Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that a National Referendum is to be held on Britain’s continuing membership of the European Union on

Thursday 23 June 2016.

WHO CAN VOTE?
As with Parliamentary Elections, British, Irish and Commonwealth citizens (aged over 18) who live in Britain – and British nationals who have lived overseas for less than 15 years – will be permitted to vote in the EU Referendum.

 Additionally members of the House of Lords – and citizens of Gibraltar who are eligible to vote in EU parliamentary elections – will be allowed to vote.

Other citizens of EU countries living in Britain – other than those of Ireland, Cyprus and Malta – WILL NOT have a vote.

 WHAT IS THE QUESTION?
The question on the ballot paper will read:

“Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?”

Voters choose between two answers:
Remain a member of the European Union
Or
Leave the European Union
HOW LONG WILL THE CAMPAIGN LAST?
EU Referendum law demands a campaign period of at least 10 weeks prior to voting.

Before the official campaign period can begin, legislation must be passed through Parliament to set out the details of the vote, including its date. The Government anticipates that process to take around six weeks.

HOW MUCH CAN THE CAMPAIGN GROUPS SPEND?
For the duration of the campaign, the Electoral Commission (Britain’s electoral watchdog) can designate a leading ‘group’ on each side of the debate. Those lead groups may each spend up to £7 million and receive a public grant of £600,000 from the taxpayer. Each is also allowed campaign media broadcasts and one free postal mailing to voters.

Any OTHER campaigning groups can each spend up to a £700,000 limit. Anyone intending to support such groups and the groups themselves must declare any donations above £7,500 received after 1st February 2016.

HOW MUCH CAN POLITCAL PARTIES SPEND?
Spending limits for Political Parties are governed by the percentage of the vote they won in last year’s General Election.
Therefore the ruling Conservative Party of Prime Minister David Cameron can spend up to £7 million, the Labour Party £5.5 million, the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) £4 million and the Liberal Democrats £3 million. All other parties are limited to £700,000.

However, the Conservative Party has promised that it will remain neutral, allowing no Party funds, personnel or facilities to be used by either side of the argument.
It is not so clear whether the European Union itself will feel legally constrained from bringing its powerful and extravagant influence to bear on the UK voters’ decision-making process.

HOW WILL THE GOVERNMENT CAMPAIGN?
Nevertheless David Cameron has declared that he will campaign with all his “heart and soul” to persuade voters to stay in the European Union, warning that to leave will be “a leap in the dark”.

No 10’s influence has quickly been used to persuade big business names to back its view to ‘Stay’, but there have noticeably been twice as many decliners than those who agreed to sign letters to the media.

Similarly favours have been called in from former MOD top brass now in the House of Lords to express security concerns over exiting the EU, despite the fact that it is NATO, not Brussels, that is responsible for defence.
Interestingly, General David Richards did not participate.

The official Government position is to back ‘Stay’, but six of the Prime Minister’s top Cabinet members have so far rebelled to campaign for ‘Leave’ the EU. After some hesitation, top MP and London Mayor, Boris Johnson has lent his considerable weight to the ‘Leave’ side.

A ’Purdah’ will be applied to the government itself, barring it from publishing anything in the 28 days prior to the Referendum that could influence the outcome of the vote.

WHAT HAPPENS ON THE DAY?
Polling will be open from 7am-10pm GMT. Counting will begin at the earliest time possible and will continue overnight.

Twelve counting centres will be used for collating votes and the final result declared in Manchester.
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British Prime Minister David Cameron claimed in triumph that he had agreed a “new settlement” with the European Union.

But how does that Brussels deal actually square with his original declared aims of what he wanted for the United Kingdom?

Closer Political Union

The UK wanted explicit exemption from the EU’s commitment to ever-closer integration of all nations into a single federal European state.

The UK got an unqualified and undefined promise that “the United Kingdom…is not committed to further political integration in the European Union. References to ever-closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom.”

Previous acts of integration remain and are irreversible.

Economic Governance

The UK wanted guaranteed protection for the City of London from any disadvantaging decisions made by the ‘Eurozone’ countries, which was considered by Chancellor George Osborne to be a crucial issue.

The UK got a vague promise to ensure “the coexistence between two different perspectives.” Britain can delay some decisions by the 19 Eurozone nations and force a summit discussion between all 28 national leaders. But the UK has no veto.

Welfare

The UK wanted EU migrants to be banned from claiming in-work benefits (until they had contributed to the welfare system) for four years – effectively an “emergency brake” that could be applied for up to the next13 years.

The UK got permission to apply that brake for only the next 7 years. It cannot affect those already in the UK and cannot be introduced until late 2017.

Child Benefit

The UK wanted to implement the Tory manifesto pledge to end child benefit to EU workers who leave their children back in their native country. This currently applies to only some 40,000 families.

The UK got agreement vaguely to adjust payments only to new migrants that will be linked to their cost-of-living back in their home nation. This will only start to apply to workers already here from 2020.

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According to recent revelations, the European Union is run on the lines that Adolf Hitler had pretty much planned to organise and administer the Fourth Reich once he had conquered the Continent.

It also resembles the structure of the former Communist Soviet Union, giving rise to that joke about the EU being the EUSSR – a joke that’s starting to wear a bit thin.
Nominally there are three decision-making bodies in the European Union. They are the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the European Council of Ministers.

