EU Elections 2014; time to finally vote for the BEST MEP candidates?

'David Cameron has been given a six-week deadline by rebel Tory MPs to publish a clear plan for clawing back power from Brussels if he is to avoid a “disaster” in the European elections this spring.'

....

MPs are privately furious at the leadership’s flat rejection of their proposal and believe that Mr Cameron’s "out of touch" attitude could pose a threat to his own future.

“The Prime Minister is completely at sea over Europe. His heart is not in it,” one MP said. “The fact is that he has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to every new position he has taken.”

The European Parliament elections take place on May 22, one year before the general election.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the MP said: “If it’s disastrous, there could be repercussions for the leadership. Would it be too late to change the leader before the election? No.”

...

The trigger for a leadership challenge could come if the Tories fall to third place in a national poll for the first time in their history, behind Labour and the UK Independence Party, which is expected to perform well in May.

A poll on the European Elections by YouGov last week suggested that such a defeat for Mr Cameron was likely. Labour would receive 32 per cent of the vote, Ukip would get 26 per cent and the Conservatives would lie in third place on just 23 per cent, it found.

Another Conservative MP said: “People are talking about whether the PM should go if the Euro elections are a disaster. These discussions are beginning to rear their head again, for the first time in months.”

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/10581924/David-Cameron-faces-Tory-deadline-over-Europe.html

Isitmebut

But the hell does ANY government inheriting a £150 billion overspend do all of that, when their national debt will be £1,500,000,000,000 by 2015 – when the only way to start paying that off, apart from more economic growth, is for LESS of everything else on the wish list?

It could start by cutting spending. The Conservatives have put as much on the national debt in 4 years as Labour put on in 13.

'£31m to Turkish wind farms'

Not only do they spend taxpayer money on subsidies to their chums here to erect windfarms, but they actually use our taxpayer money for windfarms abroad too. Did that help prevent the floods?

'£31m to Turkish wind farms'
Why no £4m to the Somerset Levels?

Madness.

But the good news is it is coming to an end.
There is a party that will overturn the trough and they will have to stop feeding off the taxpayer.

'Cameron can lose every MEP seat and it won't make a jot of difference to his job security'

You haven't got a clue. Do you think he is some sort of King who can ride above everything, some untouchable superhero?

He has feet of clay just like everyone else and if he loses every MEP seat, then he will face a leadership challenge from within his party, just as Thatcher did.

Stop sucking up to your betters and praising their every mistake and tell them the truth. The Emperor Has no Clothes, and if he carries on like this, he won't have many votes either.

It would have cost them only £4m to dredge the Somerset Levels. What has happened is disgraceful.

How about some heads rolling for a start to show us that they get it - not get their salaries and perks and bath plugs - but get what the people are thinking and saying.

OK, now what do Tories want?

Cuts to 'ring-fenced foreign aid', cuts to 'green crap', cuts to spending on windfarms, cuts to salaries of quangocrats, cuts to waste in spending by quangos, taxes on so-called 'charities'. fewer 'tsars', no more £31m 'bird sanctuares' and a real control of expenditure by these quangos headed up by ex-New Labour types on £100,000 for 3 day weeks.

And with what they save on that they can start to provide all the other things too.

'What right does any of ‘the people’ of today, have in saying WE WANT MORE in a near busted country and have the next several generations pay it off????'

Because they work for us, the people, and we don't want them to award themselves an 11% pay increase while they cut everything else apart from their cherished 'ring-fenced foreign aid' and funding of the Ethiopian Spice Girls and the taxpayer susbsidies they give to their rich chums to erect useless windmills on their land which catch fire when a storm starts.

'it won’t make a blind bit of difference to ANY government’s realistic options for MORE over the next decade or so'

If that is their defeatist attitude and lack of policy and spirit, no wonder they will lose votes. We want a 'can-do' attitude - a slashing of the £90 odd billion spent on quangos, a huge cut in BBC salaries paid for by the public, a scrapping of HS2, a moratorium on foreign aid spending to countries with space programmes.

