A speech at the first Goldsmith Memorial Lecture on 22nd May 2007, at University College in London.

To read the text please click on the link to the “Governance of Britain” page of the Britain Watch website.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 3rd July 1995.

In contemplating Lord Carr’s appeal for loyalty to Mr Major (June 30th), Conservative MPs should ask themselves what exactly they would be loyal to.  Economic and Monetary Union Stage 3 is not just about abolishing the pound, it is about total loss of control over every significant feature of national economic life.

Protocol 3 of the Maastricht Treaty sets out the basic tasks of the European Central Banks as (i) defining and implementing monetary policy, (ii) undertaking all foreign exchange operations, (iii) holding and managing the official foreign reserves of the Member States.  The latter provision means our handing over gratis all our national reserves of around £28,000 million to a foreign institution, over which, according to Article 7 of Protocol 3, we are specifically barred from having any influence.  Under Article 28, from which we have no opt-out, Britain is committed to paying on Jan. 1st 1999 about £700 million towards the capital needed to establish the European Central Bank.  Furthermore, Article 104c of the treaty provides that should Britain, having signed up to Stage 3, then fail to comply with a decision of the ECB, it can be required “to make a non-interest bearing deposit” or “be subject to fines of suitable size”.

Britain would be left with the financial authority of a charge-capped borough council.  How can any Conservative MP continue to support as Prime Minister someone who is apparently in two minds about whether or not our country should be obliterated as an independent nation?  John Redwood offers a clear break with the Major government’s incomprehension and muddle.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 15th May 1995.

In November 1993, Mr Major told the House of Commons that it would “turn my stomach to talk to IRA terrorists”.

In August 1994, at the time of the IRA ceasefire, the Government said that before it would enter into talks with the IRA/Sinn Fein they must surrender their weapons.

In January and February this requirement was reduced to the IRA merely showing evidence of substantial “decommissioning”.  Now all that is required of the IRA/Sinn Fein is to be prepared to talk about decommissioning, as if that means anything.

Mr Major was recently subjected to personal humiliation at the hands of an IRA/Sinn Fein mob, who later graciously let him visit a museum in the middle of a British city.  Mr Major said that he would have to consider very carefully whether next week’s Government-Sinn Fein talks would go ahead in the light of this outrage.  His pathetic protests having been contemptuously brushed aside, the talks are going ahead anyway.

This is the classic path of discreditable appeasement.  The IRA hold Mr Major and his Government in much the same contempt, as after Munich, Hitler held Chamberlain, whom Mr Major is said to admire.

In Europe, Mr Major’s Government is regarded in similar light: huffing and puffing, but always giving way in the end.

The British public sees these things.  Their attitude to Mr Major now has very little to do with the economy, feelgood factors, taxation, or any “policy” matter.  They simply have no respect for him.

If the Tory grandees can’t bring themselves to dump him now, in 1997 the British electorate will dump them.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph by Mrs Gillian Bush, which was published on 11th June 1993.

“The Government listens too much to the pollsters and the party managers”, said Mr Lamont in his resignation speech (report, June 10th).  I submit that the Government, in fact, ignores the pollsters and only listens to the party managers.

If Mr Major had adjusted government policy in line with the results of polls and public opinion, he would now have allowed a free vote on the Maastricht Treaty in the House of Commons, or at the very least permitted a referendum.

A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 17th September 1992.

The present sterling crisis is more than the currency crisis which commentators are describing it as. It is, in fact, the symptom of the bankruptcy of the present political class to understand, let alone do anything about, the real economic needs of our country.

The leaderships of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal-Democrat Parties are at one in upholding the Government’s strategy – if such it can be called – of maintaining Britain in the ERM and ratifying its political analogue, the Maastricht Treaty.

In fact, the only opposition to the Government comes from those who have been calling for a complete change in European policy away from tighter union and towards an open trading system with both Europa and the wider world.

The way out of the current slump in Britain is not through an artificial consumer-led recovery, on which, until today Mr Major and Mr Lamont have pinned their hopes, but through an all-out export drive by the manufacturing industry, triggered by a floating down of the pount to around its real value in the world, namely 2.5 Dm and $1.6.

But, of course, this is a real economy argument not a City argument which is all this Government seems to understand.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 14th May 1992.

Mr Major’s assertion that the sovereignty of Parliament “is not a matter that is up for grabs” (report, May 13th) is destined to be placed alongside the remark of another Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, who said on the eve of the referendum in 1975 that the threat of economic and monetary union “has been removed”.

The 1988 Merchant Shipping Act, which was passed by the House of Commons without a single dissenting voice, in effect has been completely set aside by the European court.

If that is not handing over the sovereignty of Parliament, perhaps Mr Major could explain what he thinks it is.

On the eve of ratifying the Maastricht Treaty, MPs should ask themselves if the present Prime Minister is merely deceiving himself, or actively trying to deceive the British people as to the true import of this Treaty.

Behind a smokescreen of babble about democracy, trade and level playing fields, every single act of the European Commission, from which this profoundly undemocratic Treaty stems, is directed at one goal and one goal only, the incorporation of this and other countries into a single state, like America, Australia or India.

No MP who cares about the actual foundations of our democracy, as expressed, for instance, in Clause 39 of Magna Carta (1215) and Section 1 of the Bill of Rights (1689), can possibly in conscience vote for this Treaty.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 29th October 1991.

It was written by senior members of the Campaign for an independent Britain: Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Chairman), Sir Robin Williams (Secretary), Austin Mitchell (Labour MP and vice-chairman), Professor Stephen Bush (vice-chairman).

The news that the present Prime Minister is flying to Germany to see Chancellor Kohl will cause despondency in those who recall or know of the flight of another Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. He flew to meet another German Chancellor in a similarly vain attempt to appease the unappeasable.

Every Westminster MP must recognise by now that it is not the freedom and independence of a small country “of which we know little” which is at stake, as in 1938, but that of our very own homeland.

Continental countries led by France and Germany want the complete surrender of this country to their bidding on all fundamental matters, particularly where, as is usually the case, our interests and theirs are opposed. Besides wishing to abolish our currency, Germany wants us to give up our seat on the Security Council at the United Nations, an organisation which we helped to set up.

The EC Commission aims to control our external relations, particularly those with the United States, and in short order thereafter deployment of our armed forces. In trade the GATT negotiatios show how we are already being conscripted to fight our natural friends and allies in the English speaking world.

As usual, a British government is trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead of rushing to appease Chancellor Kohl, Mr Major should sit tight, veto political union and let the Germans carry out their threat to veto economic and monetary union – and if they don’t, we should.

We can leave the other 11 countries to form their 1940s-inspired union and let it wristle with the combined problems of millions of economic refugees, the Common Agricultural Policy and the importunate demands of Spain, Greece and Portugal, unsubsidised by the British taxpayer.

For Britain to escape from this nightmare of the past and rejoin the future, all that is needed is a little courage on the part of the Government to face the plain fact that this is the parting of the ways.