Cameron’s difficulties on Europe largely of his own making

From: John S Murray, Moorside Road, Honley, Holmfirth, West Yorkshire.

THE Prime Minister has been unable to impose his authority upon his party on the issue of EU membership. Even though he has expressed the wish to keep Britain in the EU, his lack of conviction has allowed the extreme right and europhobic part of his party to pull him further and further away (Yorkshire Post, May 18).

Of course his predicament is to a large extent of his own making. Like a figure in an ancient Greek tragedy, he is the author of his own fate.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

He has tried to placate the eurosceptic members of his party by promising to renegotiate Britain’s Treaty commitments and now offering them a referendum on EU membership.

The eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party is guided by a dogma-like obsession to remove Britain from the EU, one way or the other and at any cost. They show complete disregard for the interest of their party and the country at large.

The very week that the Prime Minister went to the US, in an effort to showcase Britain’s global credentials and to promote the need for and benefits of a US-EU trade deal, his europhobic backbenchers were sparing no effort to find ways that will end the UK’s participation in the very EU which President Obama called the “expression of the 
UK’s influence and role in the world”.

The one thing that the past few days have made clear is that those eurosceptics’ appetite for a referendum does not stem from their wish to give the British people a say.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The real reason behind their wish to hold a referendum is that they (mistakenly) view such a vote on the EU as the only way to remove Britain from the EU and they believe that the sooner that referendum takes place the more chances they have to achieve their objectives.

There is one aspect of all this that offers Mr Cameron some reprieve.

This whole debate is a welcome distraction from the real issues Britain is facing.

From: JC Penn, Birch Tee Drive, Hedon, Hull.

IN the last century we suffered two world wars. Both of these events were started in Europe. Millions of lives were lost, many in terrible acts of brutality.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Has the formation of a European Union helped us to 
be free of these awful events? Could the current events in British politics, the rise of Ukip and Conservative scepticism, 
take us back to these terrible times?

From: Brian H Sheridan, Redmires Road, Sheffield.

CONSIDERING the inaction of the Office of Fair Trading shouldn’t the much-maligned European Commission be given some credit for their investigation into petrol price-rigging by oil giants (Yorkshire Post, May 16)? Especially as the Government has ignored a three-year campaign for an investigation into the matter led by Conservative MP Robert Halfon.

From: Cecil Hallas, Cubley Rise Road, Penistone, Sheffield.

AFTER a long period of turbulencem storm clouds are showing up on the European horizon and heading in our direction.

Canute-like, our eurocult representatives choose to ignore these signs, looking in all directions for any indication that it might go away. No matter how pleadingly they look towards Heaven its progress is now inexorable. And now our elders have begun to read the tea leaves and are beginning to emerge from the woods, swords unsheathed, the Lawsons, Lamonts, Portillos and Healeys are now joining the same clan besides two current Cabinet Ministers who are astute enough – and brave enough – to voice what after all, is the voice of the nation.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

How have we allowed ourselves to get into such a mess, coming to accept such foolishness from these door-to-door salesmen who have persuaded us that it would be in our interests for the Brussels caravan to move to Strasbourg every month, to accept accounts which haven’t been signed off for 17 years, whistleblowers dismissed, the criminal discarding of good fish and for good measure our own European representatives readily accepting all this?