'Britain gives millions in 'climate aid' to tackle flatulent Colombian cows... plus £31m to Turkish wind farms and funding for talks with Kenyan 'rain-makers'

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2245300/Britain-gives-millions-climate-aid-tackle-flatulent-Colombian-cows--plus-31m-Turkish-wind-farms-funding-talks-Kenyan-rain-makers.html

How about being responsible wth our taxpayer money that people sweated and grafted for while this out-of-touch elite blew our money away in their pet projects while claiming every bath plug they could from the public?

That would be a start. But even that may be too late to save them now.

No, being "out of touch" has nothing to do with what policies you believe will sollve what you belive our problems are. Being "out of touch" is not listening to what the public is saying.

To paraphrase Clinton, "it's about the public, stupid, not about the policy wonks".

I have just read further in the comments to that Daily Telegraph article and it is amazing what their readers are saying and how they think that the Daily Telegraph has gone "left wing" and employed "left wing bloggers" to try and steer the public. That is another example of "out of touch". It's not about spinning and steering people (that was New Labour's trick) it's about listening.

'The Euro elections will change NOTHING on UK domestic policies'

I hope Central Office has some more switched on people than you on their side because they are going to need them.

The Euro elections may spell the end of Cameron depending on how bad the results are. Of course it will affect Tory Party policy and hence domestic politics. It is a watershed moment for them. If they read the tea leaves wrongly (like you tend to do), then it is curtains for them.

Isitmebut, you don't understand the public mood. Have you read the comments of Daily Telegraph readers to Damian Thompson's article? Do you read the comments of Daily Mail readers?

Unfortunately, you are out-of-touch just like Cameron who called UKIP "fruitcakes" and then had to swallow his words.

We will have to wait and see what happens after the Euro elections.

'But as far as they go, I think they were close very close to 50-50 on the EU, and as most French graduates aspire to a job in government, they are unlikely to be too concerned about bureaucracy within the EU'

50-50 is possibly right. But you are underestimating the French if you think they are more interested in career than country. They cannot all be bought.

Thatcher was the trailblazer who once stood up to and told a fomer French socialist President of the European Commission

"No Mr Delors. We shall not have socialism by the back door"

Then we had an "Et tu Douglas?" moment when Thatcher was removed.

But it doesn't matter how many socialist Presidents of the European Commission or former Presidents of the European Commission such as Manuel Barroso who was once one of the leaders of the underground Maoist MRPP (Reorganising Movement of the Proletariat Party, later PCTP/MRPP, Communist Party of the Portuguese Workers/Revolutionary Movement of the Portuguese Proletariat) or progressives there are that jump to the tune of the plutocratic elite, they will not be able to prevent the tide of public opinion, just as King Canute couldn't stop the sea.

Le Pen will call all of their bluffs, and she said

"Europe is just a great bluff. On one side there is the immense power of sovereign peoples, and on the other side are a few technocrats"

I am not an expert on it, but if anyone leaves the EU, I think it will be France and if it does the shockwaves will be so huge that the fissures will destroy the entire EU and other countries will follow very quickly.

'We have a minor earthquake in France. A party committed to withdrawal from the euro, the restoration of French franc, and the complete destruction of monetary union has just defeated the establishment in the Brignoles run-off election.

It is threatening Frexit as well, which rather alters the political chemistry of Britain's EU referendum.'

....

'I am watching this with curiosity, since Marine Le Pen told me in June that her first order of business on setting foot in the Elysee Palace (if elected) would be to announce a referendum on membership of the European Union, with a "rendez-vous" one year later:

I will negotiate over the points on which there can be no compromise. If the result is inadequate, I will call for withdrawal. Europe is just a great bluff. On one side there is the immense power of sovereign peoples, and on the other side are a few technocrats

...

" France is not a country that can accept tutelage from Brussels ."

Officials will be told to draw up plans for the restoration of the franc. Eurozone leaders will face a stark choice: either work with France for a "sortie concerted" or coordinated EMU break-up: or await their fate in a disorderly collapse

" We cannot be seduced. The euro ceases to exist the moment that France leaves, and that is our incredible strength. What are they going to do, send in tanks? "

Her four sticking points on EU membership are withdrawal from the currency, the restoration of French border control, the primacy of French law, and what she calls "economic patriotism", the power for France to pursue "intelligent protectionism" and safeguard its social model. "I cannot imagine running economic policy without full control over our own money," she said.

