Richard North at the EU Referendum blog did sterling work transcribing a Radio 4 encounter featuring Sir Stephen Wall who is all in favour of this Europe thing and then Helen commented in detail on one section. However, awful as that section is, it seems to me that it is actually worth fisking his entire comments so here goes. Note that a) I have copied only Sir Stephens remarks and b) I'm going on a transcript not on what I myself heard.
SW: Well, I think this is a determining moment for us, for Britain and the British people do have a chance to take a decision which obviously will be about the constitutional treaty, but on the back of that, about how they see our place in Europe.
As I always like to say, its good to start off agreeing with ones Fiskee and I agree with this; it is a determining moment and it is about how we see ourselves in Europe.
And I actually think that what the constitutional treaty has done is valuable to us because we are living at a time where not only economically do we need the co-operation we have with our partners the European Union through the rules that the European Union has, but we live in a pretty dangerous world where the so-called "soft power" of the European Union is extraordinarily important
I think we're about done with the agreement section. That didn't last long. We do indeed benefit from our free-trade with Europe but I wonder sometimes whether the monetary benefit we get outweighs the amount of money we contribute to pay for the EU each year (approx £4 billion in 2004 IIRC). However that is just a minor matter, a more major matter is this "soft-power" thing. I can't think of any situation where the EU's "soft-power" has done anything except reward tyrants and despots. From Srebenica to Sudan "soft-power" is pretty much a name for "we ask you to stop being beastly and promise to pay you money if you do so, so you claim to stop, pocket the money, and then continue on as before".
We’re going to have to develop a relationship with China which will be the big emerging superpower of this century. We have to manage the issue of climate change. We’re seeing in Sudan the first war of climate change over access to resources. We have to deal with Iran which is developing nuclear weapons. You can’t deal with these issues through force, you have to deal with them by influence and the European Union through its aid and trade relationships is a huge democratic force for beneficial change in the world.
China: we see a posisbility of sucking up to the chinese and making some money while the evil Yankees are being principled. If we do it right then when the Chinese have enough of our armaments to threaten the US they won't threaten us too. This is kind of the way that weak children give bullies sweets so that they won't be beaten up in breaktime
By blaming the war(s) in Sudan on climate change we can hint that - yes - its all Amerikkka's fault because everyone knows that global warming is caused by fat Yanks driving around in SUVs eating hamburgers.
We are trying the same treatment on Iran as we are on China.
Since the EU doesn't have any military force and no budget to make one we'll make a benefit out of a necessity by repeating the slogan that "force never solved anything".
Finally the bit about the EU's trade and aid relationships being a huge democratic force for change is wrong on so many levels. The EU's aid mostly props up despotic tyrants and its byzantine bureaucratic trade protectionism stops developing farmers from selling crops for EU cash. This is a huge force for change? I'm quite impressed that Sir Stephen managed to say this with a straight face. Perhaps fortunately, however, he wasn't forced to continue because Jim Naughtie did a smooth interview bit that lead to this:
SW: Well, I am not sure that’s altogether true because opinion polls when people are asked what most concerns you, now at the top of the list people say defence and foreign policy issues because I think people are rightly worried about what kind of world we live in.
Now I think thats one of those opinion poll things that doesn't hold true when the same people are in the voting booth with a pencil and a piece of paper. Lots of people claim to have these sorts of feelings in public but then when they are all alone they vote for their pocketbook.
But even on the bread and butter issues, I would argue, for example, as we come to tackle the whole issue of international crime, terrorism etc, I believe that what the constitutional treaty does, by allowing for more majority voting – Britain doesn’t have to take part if it doesn’t want to – that that is actually beneficial. In the days when we were trying to settle things by intergovernmental agreement, we were incapable of reaching decisions.
Ok this bit is bizarre. Is he saying that Britain doesn't need to implement those bits it doesn't vote for? I agree that the requirement for unanimity on many things caused the EU to either fail to reach decisions or to reach flawed ones because of horse trading but I don't see that majority voting necessarily improves the situation since it just makes it easier to pass bad laws.
SW: Well, just taking the charter of fundamental rights, there are safeguards in there which on the face of the document that this cannot replace national laws and rules so there is no question of the charter of fundamental rights replacing our national labour laws. All you have to do is read the document. It’s there.
Again this is oddly phrased. What he seems to be claiming is that the charter of fundamental rights won't be legally binding. If so then this is totally untrue, unless this charter is somehow different to previous Human Rights laws which EU courts have ruled as being binding on the UK and overriding our national laws.
SW: Well the judges are going to have make the decision based on what on the face of the document and there’s a triple lock on anybody’s ability to change our own national labour laws.
This passage seems contradictory to the previous one. According to this bit the EU judges will be able to decide which EU laws apply to the UK. Quite where this produces a triple lock is unclear.
SW: We have to decide in the case of each piece of legislation whether we vote for it or against it. Overall, what the constitution does is insert a role for national parliaments in that process which hasn’t existed before, and if you look at what has happened over the years, we’re not in a situation where there’s going to be a single country called Europe. We got 25 individual nation states and collectively in terms of our economic interest, fighting terrorism, dealing with a dangerous world, it is better to be working with 24 other democracies than being out on a limb on our own.
This bit is amusing for what it leaves out. If you read the EU referendum bloggers analysis of the EU constitution stored on this site you see that while the constitution may give some power to parliament it puts whole swathes of policy beyond the reach, not only of nation parliaments but the EU bodies too. Finally the better off in than out argument is utter bunk. Think of countries such as Switzerland or Norway which seem to be doing fine outside the EU. A UK that was a member of EFTA would get the same trading rights with the EU as it does today but would not need to pay money to the EU or pay attention to EU regulations of food, fish or 101 other things.