The People are Stupid and their Leaders Cowards

The arrogance of those speaking in favour of the EU is often reason enough to hate the project all on its own. This contribution from FT by Dietrich von Kyaw, Germany's permanent representative to the EU from 1993 to 1999.

On the crucial question of the European Union's new constitutional treaty, certain leaders in EU member states have proved adept at ducking responsibility.

Many of those same leaders were arm twisted into signing this document and many would be unperturbed by its death by referendum. Why should the stick their necks out for it.

Consider Tony Blair. Britain is as far away from the heart of Europe as ever and Mr Blair's chances of going down in history as a statesman look dim.

Depends on whether you think statesmen should sign away their country’s future or not I suppose. Tony Blair has very little going for him apart from passable Statesmanship if you ask me.

Notwithstanding this week's soothing comments on the matter by Javier Solana, the EU's chief foreign policy adviser, a British "no" in 2006 would isolate the UK from its peers.

Funny I saw it as a threat.

Too many national politicians, far from showing leadership, have chosen to gamble on the future of the EU, on its cohesion at a time of globalisation and of serious threats from international terrorism, failing states and nuclear proliferation.

All of these are areas where the EU has shown time and again its irrelevance. Globalisation cannot be tackled by quarantining the EU markets from the rest of the world, terrorism cannot be fought through being nice to them and even nuclear proliferation, the area where the EU seemed to have found success, appears to be coming unravelled.

That gives populist politicians an ideal opening to exploit ignorance and euro-scepticism.

I would have thought that exploiting ignorance was a winning strategy for the yes side rather than the no’s.

Direct democracy is an inadequate instrument for dealing with international issues such as the compromise hammered out between 25 sovereign nations on a constitutional treaty consisting of several hundred pages of complex legal and political content.

This last paragraph when translated means something like this:

• The people are ignorant and stupid.
• They cannot be expected to make the right decision.

Judging by the average level of ability in our parliament, I wonder how they expect our MPs to get their head around it.