The old eurosceptic Independence/Democracy group in the European Parliament was kept more or less respectable largely thanks to the influence of its former joint leader Jens-Peter Bonde, who stemmed from the relatively moderate lefty side of euroscepticism. Now, however, Bonde has retired and his old June Movement was wiped out at the European elections – along with its Polish equivalent – and the Ind/Dem group died with them.

But now, from the ashes, UKIP leader Nigel Farage (the former joint leader of Ind/Dem) has managed to salvage an alliance – with 30 MEPs from 8 countries (where the EP requires 25 MEPs from 7 countries for an official group to qualify for funding and committee places). But where the old Ind/Dem group was confined largely to criticising the EU and calling for repatriation of powers to the member states by the restraining influence of the left-wing anti-EU parties, this new group appears to be taking a decidedly more hardline nationalist approach, characterised primarily by strongly anti-immigration rhetoric.

UKIP dominates the new group with 13 MEPs, and for this we should be grateful – because they seem to be one of the most moderate parties in the thing.

Their major partners are Italy’s Lega Nord, with 9 representatives. What do these chaps – part of Berlusconi’s broad church right-wing governing coalition – believe? Well, let’s ask Wikipedia…

The party is often described as “xenophobic” and “anti-immigrant”. [Leader] Umberto Bossi himself, described African immigrants as Bingo-bongos, in an interview suggested opening fire on the boats of illegal immigrants who would disembark in Italy.

In 2002 Erminio Boso, a Lega Nord politician from the Province of Trento, proposed a separate train for immigrants and Italians. In 2003 he former Mayor of Treviso, Giancarlo Gentilini, while in office, spoke about those he called “immigrant slackers”, saying, “We should dress them up like hares and bang-bang-bang”.

Add to that the call by one of the party’s deputy mayors for “an ethnic cleansing of faggots”, and I’m sure you’ll agree that UKIP have chosen some regular charmers. But it doesn’t end there…

There’s also a couple of MEPs from the anti-immigration Dansk Folkeparti, whose leader, Pia Kjærsgaard, lost a 2003 libel action against a political opponent who accused the party of having “racist policies” – making the DPP an officially racist organisation. DPP politicians have also come under fire for comparing the Qu-ran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf (evidently unaware of Godwin’s Law), while others are on record as saying “In many ways, we are anti-Muslims”.

Slightly less mad is the MEP from the Dutch Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij – they just want the Netherlands to be reformed along strict Calvinist lines, with all laws to be derived from the Bible.

There’s also a couple of True Finns (Perussuomalaiset), who have also been involved with the Tories’ new centre-right eurosceptic grouping, one of whose party members is currently facing two years in jail on race hate charges for describing all foreigners as “criminals”, and asylum-seekers as “gang-rapists” and “parasites”.

Then there’s a couple of MEPs from the delightful Greek Laïkós Orthódoxos Synagermós – former members of Ind/Dem who have been repeatedly accused of anti-semitism (including their founder/leader, who is alleged to have called for a debate on “the Auschwitz and Dachau myth”, claimed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are a reality, and blamed “the Jews” for the September 11th 2001 attacks.

The new group has already been described as being “far-right lite” – with UKIP accused of hoping to tone down some of the more overtly racist/fascist rhetoric of their new partners and repackaging the strongly anti-immigration stance that is the new group’s one binding ideology into a more friendly, populist package.

But will it last? The last racist group in the European Parliament, the short-lived Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty soon fell apart when its members all realised that the other members were, well, filthy foreigners. Could the same happen to UKIP’s new group? And is UKIP – a party that has striven hard in the last few years to shake off its past image as being xenophobic and anti-foreigner – really going to be prepared to be associated with parties with such unpleasant associations?

Yet here’s some confusion… While UKIP refuse to back the Conservative party in the UK thanks to the Tories being centre-right eurosceptics but – crucially – not withdrawalist like UKIP, they seem quite happy to do business with all these parties in their new group in the European Parliament – none of whom, bar UKIP themselves, advocate withdrawing from the EU.

