Unfortunately, the issue of immigration is one that is forefront in the minds of many and because of this, UKIP has been somewhat forced into taking up that issue as its 'lead argument' by the press, who never ask anything but questions about immigration. Whilst the issue of open door immigration is a valid one and is certainly one of many reasons, that I'll be voting UKIP, to me, it isn't actually the biggest reason to vote for them.
Our national sovereignty is being given away, piece by piece to the EU. You hear this all the time, but it doesn't seem to have any impact with voters for some reason and I can't quite figure out why. My assumption, is that the word sovereignty perhaps rings bells with people, as meaning the Queen, or royalty and thus people either think that they (The Royals) will always be there, or perhaps are anti-royal and so don't care. The fact is though, sovereignty in this day and age has really bugger all to do with the Queen in real terms, it's to do with who makes our laws, who directs our country, who establishes things like our foreign policy, defence policy, energy policy. Put simply, sovereignty is our right to self determination, it's our countries ability, to distinguish itself from other countries and make its way in the world, to make our laws, to decide what steps we're going to take, if any, to avoid 'global warming', it's our right to decide who we allow to run businesses, how they run them and who pays what taxes here. Without sovereignty, we are but slaves to whoever dictates that we must do things.
No doubt you've heard that the EU is full of 'unelected bureaucrats' and some of you may look at the MEPs and think, no it isn't, we elect MEPs. But, the fact is those MEPs have no power. Let's compare the EU Parliament to our own for a minute, to get some perspective. In the House of Commons, we have two sets of benches, those of government and those of opposition. With 650 MP seats available in the House of Commons and a party needing a clear majority of those seats in order to form a govt, it's an almost certainty that new laws the govt wants to introduce, will pass the vote. This is how parliamentary democracy is supposed to work, the party who won the Electoral vote has the larger number of votes in the House of Commons and therefore, shy of anything MPs may seriously disagree with, they can create and pass new laws, with relative ease. The fact is though, if MPs do seriously disagree with something, or their constituents have organised a petition, or written to them in large numbers, they can 'rebel' and stand against the govt if they so choose. Something Mark Reckless and Douglas Carswell did rather a lot before defecting to UKIP.
The EU parliament however, doesn't work this way, it can't work this way, because of the disproportionate number of MEPs who sit there, from all of the member states. There is no govt side of the house with an opposition side of the house to argue with, there is just a big mess of MEPs sat together, voting with nearly no solidarity whatsoever (other than party solidarity, or group solidarity in some cases), on the laws that the commission put forward. Now this is where the differences begin, but it's not where they end. The MEPs cannot propose new laws, nor amend them, nor debate them, nor can they reject new laws, even with a majority vote. WHAT? I hear you cry, but if the MEPs can't propose, amend, debate, or reject new laws, all they can do is pass them surely? Correct, MEPs can pass laws, or they can 'temporarily' take them off the table if the vote doesn't go the 'right' way, but that requires a majority of MEPs from ALL countries in the union, to vote against it, a very rare occurrence. The simple fact is, MEPs pass into law a truck load of new laws on a weekly basis, to watch them voting on video, is akin to watching a bunch of brainwashed cult members raising and lowering their hands on command. When a vote does say no, the commission takes away that bill, re-drafts it and re-introduces it later as something else.
So who does propose, amend and debate new laws then if it's not the European Parliament? Well I'm glad you asked, that would be the European Commission, a group of unelected bureaucrats, who you have no control over, who have no link with the people and who have no 'face' essentially. These people are usually politicians who've done their time in their local govts and either can no longer be elected at home for whatever reason, or have decided to seek more power, with less of the need to justify themselves to the public. Tony Blair is one politician who sought the office of EU President and thankfully failed to gain the position. Had he done so, he would have been the one in charge of the entire European project, he'd be making up the laws, passing them through the rest of the commission and then down to the MEPs to vote on, without ever having to make a speech to the public, without ever having to ask the publics' opinion, without ever having to be held accountable to the public for his decisions.
Now ask yourself, does that sound like democracy? It sounds like a very skewed form of democracy to me. Yes we still elect MEPs and yes the president is 'technically' elected by the MEPs, but as we've seen recently with the appointment of Mr Juncker to the position of EU President, not a single member of the ordinary public voted for him to be a candidate and more importantly, when the MEPs were given a vote, he was the ONLY candidate for the job, hardly something you can really vote against.
I could go on forever here with reasons that the EU is not in our interests, is undemocratic and is fundamentally flawed in its methods, but doing so would render the post unreadable, so I'll wind up here, by pointing out that we as a country, only have 8% of the MEPs in the European Parliament, one third of those 8% of MEPs for Britain are UKIP MEPs, the rest are made up of Lib Dems, Greens, Labour and Conservatives. The only party whos MEPs vote in Britains' interests, are UKIP with the Lib Dems, Greens, Labour and Conservative MEPs regularly voting in completely the opposite direction to UKIP. If UKIP MEPs make up 3% of the EU parliament as a whole, how on earth do we EVER expect to have any voice in Europe? Remember, even if ALL the MEPs were UKIP and voting the same way, that is still only 8% of the entire European Parliament and we still have absolutely ZERO voice, when it comes to decision making. I don't like the fact that our country has absolutely zero say in how our laws are made, I don't like the fact, that the EUs core, is built on the phrase 'ever closer union' and I don't like the thought, that in another ten years time, if we have not left the EU, Britain will be nothing more than a county, in the EU Superstate they are creating. THAT is why I'm voting UKIP, not just because of the preposterous open door immigration policy that's forced on us by the EU, but because I'm British, proud to be British and I want to remain, British!
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