Lipsmacking prospect, I grant you.
Small problem, Norm. Illegal.
A sine qua non of European Union membership is membership of the Council of Europe which means subscription to the European Convention on Human Rights and therefore submission to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Senatus Populusque Olissiponis in Argentorato imperant.
To tell the ECHR to FOAD would provoke the pronouncement of anathemas upon the United Kingdom by not just the other 46 righteous and utterly saintly members of the Council of Europe but by our 'colleagues' in the European Union who would return the compliment with knobs on.
A fate worse than death, right?
The CE and the EU, with their respective supreme justiciars the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, are not in fact co-terminous although an innocent fact-seeker visiting the website of the Council of Europe might not spot that. The EU logo devices, gold stars, royal blue house colour, etc., are all over it. Rum, eh?
Presumably an ablative was intended?
ReplyDeleteTsk. Put it down to acute rust. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteErnest Bevin, who was Foreign Secretary in the post war Labour government, was a very prescient man when it came to the Council of Europe and all its offshoots. He was agin it. In a splendid mixed metaphor he said
ReplyDelete"If you open that Pandora's box, you don't know 'ow many Trojan 'orses will come flying out".
The ECHR is one of them.
Unfortunately Bevin had to give way under American pressure. Britain was bust and dependent on dollar loans to keep going. The CIA funded the European Movement in a big way .