...

'It is now highly likely that the Front will sweep the European elections next May, a vote perfectly suited to their agenda. It will not be alone. Euro-sceptics look poised to storm the Strasbourg Hemicycle. That will be another fact on the ground.

The worst fears of the EU elites are starting to come true. It is entirely their own fault .'

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100025783/time-to-take-bets-on-frexit-and-the-french-franc/

France historically cannot be controlled or subjugated by a tiny technocratic elite of puppets who work for a handful of plutocrats. The French had a revolution to overthrow a previous aristocratic elite.

The tiny puppets and popinjays and ex-polytechnic lecturers and ex-barristers will have to accept France's terms, but these terms are against everything that their plutocratic banking masters had planned for the European people and for their global order. What will happen?

As Le Pen asked 'What are they going to do, send in tanks?'
I wouldn't put it past them, because they are witnessing the end of their dreams and plans and the decline of their grip on power. Whatever happens, France and the French people will win.

" The worst fears of the EU elites are starting to come true "

It's coming to a head and the puppets are shaking. At Davos and elsewhere the puppets and their masters speak of nothing else.

'And I’ll reiterate a personal view of mine, that while I think that I’m fairly well read up on most things political (and financial), I on balance cannot form a view on in or out, because no bugger has laid out all the facts before me.'

The only fact worth considering is that being in strips us of our democratic right to make our own laws and determine our own fate and make our own rules on whether our rivers can be dredged and how the silt from them will be disposed of and whether the eco-habitat of the 'Depressed River Mussel' shpuld prevent dredging and whether we should cripple our industries with their carbon taxes.

The whole thing is coming to an end and the entire class pf puppets who have fed at the trough will lose.

'It is the senior politician and bureaucrats dream project, this was never about the people, so like Labour they don’t care a stuff about what the people think, therefore small protest parties WITHOUT a majority in their home parliament, as a gaggle of fruit loops can make themselves as unwelcome in the European Parliament as a bottom burp in a space suit, THEY WILL CHANGE NOTHING.'

Isitmebut, Dave wants to stay in Europe. He wants to do some renegotiation and stay in it. But the people across all of Europe are moving to the position of wanting out. I am not sure that the "senior politicians and bureaucrats dream project" can last. Democracy will make a mockery of it, so I don't know how they can stop it falling apart unless they abolish democracy.

"Entrenched international civil services" don't last for ever. You haven't been paying attention to politics if you don't understand the huge earthquake that will occur after the May Euro elections.

The people are speaking and voting in droves for populist parties that oppose further EU integration and want to dismantle it. UKIP's growing success is only a symptom of what is happening all over Europe as people lose faith in the elites who have led them into the disastrous Euro problems.

'The bankers won't really care what happens, they adapt.'

You're dreaming. Of course they care because there are likely to be regulations against them in Europe as populist parties oppose rule by the bankers. UKIP is different because some of the City back them and oppose the proposed financial transaction tax which the Tories also oppose. But, there is no doubt that the interests of the bankers are threatened by populist European parties (not UKIP). And the whole European Project is under increasing threat and that is not a project of the bankers alone even though they implement austerity within it.

You can certainly end the gravy train, the march to further integration, windmills, climate claptrap, 'green crap', zero-growth globalisation policies and centralised control of finance by an unelected elite.

The bankers and their paid-for puppets don't find it 'interesting', they are panicking. The people are taking back power form the undemocratic, technocratic, plutocratic elite.

'Spin…you are still not getting it, what is the cheap heckling in the EU parliament going to achieve for the UK?'

Cameron just talks about 'cut the green crap', but Farage will actually do it. It is in Brussels that these regulatins and laws are made and after may, 30-35% of the EU MEPs will be from populist parties all across Europe. They will put an end to the 'gren crap' and lots of the other crap. They will put a spanner in the wheel unlie some of the spanners in Parliament.

Lol,

Name me these labour, tory ( other than Daniel Hannan who I like) and libdem MEPs who are anything but rubber stamps?

Every one of them costs us £1.79m per year, so thats £500 million over the last five years for liblabcon rubber stamps....

UKIP in the EU parliament, where they have no power, are arguably a more effective opposition than the useless backbenchers in our own parliament.