So what is it that makes UKIP think that they have more in common with these European parties than they do with the Tories in the UK? Because the only thing I can see that ties these parties together beyond the standard centre-right euroscepticism that would see them as good fits for the Tories own new group is precisely the hardline, frequently (allegedly) racist approach to immigration.

After yesterday’s confusion – with one MEP leaving and another joining, exposing this new British Conservatives-led group as a fairly fragile alliance – now we again have renewed concerns being voiced: This time from among the British Conservatives themselves.

Many Tory MEPs were decidedly unhappy about David Cameron’s pledge to pull out of the EPP – knowing, as they do, that being a sizable part of the largest bloc in the European Parliament (partnered with various sensibly mainstream parties, such as those headed by Sarkozy and Merkel) gave them significantly more influence than being the largest part of a far smaller grouping (partnered with various less than loveable minor parties).

Indeed, just about the only Tory MEP to be vocally supportive of ditching the EPP was the strongly anti-EU Daniel Hannan – the eloquent internet celebrity, whose verbosity and intellect masks an attitude towards the EU that wouldn’t look out of place in UKIP. Why was Hannan so keen to ditch the EPP? Well, they’d already ditched him – he was effectively forced out in February 2008 after (fairly admirably, to be fair – though he certainly milked it) standing up to a point of principle over parliamentary procedure. Plus, of course, the staunchly anti-EU Hannan tends towards the withdrawalist take on the EU, and so even the relatively mild acceptance of European integration shown by the EPP was a bit much for him.

Hannan, however, would seem to have the ear of similarly strongly eurosceptic Shadow Foreign Secretary and deputy Tory leader William Hague – him of the ill-chosen “Ten days to save the pound” campaign back when he was Tory leader in 2001 – and it would seem to be Hague who is the guiding hand behind Tory EU strategy. In the last few weeks, Hannan was even sent off around the various member states to talk to (and campaign for) potential partners for the new group. The other Tory MEPs appear to be almost entirely ignored by the Cameron/Hague leadership.

Had they listened to the concern of the majority of their MEPs at the time rather than just Hannan, however, perhaps the Conservatives wouldn’t now be in such a pickle. Not only has the party already come under attack for the unsavoury nature of some of its new EP allies, but now even its own MEPs are starting to voice their concerns in public:

“Despite what David Cameron has said there are already indications that some of the members have links with extremist groups and I feel very, very uncomfortable with that,” [Conservative MEP Edward McMillan-Scott] said. “I know the party has made inquiries but I will make my own investigations into the background of these people.”

The other Tory MEPs are currently giving every indication of continuing to back the leadership in Westminster, and to be prepared to push ahead and make the best of this new group. But for how much longer? Rumours are already circulating of deep disquiet within the Tory ranks in Brussels – while outside observers continue to look on in amazement, scratching their heads at the reasoning of a major political party from one of the EU’s largest and most influential member states, that’s near certain to be in power domestically within a year, which has decided to make friends with small opposition parties with extremist views and a bunch of random individual MEPs, when it could be hobnobbing in the EPP with the most influential political leaders on the continent.

On a diplomatic level, this Tory strategy still makes no sense to me. What exactly are they hoping to achieve by teaming up with this bunch of suspect no-marks? Or is it as simple as the Tories have given up on the EU, and are prepared to sacrifice influence and friendships on the continent to try and win back the floating eurosceptic voters they need if they are to have any hope of securing a decent majority in a domestic general election? Because although it’s true that they can achieve nothing unless they’re in power, in the current global economic climate they’re also going to have a tough time achieving anything substantive without strong and willing European allies.

Well, according to the European Parliament it can go jump in a lake. Because they’ve voted not to respect the result of the Irish referendum (constitutionally required, lest we forget) on the Lisbon Treaty.

What we effectively have here is an admission that referenda will not count even if countries do hold them. An admission that the EU will simply ignore any member state that has concerns with the Lisbon Treaty, now that the elites have come to an agreement.

