Lacking specialised training, I can’t define treason with lawyerly precision. But on general principle, a concerted effort to destroy the constitution of the realm should come close to any reasonable understanding of the term.
If so, then the Maastricht Treaty signed by John Major in 1992 was a treasonous document. Then again, not being the sharpest chisel in the toolbox, Major probably misunderstood the sovereignty of parliament, on which our constitution is based.
He might not have realised that the institution in question isn’t just any old parliament, but specifically the British one. That means the parliament sitting in Westminster, not in Strasbourg – but then geography, or for that matter any academic discipline, isn’t Major’s forte. (In his youth he even failed maths in a bus conductor’s exam.)
Even before Maastricht, in 1990, Major tried to peg the pound to the euro by joining the European Exchange Mechanism. That little caper cost the Exchequer some six billion before the pound was forced out, with Major kicking and screaming.
Having effectively turned Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II into Liz Windsor, citizen of the EU, Maastricht Johnny then applied his giant intellect and political acumen to home affairs. In that capacity he successfully led his party to the worst defeat in recent memory, a 1997 debacle that wasn’t fully reversed until last year.
In 2001 Major retired from politics and has since practised full-time self-vindication, which in his case means frenetic attempts to prevent Britain from regaining her sovereignty. Such worthy efforts were intensified in the run-up to the 2016 referendum, and especially after it returned a result Maastricht Johnny hated.
Yesterday he rode again, showing that his mind hadn’t noticeably sharpened in the intervening years. First Major made an observation startling in its ground-breaking perceptiveness: “We are no longer a great power. We will never be so again…
“We are a top second-rank power but, over the next half century – however well we perform – our small size and population makes it likely we will be passed by the growth of other, far larger, countries.”
As Johnny must have told Edwina at one point, it’s not the size that counts. Quite a few successful countries – in fact all the top 10 in the quality of life – have smaller populations than ours.
As Maastricht Johnny espied with his eagle eye, Britain is unlikely to retrieve her empire, much to the chagrin of many countries that used to belong to it. So what exactly follows from his astute observation?
Funny you should ask. For, displaying the mental acuity of his bus conductor’s exam, Major came up with a complete non sequitur: because Britain is no longer an empire on which the sun never sets, she should remain in the EU de facto, even if that awful referendum made it impossible for her to do so de jure.
That logic can’t be reduced to the absurd because it’s already as ridiculous as it can get. In effect, Major is saying that a country of 65 million souls is too tiny to govern herself without help from some supranational entity constricted by its own megalomania and bureaucratic zeal.
Hence, if we regrettably can’t keep the nebulous privileges of full EU membership, at least we must retain the duties. And the way to do so is giving the EU everything it wants to get out of the on-going negotiations.
“Because of our bombast, our blustering, our threats and our inflexibility,” fumed Maastricht Johnny, we’ll end up with “a flimsy, barebones deal or no deal at all.” That would be a “wretched betrayal of what our electors were led to believe”.
Our electors were led to believe that, as a result of Brexit, Britain would again be governed by her own parliament according to her own ancient laws, and not those imposed by an ideological contrivance with its roots in the socialist dream of a world government.
This is what Johnson’s government is trying to deliver, and it’s something that can only be delivered by a show of strength and resolve – what Major describes as inflexibility.
The situation is difficult, but it has only arisen because of what he did in 1992. Surely Maastricht Johnny must realise that? No, perhaps not.
As he’s probably unaware of the net effect of Britain’s EU membership: untold billions going to that abomination, untold swarms of immigrants coming the other way, our laws made impotent and irrelevant, our government reduced to a gau similar to those circa 1940.
I wouldn’t put it past Maastricht Johnny to collude with Biden in trying to stop, or at least denature, Brexit. After all, four years ago the British people let it be known in no uncertain terms what they thought of his life’s work. I’m sure Major takes that as a personal insult, and that’s not something his brittle ego can stomach.
Try as I may I can find nothing in this with which to disagree. Spot on once again!
Thank you, but you are spoiling me. More of this, and I may become as smug as Peter Hitchens.
I seem to recall the Conservatives winning a majority in the 2015 general election.
Why it was Dave himself who won my vote via a YouTube appeal.
That’s why I said “…fully reversed”. The 2015 Tory majority was too tiny to be operable.
If I may be permitted a second comment, I would add that offhand I can’t think of any Western country taking treason seriously for decades. The execution of William Joyce, along with a few other ‘patriot traitors’ in ’46 was the last time such offenses were acted upon in Britain. I suppose it’s the work of the cross party apparat, the logical conclusion of divesting the political class of any frightening consequences for dodgy statecraft.
Although having said that, I’m reminded of your assertion that in times past, generals and monarchs could lead foreign armies against their native land and upon losing, suffer nothing worse than exile in a cushy rest spot of their choice. So perhaps what we have nowadays is a return to the historical norm.
Different times, different mores. The relationship between a British PM and the Queen isn’t at all comparable to that between Louis XIV and his cousin, the Great Condé, who twice led Spanish armies against the king. Those were the days before the Enlightenment, which gave us many poisoned gifts, including nationalism and national, as opposed to dynastic or religious, allegiance.
“We are no longer a great power. We will never be so again… ”
USA not far behind. England leads and USA tends to follow.