The European Union’s creeping barrage continues. Brussels has appointed the urbane looking Joao Vale de Almeida as ambassador to Washington; Vale de Almeida hopes that Henry Kissinger will call him if the old campaigner wants to talk to Europe. It is perverse that Britain is saving money by closing embassies and downscaling around the globe whilst also paying its share to install Senor Vale de Almeida in the swanky environs of the Beltway.
In this era of devolution, cost-cutting decentralisation, the European Union is beginning to behave like a state, and an opulent one at that. In the past fortnight it has once again suggested that it should raise taxes. It has also inaugurated the European Investigatory Order that mandates police officers to follow requests lodged from overseas, which, because of the vast migration within Europe will place huge pressure on police forces. And now the diplomatic service, under the aegis of the fragrant Baroness Ashton, has spread to all four corners of the globe, and talks without definition of ‘common positions’ and why they need diplomatic representation in addition to sovereign delegations.
The British government has not resisted these events; it has been entirely quiescent.
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