What we have here, in other words, is an admission that the European Parliament does not believe in democracy.

NOT.
GOOD.
ENOUGH.

(See also Devil’s Kitchen, with a good point about Tory – and UKIP – hypocrisy)

All this, of course, while allegations of endemic corruption amongst MEPs are beginning to snowball. Come on, EP – you’re supposed to be the respectable, democratic bit that we can all point to and say “hey, look – the EU’s going in the right direction, at least!” Get your sodding act in gear.

Quick question: why is there so little condemnation from the pro-EU camp of the European Parliament’s recent actions in trying to stifle eurosceptic proponents of referenda on the Lisbon Treaty?

To redress the balance: I’m pro-EU and I’m anti-referendum – and I think this is an absolute disgrace.

The evidence of double-standards is palpable – people and MEPs protesting against things the EU machine wants to do are stifled and harassed; those who protest about other issues are allowed to continue on their way.

Yes, a bunch of eurosceptics dressed up in chicken costumes to highlight calls for referenda because they mistakenly think that the Lisbon Treaty is in some way more significant than Nice, Amsterdam, Maastricht, etc. etc. is ridiculous and stupid. Eurosceptic MEPs launching long speeches and using the regulations of the European Parliament to try and get their point across may be frustrating. But both of these are perfectly within the rules.

And, of course, most importantly it’s why they were elected. You don’t vote for a eurosceptic MEP for them to faithfully go along with everything the EU wants. You vote for them because you want them to oppose things you disagree with – even if that does include the entire EU project.

Yes, they may be irritating. Yes, many of them may be tits (Kilroy, I’m looking at you). But they are elected representatives who are doing what they were elected to do. Preventing them from doing this is not only to breach the rules of the European Parliament – it is effectively to disenfranchise their voters.

What happened to Friends of Europe Secretary-General Giles Meritt’s eminently sensible advice for the EU to start engaging with eurosceptics to help identify areas for reform? What happened to the European Commission’s supposed plan to the promise to listen that came with the “New Commission approach to dialogue and communication with European citizens”?

If the EU is ever going to get widespread and active popular support, it needs to show that it is democratic and that it listens. This is something I kept returning to in my dLiberation coverage for openDemocracy last year. It’s something that various EU bodies have said themselves countless times over the last decade or so. Yet time and time again, the EU gives the impression that it will only ever listen to those who agree with it.

Stifling dissent is not the way to win support – it’s the way to harden opposition and drive more people into your opponents’ camp. Shame on you, European Parliament.

Update: Oh, and this. If you want people to support the political system you’re trying to build up, you need openness and transparency – not secrecy and corruption – from your elected representatives.

The European Parliament is meant to be the jewel in the EU’s crown – constantly referred to as the proof that the organisation is democratic and accountable.

It needs to get its act in gear, if you ask me…

To be fair, it’s taken the far right Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty European Parliament group – that delightful organisation that combines everyone from convicted fraudsters to French presidential runners-up and the granddaughters of fascist dictators – far longer to disintegrate than I expected. After all, within a few days of the group forming there were all kinds of little scandals that looked like it would face a premature end.

However, since January there’s been very little cropping up about the strange assortment of racist idiots that makes up the group – my Google News alert, set up eleven months ago on the group’s formation, has sent through a grand total of 28 emails in that time, few of them overly exciting. The last was when the group’s sole British member, ex-UKIPer Ashley Mote, got done for fraud back in August. As with so many eurosceptic MEPs (*cough*Kilroy*cough*), it seemed that most of the ITS lot were more than happy to slag off the EU while still happily rolling in to Brussels to collect their pay cheques and expenses, without actually doing much of anything either to advance their own cause (for which they were, of course, elected) or to add constructively to the various bits of legislation that have been knocking around over the last year, and which could be improved (or have their impact lessened) by a bit of constructive criticism.

