of golden stars – all because of the Lisbon Treaty which Blair and Brown approved without reference back to the UK parliament or the electorate. This all makes the old political parties deeply uneasy. They cannot fathom the public unrest at this kind of behaviour and prefer to turn their ire on UKIP, rather than on the EU. Licking their wounds after their election defeat, they argued it was ‘pointless’ voting to send UKIP MEPs to Europe because they would not engage in the processes of parliament and did not really want to be there. Putting aside the disdain this shows for voters, what they really meant was ‘we don’t want UKIP here messing things up for us’. They are right to be worried – UKIP MEPs expose how the three old parties vote to expand the EU and its supranational takeover bid, usually in stark contrast to whatever their leaders may be saying back home. In one sense though, they are right: Nigel Farage has likened the role of UKIP MEPs to that of ‘turkeys who would vote for Christmas’ because we do want to get out of the EU, not engage with it. Our MEPs would like to see themselves out of a job before the next planned Euro election in five years’ time. In a more fundamental way though, the old parties were also very wrong: it is in fact pointless sending any MEPs to Brussels, whatever their political party. Brussels: it’s no place for democracy
The European Parliament bears little relation to our own parliament which, whatever you think of it, is at least democratic. The elected government of the day drafts legislation which MPs vote on. We have access to our MPs, we can write to them, phone or visit them asking them to either vote one way or another on our behalf and we can appeal to them for help with any problems we may have personally. Depending on how well or otherwise they perform their duties to us and our country, we can either vote for them again, or vote them out at the next election. The European Parliament is completely different. MEPs have no say whatsoever in generating new legislation or re-visiting existing legislation. That is the sole preserve of the twenty-eight members of the EU Commission, one for each of the current member states. These commissioners are not elected, but appointed, meaning they are unaccountable; no one voted them in and so no one can vote them out. They are glorified bureaucrats. Yet only they can initiate legislation, so they are the ones that have all the power. MEPs can debate what the commissioners propose in committee meetings, ask questions of them, and suggest amendments which are then put to the vote in the EU Parliament, but that is all. UKIP believes this is wrong. The complete lack of transparency and democratic accountability in those who would make decisions affecting our lives, our livelihoods and our public services is one very good reason to leave the EU. We believe anyone who has power over us should be democratically elected, not appointed. We should be able to kick them out of power via the ballot box if we so choose. Let’s get our sovereignty back
The goal of the EU is ever-increasing political union. UKIP is opposed to this and wants to see full powers for governance of Britain returned to us from the EU and placed back in the hands of our MPs in Westminster, and the British public, through the use of binding referenda. We do not want to be ruled by an out-of-sight, out-of-touch European bureaucratic elite. At the moment, the EU makes most of our laws, although precisely what percentage is a topic of fierce debate. In a visit to Britain in February 2014, Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, addressed a meeting in London and stated that 70 per cent of laws in Britain are ‘co-decided’ with the EU. She subsequently reiterated the point, saying: I do not know if it is now 80 per cent or if it is 75 per cent. The truth is that most laws which are applied and executed, implemented at national level are based on European directives, which then have to be translated into national laws. So the most, the biggest part of the legislation which is applied in a given member state, in one of the twenty-eight, is decided by the European Parliament in co-decision with the Council of European Ministers. A 2010 House of Commons Library report stated: ‘The British government estimate around 50 per cent of UK legislation with a significant economic impact originates from EU legislation.’13 Yet, in his famous televised debate with Nigel Farage, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg quoted the same report and claimed the figure was just 7 per cent. However, the report actually says: ‘Over the twelve-year period from 1997 to 2009, 6.8 per cent of primary legislation and 14.1 per cent of secondary legislation had a role in implementing EU obligations’, so Nick was wrong and the figures were five years out of date anyway. The conclusion of the very same report probably had it right: ‘There is no totally accurate, rational or useful way of calculating the percentage of national laws based on or influenced by the EU.’ In any case, because in any case this argy-bargy misses the point. The EU controls immigration, business and employment, financial services, fishing, farming, law and order, energy and trade. So, whatever the precise figure is regarding how much British legislature is controlled by the EU, you can be sure it is too much. Our voting power within the EU is also getting weaker and weaker. Those who say if we left the EU we would be isolated and lose our influence are being ridiculous: we have very little influence anyway. Since 1996, the UK has voted ‘no’ to a proposal fifty-five times at the Council of Ministers – where national ministers from each EU country meet to actually decide the EU’s line on major issues – yet every single time the measure has gone on to become British law anyway.14 We are unlikely ever to be able to get a ‘no’ vote carried unless a majority of the rest of the Union agrees, since the UK’s voting power has declined as the EU has expanded. Research by campaign group Business for Britain says that, since 1973 the UK’s voting power in the Council of Ministers has decreased from 17 to 8 per cent, in the European Parliament it has decreased from 20 to 9.5 per cent and in the European Commission it has decreased from 15 to 4 per cent. When the Lisbon Treaty took effect on 1 December 2009, Britain lost its right of veto in more than forty areas of public policy. These included asylum, border controls, common defence policy, crime prevention incentives, criminal law, culture, emergency international aid, the EU budget, freedom to establish a business, intellectual property, police cooperation, self-employment rights, space, sport, tourism, transport and, significantly, withdrawal of a member state. Yet this was the treaty on which David Cameron broke his ‘cast-iron’ promise to give us a referendum. Who voted for a United States of Europe?
No one did. The British people have never really had a vote on...