More on the No Vote
Lenin has similar views to mine, only he’s much more eloquent:
It is remarkable that the market and competition should be raised to the status of constitutional precepts. Even more remarkable is that even modest boureois principles of democracy should be cast aside – the Council of Ministers is not elected, but it has the powers of the executive and legislative together, so that neither popular sovereignty not separation of powers is respected. The only elected body, the European Parliament, has only limited veto powers and no executive powers to speak of at all. It is remarkable that the parties of the Socialist International (n?e Second International) have even attempted to flog this undemocratic neoliberal drivel to the voters. Fuck ’em. Let these bruschetta eating, shiraz-quaffing mofos drown their sorrow in mange touts and the finest red. This is, as someone said in the comments boxes below, the best May the left has had since 1968.
Speaking of the Socialist International – that duplicitous glob of opportunistic New Labour slime, EU Trade Commisssioner Peter Mandelson, was on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning (listen here). He said that, as 49% of those referendum-ed in Europe other than the French had said yes, the French vote was basically irrelevant, and that the no vote was a mere protest against Chirac, and a complaint that the EU was no longer an extension of France. (The usual, condescending Mandelson style we all know and love so well.)
Dammit, this was a well-informed and well-discussed issue, and the French knew perfectly well what they were voting about, as do the Dutch. Mandelson is engaging in the usual New Labour practice: when an election doesn’t go your way, decry the electorate as stupid, xenophobic and ill-informed.