Now, however, they’re getting more press again – and hilarious press it is too. Because, as Der Spiegel notes, it’s all due to the fact that western European quasi-fascist xenophobes rather look down on eastern European quasi-fascist xenophobes. And, sadly for the eastern Europeans, the western Europeans also have very little interest in distinguishing between Romanians and Roma, Serbs or Slavs, Slovaks or Slovenians. That’s the thing with holding prejudices, you see – the details don’t really matter, it’s all about the broad group generalisations, even when the group is an entirely artificial one that exists only in your own head.

As I’ve been rather busy recently, I’m late with this, and soMr Eugenides has already summed the situation up nicely:

“It must come as a shock to these delightful people to learn that, as far as their quasi-fascist mates are concerned, they all look the same anyway”

It is rather amusing – but also shows one of the key problems for eurosceptics EU-wide: if you want to fight the EU, you need a broader, cross-boarder coalition with likeminded groups. But when you are campaigning to get rid of the influence foreigners have in your country, and your speeches are packed full of nationalistic rhetoric, it can be very hard to keep such coalitions going, as you’re bound to insult one of your allies at some point.

Plus, of course, the very fact that you need to build coalitions with people from other member states, erm… rather goes to show that cross-border co-operation can sometimes be the only way to get things done…

Ashley Mote MEP, a former UKIPer (who even they wouldn’t have in the party more than a few weeks) who went on to join the controversial far right “Identity, Sovereignty, Tradition” group in the European Parliament, is a bit of a hero of mine.

He’s been tirelessly fighting the evil Brussels money wasting machine ever since he was elected on the UKIP ticket back in 2004 – and now, finally, after a trial that’s been dragged out for a good three years… he’s been done for fraudulently claiming £73,000 in state benefits.

No idea how much the trial will have cost, but considering an MEP’s salary is somewhere in the region of £60,000 (not including expenses, etc.) that means he’s managed to syphon off – at the bare minimum – a quarter of a million pounds at taxpayers’ expense.

Plus, hilariously – and almost unbelievably – Mote is not only a member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control (he he he!), but also a substitute on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. A financial fraudster. On the committees for Budgetary Control and Economic and Monetary Affairs. Perfect!

He’s even had the gall to challenge the procedures in place to scrutinise the EU’s accounts (e.g.) and to attack the British government for *ahem* wasting taxpayers’ money on the EU (he he he!). And if that’s not brilliant enough, he’s also had the balls to accuse the EU of – wait for it – not doing enough to combat fraud!

In other words, had he not got so many close ties to pretty much every anti-EU party in Brussels, and were it not for UKIP’s poor scrutiny of its candidates (or is that simply desperation for any candidates?) having allowed him to get elected on the dodgy list system in the first place, Mote could have been an ideal example of the rampant corruption that’s supposedly endemic in the EU for the anti-EU lot to use at every given opportunity. As it is he’s just yet another example of how so many nutty single-issue political groups can’t be trusted to do anything right. Hurrah!

I love Ashley Mote. Almost as much value for money as Robert Kilroy Silk (remember him?)

Anyone even slightly familiar of the chain of events that led to the fall of the Soviet Union and European communism will be aware of the importance of the Solidarity movement. Short version: it was one of the sparks that helped bring the entire system crashing down – a popular, grass-roots protest against the repression of the communist state that showed beyond all doubt that the dictatorship of the proletariat was little more than dictating TO the proletariat.

As such, you’d think that any suggestion that either Tadeusz Mazowiecki – one of Solidarity’s leaders, imprisoned for his crime of freedom of expression, and Poland’s first non-communist Prime Minister after the Second World War – or Bronislaw Geremek – another leading member of Solidarity who went on to become Poland’s Foreign Minister in the 1990s – would have pretty impeccable credentials as opponents of communism, right?

Not according to the current Polish government.

I’m late with this, and had been meaning to do something earlier – not least after Alex Harrowell called for a blogland attempt to show solidarity with Solidarity a few days ago.

In short, the Polish government has passed a law demanding – not for the first time – that “leading public figures” (journalists and academics as well as politicians) sign an oath stating that they are not, nor ever have been communists, and that they never “collaborated” with the old communist regime.

