ANOTHER VOICE

When will these babyish, petulant Eurosceptics see sense?

AUBERON WAUGH

Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repen- tance' (Luke XV, 7).

Sir Peregrine Worsthorne seems to have spent rather a horrid Christmas week, I was sorry to learn, being burped at by a fellow member of what he had thought was an exclusive country club in Buckinghamshire. The experience led him to conclude that there is 'no escape from the uniquely awful vulgarity of contemporary Britain'. From that discovery he progressed by inexorably logical steps along my own itinerarium men- tis to the conclusion that a united, federal Europe might not be such a bad idea after all, and would certainly be preferable to an independent Britain whose culture and government had fallen into the hands of uneducated vulgarians: `A European Federal Union would be much less populist, much less democratic, much more under the control of the civilised and highly educated — in a word, far more elitist and far less egalitarian. More state interference, yes, but in pur- suance of ideals of social justice which owe more to Catholicism than to socialism. Not perhaps the ideal English way to put the clock back, but the best on offer . . . '

These are exactly the arguments I have been advancing for the last six years since Mrs Thatcher and her sycophants started making babyish, petulant noises about her own sovereignty. At the same time, they made it plain they had no intention of har- monising taxes on alcohol and tobacco, which was always the only way to sell the European idea to the masses.

It has long been my conviction that Eng- land after the 'classless revolution', when the humane, educated bourgeoisie has sur- rendered all influence over education, entertainment, social behaviour, culture and government, will be a pretty dismal place. We would be better off under Mit- terrand, let alone Delors, than under Howard, Tebbit, Lilley, Portillo and ludi- crous little John Redwood wreaking their havoc in the name of a national sovereignty which means no more than their own voice in government.

'Howard fights to curb Euro courts' pro- claimed the headline in the Daily Telegraph over a report in which Boris Johnson described how the Home Secretary had laid out a 'radical Eurosceptical agenda' for the Government to pursue. But it was not just the Luxembourg Court of Justice on which Howard had set his sights as the only pro- tection Britons have against our incompe- tent legal system, so villainously over- priced as to be identifiable to everyone outside it as a simple extortion racket. In an extended interview with the same Boris Johnson on an inside page, Howard revealed the way his great mind is working on our native judiciary, too.

Johnson: Are the judges getting above themselves?

Howard: The Courts are more active in the way they see their role than they used to be.

`Some ministers are alarmed,' revealed Johnson, after listing the legal reverses which the Government has suffered this year, 'not just that the Government appears incompetent, but that political power is passing to an unelected judiciary.'

Perhaps some ministers are indeed alarmed by this, although I suspect the message is also intended as a shot across the bows for Lord Justice Scott as he finish- es his report on the suppression of inconve- nient evidence by ministers through abuse of immunity certificates. But even if minis- ters are alarmed at their threatened loss of immunity, nobody else is. The more judges and ministers are at each other's throats, the sounder we will sleep in our beds.

Nobody need care which side is right; nor need anyone care about which side occu- pies its position through election, which through merit. The idea that, because at some point in time somebody voted for these buffoons, their activities must be sacred is at the centre of the quasi-religious piffle talked about national sovereignty.

I was saddened but scarcely surprised to see Dominic Lawson, as part of a tribute to John Osborne, quote an extraordinarily obscure piece of Osborne bombast on the subject of the European Economic Com- munity (as it then was) taken from Tribune `Fanny Cradock will be turning in her gravy.' in 1967. Lawson wrote: 'This — remains the definitive case against the Tory Europhiles': `. . . We cannot pool our sovereignty any more than we can pool our individuality. If the idea of national sovereignty has no meaning, then the idea of a free world has no meaning. But it does have meaning: it is not a political abstraction because it is related to the human personality . .

The idea of a national sovereignty has a very precise meaning, in effect. It is the machinery by which Mr Howard and what- ever buffoon replaces him is enabled to feel important and make a nuisance of himself, to the rest of us. I knew John Osborne only in the last year of his life, but feel I have lost an old friend. In the course of our slightly confused first meeting I tried to persuade him that Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg offered a smaller threat to the Englishman living at home in the country, his way of life and whatever he held sacred, than continued government by sound-bite from the television studios. He seemed to agree, but it was a very agreeable meeting. Where he agreed without any shred of hesi- tation was in identifying a much greater threat than anything posed by Europe to the English patriot's peace of mind.

The future of England may well be bleak if it is left to itself — one brutal, vindictive post-industrial working class flexing its eco- nomic muscles and exercising its degraded choices, our rancorous dependency sector whingeing for more state involvement, our five and a half million more or less redun- dant public employees and our half-baked post-socialist 'intelligentsia'. But it will be much bleaker in the context of an engulfing Murdocho-Clintonian culture of hamburg- ers and moronic television entertainment (with just a touch of sadism added to prove we are all still human).

Of course there is no question of Britain being left to itself if we follow these baby- ish, petulant Eurosceptics and decide to `go it alone'. Britons would soon settle into the role of America's poor relations, the rou- tine of its white trash underclass, without, it is true, any of the enervating health and welfare provisions which so dispirit us now, but also without any right to vote in the American elections. Instead, we would go on voting for Major and Blair, Howard and Prescott, priding ourselves on our national sovereignty as we sink into proletarian illit- eracy, incompetence and gloom.