Thursday, January 27, 2011

Pause for some light entertainment

Yes, I did hear yesterday about the upheaval in eurosceptic circles about the events at the meeting of the parliamentary section of Better Off Out, but was laughing too hard to write anything about it. In any case, there were more important matters to deal with.

The account (and who leaked it, one wonders) first appeared on this blog, was picked up by Autonomous Mind and thence by the Boss on EURef (though, as ever, I think it is unfair to compare politicians to useful farm or any other animals). Nothing I can add really.

Does Better Off Out achieve anything, especially in Parliament? Well, that's a moot point. It has meetings (to which neither the Boss nor I have ever been invited) and, no doubt, all who attend congratulate each other mightily about their various achievements, difficult though these are to discern. Certainly questions are asked in the House of Lords (and this blog needs to catch up there) but those tend to be done by individual members rather than as part of a campaign; equally certainly amendments are introduced, mostly by Bill Cash and Douglas Carswell, to various bits of legislation and equally regularly they are defeated by large majorities. The one undoubtedly useful purpose BOO serves is in providing us all with a list of politicians who actually dare to sign up to the notion that Britain should not be part of the European Union. It makes it easy for the rest of us to dismiss the pretensions of others to something called euroscepticism.

Still, Better Off Out remains a more coherent organization than yet another cross-party campaign for a referendum, which will ensure that yet more money, time and energy is wasted on campaigning for something that is unlikely to happen under the Cleggerons and something that we may well lose because of the lack of time etc that has been put into explaining to the populace about the EU and our part in it.

However, one can't help laughing out long and loud at the sight of all the Hannan and Carswell worshippers suddenly turning on a sixpence and deciding that those two are the terrible twins rather than the daredevil duo.

2 comments:

  1. Helen

    Still waiting for your post on the "curious development in relationship between the EU and Switzerland"

    TM

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mea culpa, TM, mea maxima culpa. Will do ASAP.

    ReplyDelete