ktlight
1st October 2011, 05:59
"Mr Barroso,
You told us this morning that the European Union is an inspiration. And whilst you admitted to there being one or two little economic problems, you made it perfectly clear that jobs and growth were to follow, that everything is going well - in fact you painted a vision that a new period of European renewal is upon us.
Now as a former communist yourself you probably remember the old soviet leaders getting up to give their speeches and telling everybody that there was a record harvest, or that tractor production figures were terribly good.
And they of course believed that history was on their side and in fact President Krushchev got up and said to the West 'We will bury you," so much did he believe in his own Union.
Well now of course we look back at that and we laugh. And I think in our tomorrows, people will look back at you, and they will say 'how did this unelected man get all of this power?'
And how did Europe's political class sitting in this room decide that the community method [federal] should replace national democracy.
I think people will look back in astonishment that we've surrendered democracy.
But what you want to do is to say, right, we have a European Union and what we're going to have to do now is to have more of it. So as an architect - and you're one of the key architects of the current failure - what we're going to do, even though everything to date has been wrong - we're going to do more of the same.
Now I thought that was a definition of madness. I can't believe that is a rational response to any situation in which you find yourself. And far from it being a 'State of the Union' I would argue that the Union is in a state. "
MmG86lWhohU
You told us this morning that the European Union is an inspiration. And whilst you admitted to there being one or two little economic problems, you made it perfectly clear that jobs and growth were to follow, that everything is going well - in fact you painted a vision that a new period of European renewal is upon us.
Now as a former communist yourself you probably remember the old soviet leaders getting up to give their speeches and telling everybody that there was a record harvest, or that tractor production figures were terribly good.
And they of course believed that history was on their side and in fact President Krushchev got up and said to the West 'We will bury you," so much did he believe in his own Union.
Well now of course we look back at that and we laugh. And I think in our tomorrows, people will look back at you, and they will say 'how did this unelected man get all of this power?'
And how did Europe's political class sitting in this room decide that the community method [federal] should replace national democracy.
I think people will look back in astonishment that we've surrendered democracy.
But what you want to do is to say, right, we have a European Union and what we're going to have to do now is to have more of it. So as an architect - and you're one of the key architects of the current failure - what we're going to do, even though everything to date has been wrong - we're going to do more of the same.
Now I thought that was a definition of madness. I can't believe that is a rational response to any situation in which you find yourself. And far from it being a 'State of the Union' I would argue that the Union is in a state. "
MmG86lWhohU