Bonde hangs up his voting card

After 29 years in Brussels the veteran Danish Eurosceptic MEP, Jens-Peter Bonde is retiring. Choosing May 9th as his final day - a bit odd it being Europe day - he is standing down to spend more time with his family, his bicycle and his European Political Party, the EUDemocrats. Though he has moved from a position of outright withdrawal to hard core reform of the EU he has notched up a number of salient victories against the entrenched institutional interests.

Amazingly his most recent campaign has received a massive boost on the day on which his resignation was announced. According to the FT the Commission is planning to release the names of the people who sit on the 3,200 internal working groups, the people who actually set policy.

In many was this is a fitting tribute to the man who, almost single handedly took on the Danish establishment and won the 1992 Maastricht referendum in Denmark. It was that 'No' vote that awoke Britain to the possibility that we could indeed say no. Within two weeks of John Major's election victory dozens of Tory MP's had signed the infamous "Fresh Start" EDM which was the real founding of the new Eurosceptic movement in the UK.

"That this House urges Her Majesty's Government to use the decision to postpone the passage of the European Communities (Amendment) Bill as an opportunity to make a fresh start with the future development of the EEC and in particular to concentrate its efforts on the chosen agenda of the British presidency which is to extend the borders of the EEC and to create a fully competitive common market."

Goldsmith, the Referendum Party, UKIP et al. owe a great debt of gratitude to Jens-Peter.

I personally wish him well.

Good for the Goose?

Ihave been tardy in posting this film of proceedings in the European Parliament, especially as I helped find it and get it on to YouTube. (Or more accurately tried to find it and congratulated others in the Group for getting it together).



It shows all those great defenders of democracy who gifted the President of Parliament arbitrary powers over the proceedings in the chamber, you know those ones who created synthetic rage about Dan Hannan.

As he puts it on his blog today

You can see the Liberal leader, Graham Watson claiming that the sceptics’ behaviour “recalls the actions of the Communists in the Russian Diet and the National Socialists in the German Reichstag”. (Can this be the same Graham Watson who claimed that my own far more discreet reference to the Enabling Act “plumbs new depths in UK-EU relations and in the Tories’ approach to democracy in the EU”?) And you can see the Socialist leader Martin Shulz saying that the sceptics made him think of Adolf Hitler. (Can this be the same Martin Shulz who said I should have no home on the European Parliament?)

I’ve always been of the view that references to the Nazi era should be made, as the Common Prayer Book says of marriage, “reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly.” I’ve explained why before in this blog. Even so, I find myself attacked on all sides for making even the most tangential and qualified reference. So why does no one criticise the Watsons and Shulzes who habitually dismiss their opponents as Hiterlites?

Do watch the whole thing.