Curtain Raiser to the 2013 Constitutional & Currency Crisis

"Who should rule?" asked Plato, as discussed in my post to Samizdata almost ten years ago on the subject of the convention on a constitution for Europe, linked here.

Yesterday's rejection by a French Constitutional Court of the 75% upper tax rate passed by the elected socialist government, (Time report here,) is one sign of the constitutional crisis breaking out across the globe as the dreadful wasted year of 2012 comes to its last gasp.

The stand-off in the USA known as the "fiscal cliff", but nothing of the kind, is another such dispute over where in today's democracies final authority lies. The Executive Order on salaries issued by President Obama, see here, is further evidence of the cracks appearing in systems of governance worldwide!

Both France and the USA are sovereign nations, operating under written constitutions, so we can leave their legal experts to resolve these issues.

In Britain, with its Common Law complicated by its Treaty obligations to the EU, the crisis becomes less clear. PM Cameron in a New Year message has avoided the questions on Europe that Russian sources yesterday revealed he will cover in a speech on 16th January, yet one suspects passage into the New Year will reveal he has left matters too late.

The initiative on the EU in the UK has now passed to Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, who having been silenced in the European Parliament by a flip of his microphone switch, will all the more readily be listened to by his countrymen when Cameron's latest unacceptable fudge has been publicly verbalized.

 As I tweeted yesterday, Parliament can repeal the European Communities ACT 1972 making EU law no longer applicable within the UK and thereafter renounce and annul the TEU and TFEU, (the now governing EU Treaties) under the Vienna Conventions on International Treaties, background discussion on which topic is here for those interested in the legalities/difficulties.

The fate of Britain's place within the EU, and given our massive contributions to that damaged and flawed institution, the fate of the EU itself, will critically rest upon the policies and ideas put forward by the UKIP leader Mr Farage in his respsonse to what the Prime Minister, David Cameron actually says, once he finally condescends to address his fellow countrymen on the burning issue for this country and the world, apparently on 16th January, if the above linked Russian sources are to be believed.

UKIP will hopefully spend the next two weeks preparing their response to the speech, probably accurately forecast in the Russian comment. They should do so in the knowledge that they may well be called to give effect to these actions and policies much sooner than any of us could now possibly expect, the damn has long been breached and leaking, once it bursts events may move with frightening speed.

The terrifying incompetence in the EU which must be overthrown is well illustrated in the Russian quote from EU Commission Vice President Viviane Reding:

One of the weirdest arguments against Britain's stepping out of the EU came from vice-president of the European Commission and Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Viviane Reding, who, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, attacked the British government's stance.

"Do you want criminals and pedophiles running around freely on the streets? Is that really in the United Kingdom’s interest? It is crazy," said Ms. Reding. Most probably, she sincerely believes that national police are less capable of handling crime than the pan-European bureaucracy, and has neglected the fact that it is the EU's constant policy of licking the boots of all kinds of perverts that actually encourages pedophiles and the like.

Such is the calibre of people and ideas that have run our country into the ground for forty years this Tuesday, it must now end!