Yes, this is a way of disposing of political enemies. No, it should not be allowed. In fact, I’m pretty damn certain that under the terms of Poland’s EU membership, it isn’t.

That, however, has not prevented this controversial Polish law from depriving Geremek of his – democratically elected, please note – seat in the European Parliament – depriving not only his constituents of their democratic representative, but the EU as a whole from benefiting from his decades of political experience. This press release gives some of the background (and three cheeers to British MEP Graham Watson for being the one to bring up the question.

There are all kinds of potential ramifications for the working of the EU if this is allowed to go unchallenged – after all, it means that any member state could unilaterally decide to disqualify its sitting MEPs and keep replacing them until it has ones it likes, which is hardly democratic.

But Geremek is just the most high-profile tip of the iceberg, thanks to holding elected office (Mazowiecki is currently less prominent outside Poland, despite being co-founder of one of Poland’s most prominent liberal political parties and the author of the preamble to the current Polish constitution).

Hundreds – thousands, even – of Poles are also being forced to sign this declaration. Politicans, civil servants, journalists. Even ignoring the distasteful nature of such forced declarations and the stupidity of such a thing in a country in which anyone working in the public sector aged over the age of about 35 most likely had to work with the old communist authorities at some point, this law is spreading beyond Poland in its effect. It is not just a national issue.

Because not only has an MEP now been deprived of his seat thanks to devious and distasteful machinations within his own nation state, now people who are not even Polish nationals – indeed, who were not even in Poland during communist rule – are being forced to sign. How do I know? Because the chap who runs the Poland-centred Beatroot blog has been told he has to if he wishes to continue working as a journalist in the country.

Poland is in sore need of its own version of Edward Murrow at the moment. The web might be the answer. Clamp down on freedom of speech and freedom of association? No thanks, chum.

Poland is increasingly becoming a continent-wide problem – and if the current Polish government isn’t challenged soon, the damage may take years to fix. So, as the Beatroot asks, sign the petition in support of Geremek, and make some noise about what’s happening to both him and others in Poland. Write to MPs, write to MEPs, blog about it, whatever. We may all be powerless as individuals, but the whole point of Solidarity was that together we can achieve great things. It’s increasingly beginning to look like it’s time for a new, Europe-wide Solidarity movement in support of Polish freedom from the new lot of nutjobs they’ve got in charge.

Added Polish unpleasantness, just to emphasise the point:

Nice lot, eh?

Barely has the new far-right European Parliament group “Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty” managed to form than it is starting to fracture.

What is it about these nationalist types that makes them so prone to infighting? (As if we didn’t know…) And why does it always seem to be a former UKIP person who’s responsible? It used to be Kilroy, this time it’s Ashley Mote, an independent British MEP who was booted out of UKIP over allegations of fraud and tax evasion (he’s still trying to evade going to court by claiming immunity as an MEP and taking his case through European Courts – rather entertainingly for someone who wants Britain to pull out of the [tag]EU[/tag] because it provides us with no benefits…)

And why has Mote caused a ruckus? Well, at the press conference launching the new grouping of mismatched nationalists, patriots, xenophobes, racists, Holocaust-deniers and fascists, he accused one of his fellow members of being a bit silly and politically inexperienced for publicly denouncing “the Jewish establishment” and attempting to justify his hatred of gypsies.

Wait, someone on the far right not liking the Jews? Whatever next?

Mote, please note, did not tell off his fellow MEP for being so silly as to use the term “the Jewish establishment” as if we were still in the early 1930s. He didn’t point out that, erm, that’s at best sailing fairly close to anti-Semitism. Nope, he told him off because

“‘I think the comments… reflect the inexperience and lack of political nous of the young man concerned.’”

To translate:

“How could you be so bloody stupid? We’ve only just formed this group and have to try to con people into thinking we’re not fascists for a bit – lay off the anti-Semitism, gypsy-bashing and public hate of anyone who doesn’t conform to your prejudices for just a little bit, can’t you? I know you’re an eastern European and you guys aren’t exactly known for your brains, but really… Bloody foreigners…”

This new lot could be fun…

Heads up, people – ID cards propaganda phase two is under way, and it’s starting in the gloomy recesses of the EU where no newspaper ever dares send its reporters.

