Revolutionary Rants

The French nation is voting today in a referendum on the new European constitution.

OK, so like the rest of the country - apart from a very few people - I find anything to do with European Union politics very, very dry; not because I have any particular feelings on it (other than it is yet another capitalist government invention! Arf arf), but just because it is one of the few areas of politics that I find just simply has no appeal. For one thing, it has never really been a Europe-wide thing, has it? We have all half-heartedly involved ourselves - usually, or at least in Britain and Ireland’s case because of the lovely handouts - but really we all want to retain our sovereignty and use the EU as a big stamping ground for us all to fight in.

Maybe that is just the view of a country which has opted out of most things, but Ireland loved the EU, but at the same time always seemed - at the heart of it - to love America more and almost to be quietly laughing at the ‘lads in Brussels who give us all the extra Punts’ (as the currency was at that time).

Anyway, I digress. Two-thirds of the French population are expected to vote, and there is a predicted narrow margin fr the ‘non’ camp, which could be eclipsed by the 20% of the voters who were still ‘undecided’ before heading to the polls. Jacques Chirac has told the people there will be ‘dire consequences’ of voting no - like what? According to Mr. C: “This vote is beyond political parties. It is not about the left or the right, and if you say ‘No’, you are not saying ‘No’ to the government. This is about your future, the future of your children, the future of France, and the future of Europe.”

Bad mistake, it is well known that Chirac only made it back in to government because he was the better of two evils (sounds familiar doesn’t it?) - anyone other than Monsieur Le Pen. Now he has strung himself up on the rack of being identified with the vote; whilst both the left and the right would have gone against it anyway, now the many in the ‘middle-France’ (not really the same as ‘middle-England’ is it?) will use the vote to punish him! Proving, once again, that the EU is more about nationalism than anything else, I suppose…

I wonder will PM Blair allow us to vote on the constitution? Will he, like Chirac, sends us all, each and every one, a full copy of the constitution? Probably not, if ID cards are going to cost £300 a piece, he’s probably skint already!

One final thing: my future-parents-in-law live in France, but as they are British/Polish they cannot vote in European elections, the same is true over here for my German pal, and was the same for all of my family in Ireland. Fair enough, you may say, but how does it work out that you can vote in local and general elections (at least ,this is true in Ireland an d Britain) if you are a ‘foreign national’, but you can’t - even though you are a European - vote in your base-country’s European elections?!?!!? I can never quite work this one out - surely it should be all or nothing? Very odd indeed!