This article was first published in Brexit Central and we republish with its kind permission.

Part 1 was published on Independence Daily here.

 

The next year a commission of the House of Lords, chaired by Lord Hope of Craighead, examined Corpus Juris and published a report (HL 62) rejecting it. However, at a conference in Tampere that year, the Blair Government put forward the idea of Mutual Recognition by member states of each other’s judicial decisions. This eventually led to the adoption of the European Arrest Warrant in 2003. It was opposed at the time by the Tory Party, but later, when they were in office, it was touted by May and David Cameron as a necessary tool for combating crime. Yet its main feature is that it dispenses with the need to show or indicate any evidence of wrong-doing to the court that is expected to extradite a suspect. It was presumably assumed by the MPs who blithely and blindly approved the measure, that the requesting state must have already gathered evidence before issuing the warrant, as is the normal practice in Britain. And that this evidence would be produced shortly after extradition had taken place.

What is unappreciated even by lawyers and law-givers in Britain, is that as often as not there is no evidence yet gathered by requesting states in Europe, since their procedures do not need any evidence previously gathered of a prima facie case to answer, in order to arrest and imprison someone. In numbers of cases this has caused considerable controversy in the UK. So far the argument that the EAW is illegitimate since it is repugnant to Magna Carta (sec. 38) has not yet been tested in court.

Each Continental country has, not only a legal system that is quite alien to our own, but also police forces that are very different from ours. Ours are typically unarmed, locally recruited, commanded and deployed, and tasked with the prevention and detection of crime. Theirs are lethally armed at all times, nationally recruited and deployed, organised under a military central command, and tasked chiefly with the maintenance of public order.

Some 15 years ago, Brussels decided to set up its own “European Gendarmerie Force”. Eight EU member states are at present contributing their own “police forces with military status” to this Federal riot-police force, and they are training side by side in barracks in Vicenza, Northern Italy, being welded into a single body. So far they have been wearing an EU armband over their national uniforms, and have progressed to a unified headgear. Doubtless they will in due course be issued with a “European” uniform…

Under article 6.3 of the Treaty of Velsen, signed by the contributing states, they may be deployed in any state “with its consent”. What is perhaps not appreciated is that once they have set their boots on the territory of a member state, they will not be obliged to leave if that State says it withdraws its consent, for they owe allegiance only to Brussels.

The referendum debate in 2016 took place very largely around arguments of trade and control of borders. The issue of security was almost entirely neglected. Yet if the result had gone the other way, if the Remain vote had won, the powers that be, in Brussels and in Westminster, would surely have taken this as a total acceptance by the British people of the entire EU project – hook, line and sinker. We would have found ourselves subjected to the full nine yards, namely:

  • No more opt-outs or rebates
  • Doubtless in due course adoption of the euro, as provided by the Lisbon Treaty
  • Not just the European Arrest Warrant, which is a stepping stone to Corpus Juris, but the full Corpus Juris itself
  • The amalgamation of our armed services into a unified EU Defence Force.

We would have found ourselves inextricably bound in, a province of the European ‘Empire’. The danger, however, is not ended.

At present, we have Mrs May still at the helm and she will remain there until a successor can be found, maybe until mid-to late July. She is on record (Hansard) as having said, in reply to a Parliamentary Question by Dominic Raab in June 2012 when she was Home Secretary, through her Minister James Brokenshire, that “of course” she would call in “special intervention units from our EU allies onto British soil” if she “saw the need”. This would mean French Gendarmes, Italian Carabinieri, Spanish Guardia Civil – the very forces that make up the European Gendarmerie Force. Once here they would not leave, if asked to by a new British government. They would take orders only from their masters in Brussels, who claim supremacy over us.

This incredibly reckless, some might say treasonous, statement, has passed completely under the radar, unnoticed and uncommented upon by all. Her potential successors – including Dominic Raab who elicited this statement from her – must be asked to comment on it. The safety of the realm demands that nobody who does not reject it outright should be allowed near the levers of power.

She had also said she intended to sign a Security Treaty with the EU, “after Brexit”. She went to Munich to say she was “unconditionally” committed to this. Not only that, her then Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, told Parliament in 2017 that even after Brexit the Government aimed for us to remain a member of Europol, and to keep the European Arrest Warrant as is. A possible successor to Theresa May, Boris Johnson, is rumoured to have offered the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer to Amber Rudd if she backs his leadership bid…

We can thus see that while the British people have been engrossed in a debate about jobs and trade and prosperity, a spider’s web net of steel has been quietly spun around us, by the clever fellows in Brussels and their willing or ignorant accomplices amongst our own politicians. We still have a chance to break free, before the net closes in.

Whoever takes over from Theresa May must reject her “unconditional commitment” to accepting these fetters on our national – and personal – freedom. The European Arrest Warrant must be reformed, so that a British court is empowered to see, and assess, the evidence against a suspect, before granting extradition. Habeas Corpus must not be sacrificed.

Otherwise Napoleon will be having the last laugh on us after all.

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