However the real power rests completely within the European Commission, which is selected and issues its diktats in such a secretive and random manner that it draws strong comparisons with old Communist Russia.

This EU Commission comprises 27 member countries and is re-formed once every five years, within six months of elections for the European Parliament.
The essential point to remember here is that the EU Commission is totally independent of all national governments. Its sole purpose is to represent and uphold the interests of the entire EU as a single entity.
The main consequence of this is that the EU Commission is a law totally unto itself. It is accountable to nobody and exercises its own absolute arbitrary power.

Each President of that Commission is elected after secret deliberations between the governments of the member states. It should be remembered that the Commission President is the single most powerful political position within the entire EU. He or she has vastly greater powers than any individual country’s President or Prime Minister.

You might imagine that there would be uproar if individual democratic nations like Britain, Spain, France or Germany selected their Presidents and Prime-Ministers in such a manner. Not through proper elections, but by back-door horse-trading between political parties. Only the Soviet Russia of old, Communist China and other Communist countries like North Korea elect government in such a fashion.

Yet in the EU this is considered acceptable by all its member states. No wonder there are howls of protest from those who believe in transparent democracy and the importance of national sovereignty.

Once chosen, the President selects the other Commissioners, again through secret discussions with the member state governments.

It should be stressed that the EU President and its Commissioners are not MPs, MEPs, or democratically elected officials in any way. Most have never been elected to any office in their lives, yet they hold absolute and arbitrary power in the EU solely on the basis of having been secretly appointed to the Commission.

It is only then up to the European Parliament of elected MEPs to ‘approve’ the appointment of the proposed Commission members – not individually, but as a whole block of 27 people – amazingly by secret ballot and without debate.

With many MEPs being lackeys of the governments of member states – and with the secret ballot facilitating behind the scenes horse-trading and influence peddling – this ‘approval’ is nothing more than a cynical ‘rubber stamp’. It is done this way every time there is a new European Commission.

With arbitrary and unchecked power,  the European Commission alone dictates what legislation to initiate or repeal.

Commission diktats (directives or regulations) are formulated – again- in covert negotiations with interest groups, advisory bodies, non-government organisations (NGOs) and other unelected ‘public service’ busybodies and power-brokers.

This is like an open and festering wound of potential corruption and unacceptable influence without any form of countering antibiotic.

Once drafted through this process, any New Legislation is presented to the European Parliament. It in turn assigns various Committees of MEPs to examine the detail. Yet even the make-up of these Committees is determined indirectly by the Commission’s choice of which “competence” to use as its justification for the legislation in question.

Again, those Committees work through secretive deliberations with EU Ministers and civil servants, who give directives to political groups in the European Parliament so as to ensure the passage of its proposals.

Such laws are presented to the European Parliament only at the discretion of the European Commission. A new law is only presented for an up or down vote in a set-up where there is virtually no debate – MEPs are allowed to speak for at most one minute per person. As the actual EU legislative history shows, this ‘parliamentary ratification’ amounts to nothing more than the proverbial rubber stamp.

So it can be seen by anyone that the European Parliament has no power whatever.

MEPs are nominated by political parties in various European countries, so they are not elected directly by voters. Not always realised is that EU parliamentary elections only decide how many seats will be allotted to each party. The actual choice of the MEPs is entirely up to the party, not the voters.

This naturally means that – except for UKIP in Britain and a few other anti-EU parties – MEPs are generally lackeys of the EU. Under such circumstances there is no more opposition to the dictatorial Commission in the European Parliament than there was to Stalin in the Supreme Soviet.

The final decision-making body in this international democratic sham is the EU Council of Ministers.

Unsurprisingly the composition of this Council is also skewed. Member states assign to the Council those ministers who are most acquescent to the EU and will most readily go along with any diktat from the European Commission. Again, the history of EU legislation demonstrates that the Council of Ministers lacks any real authority whatsoever.

Any objective conclusion is crystal-clear: The EU is virtually a bona fide Communist bloc run by its own Politburo (the European Commission) vested with the kind of absolute power of which Lenin or Stalin would have been proud.

Once EU laws are approved by the Council of Ministers and become European Law, they are presented to the British and other national parliaments. Here they can be debated them and a note made of certain provisions.

However, this is pointless because the only effective response an elected parliament may have is to invoke its ‘national veto’.

Originally a ‘national veto’ was supposed to guarantee the sovereignty of each EU member state but, as it is virtually never used, it has become obsolete. In fact even this measure will be lost forever in 2017 when new EU provisions are scheduled to revoke the veto power of individual states altogether.

The final chilling note is that EU LAWS ARE THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND THROUGHOUT EU TERRITORY, superseding the national laws and even the Constitutions of member nations. British and other national Courts are required to follow EU law unquestioningly, without the option to declare it ‘unconstitutional’ as can be done with domestic laws.
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Under these existing conditions it is clear that there is no ‘middle road’, ‘compromise,’ or ‘reform’ possible, such as Prime Minister David Cameron has claimed to have achieved prior to the promised EU Referendum.

It is a stark IN or OUT choice between national sovereignty and independent self-rule outside the EU – or perennial subjugation under the collective dictatorship of the political elite in Brussels to be known as the United States of Europe.

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