and political commentator. He appears frequently on American
and British television and radio, including
Fox News Channel, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and NPR.
By Nile Gardiner
Pierre Lellouche, the outspoken French
Europe Minister, has ironically made
the strongest case yet from across
the Channel for a referendum
on the future of Britain's relationship with Europe.
His bizarre and hugely insulting rant
following David Cameron's unveiling yesterday
of the Tories' strategy on Europe underscores
exactly why the British public should
be given the ultimate say over Britain's relationship
with the EU – and the opportunity to
emphatically reject the kind of sneering
hectoring from over-zealous European officials
who are driven by a hatred
of Anglo-Saxon global dominance.
Who does Pierre Lellouche think he is
lecturing the British people over how
they should conduct their own foreign policy?
What gives him the right to dictate
the future direction of a sovereign nation?
It is exactly the kind of Gallic arrogance
displayed by M. Lellouche that has
prompted a wave of revulsion in the UK
over the prospect of the poisonous
Treaty of Lisbon coming into force.
The next Prime Minister should
take note – this is just the shape of things
to come once the revived EU Constitution
is enacted and British sovereignty
is further eroded.
Here are Lellouche's comments as
quoted by the Guardian:
"It's pathetic. It's just very sad to see Britain,
so important in Europe, just cutting itself out
from the rest and disappearing from the radar map ….
This is a culture of opposition …
It is the result of a long period of opposition.
I know they will come back, but I hope
the trip will be short…
They are doing what they have done
in the European parliament. They have essentially
castrated your UK influence in
the European parliament."
"I have told William Hague: go away for two
to three years, in your political economic situation
you're going to be all by your self and
you'll come back. Go ahead and do it.
That is my message to them …
You want to be marginalised?
Well, you go for it.
But it's a waste of time for all of us."
"It's not going to happen for a minute.
Nobody is going to indulge in rewriting
[treaties for] many, many years.
Nobody is going to play with
the institutions again. It's going to be
take it or leave it and they should
be honest and say that.
"It is a time of tumultuous waters
all around us. Wars, terrorism, proliferation,
Afghanistan, energy with Russia,
massive immigration, economic crisis.
It is time when the destiny
of Europe is being defined – whether or
not we will exist as a third
of the world's GDP capable of fighting
it out on climate, on trade, on every …
issue on the surface of the Earth."
"We need to be united, otherwise we will
be wiped out and marginalised.
None of us can do it alone. Whether you're big
or small, the lesson is the same.
And [Britain's] risk is one
of marginalisation. Irrelevance. Finally we have
institutional package, but it took 15 years of looking
at our navel and getting everybody
bored to death with sterile debate".
French President Nicolas Sarkozy should
issue an apology for the offensive
and downright rude comments of one
of his own senior ministers.
Frankly, there is something rather pathetic
about a representative of
the French government lecturing Britain
on being marginalised and irrelevant.
This from a country that refuses to send
a single additional soldier to
the battlefields of Afghanistan,
humiliatingly kowtows to the Russian bear,
and can barely make an international decision
without the permission of its larger neighbour in Berlin.
It's not hard to see why Paris is pushing
so hard for the new EU Constitution – after all
it is far easier to mask your own decline
as a nation under the cover
of a European superstate.
Tags: David Cameron, nicolas sarkozy,Pierre Lellouche, Treaty of Lisbon
Link here
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J-L K
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