Today the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) will be addressed by two British representatives, Simon Watkin (Chair of the Co-operation in Criminal Matters Working Group – which effectively doesn’t exist according to Google – and former Private Secretary to David Blunkett during his time as Home Secretary, where he helped found the Home Office’s Hi-Tech Crime Team and worked as head of the Covert Investigations Policy Team) and David Johnson (from the Metropolitan Police’s Special Operations department).

Today’s meeting will be followed on Wednesday morning by a debate with Home Secretary Charles Clarke and Justice, Freedom and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini in the European Parliament on “ways to combat terrorism more effectively without undermining civil liberties”.

The aim of both Clarke’s Wednesday debate and today’s meeting? To convince the EU to legislate to enable law enforcement agencies to access and store pretty much any information they want from “public communications networks” – i.e. phone calls, emails, ISP records, the works – “for the purpose of combatting crime, including terrorism”. Basically, phone tapping (and its various internet cousins) would become fine and admissable in court. But lurking behind this is the spectre of ID.

The emphasis in that quote above is mine – it comes from this.pdf of today’s Committee agenda, and seems to mark a subtle shift in the government’s rhetoric and tactics for all of their planned electronic surveillance of their own population. Remember that whole business with Tony McNulty admitting that the government had “over-sold” ID cards (at a Fabian Society meeting sponsored by, erm, a company specialising in IT and biometrics, according to Private Eye)? That was the first clue that the approach was changing.

In the wake of Charles Clarke’s admission that ID cards wouldn’t have prevented the London bombings – not to mention the fact that the terrorists all seem deliberately to have carried or left existing forms of ID and that the majority were “clean skins” never flagged as potential threats – any claims that ID cards would help prevent terrorist attacks seem like even more nonsense than they did before. So now it will be crime in general which is the professed target, with the few counter-terrorism benefits they can come up with tagged on the end.

But simply shifting the emphasis to win over the gullible public won’t be enough. Opposition to ID has been growing amongst MPs, and with his reduced majority Blair can’t be certain of getting an ID card bill through unamended any more. Then there’s the added – and more serious as far as Blair’s concerned – problem of the Chancellor. Gordon is worried about cost, and the Treasury could end up vetoing any further “progress” towards the database state.

British delegate to today’s meeting Simon Watkin has long been aware of the difficulties of getting legal permission for “data retention” as this report of an October 2003 conference demonstrates – he mentions the restrictive “need for primary legislation” twice in the space of a couple of paragraphs. It’s just too tricky to get the concept of this kind of ID card through a British parliament – the more they learn about it, the less they’re going to like it. It’s just not very British, let’s face it, and gives the state far more potential power over the individual than it has posessed in centuries. That’s enough to make a lot of backbenchers very squeamish indeed.

So, your own Treasury is reluctant and your own parliament can’t be trusted to vote the way you want them to? Simple – pop over the Channel and try and get your plans imposed on the country from Brussels (or, in this case, Strasbourg). ID cards – even if not quite such hardcore ones as Blair’s lot want to impose – have existed in several EU states for years. Most can’t see the problem, and would likely not need to change much should some new EU legislation over ID come into force – in Germany, Italy and France, not to mention several other countries, ID cards are simply a fact of life. So French, German, Italian and God knows how many other MEPs would – the Blair government hopes – simply not understand the fuss, and vote through new legislation, to become binding on Britain, without even thinking about it.

Game, set and match Blair – ID cards get introduced without a vote in parliament, Gordon can’t complain about the cost without getting into trouble with Brussels, and any public complaints about the new bits of intrusive plastic can be fobbed off with the old “it’s the EU’s fault – it’s out of our hands” excuses which get trotted out pretty much any time European governments think they can get away with it.

Not good, folks. If you can track down reports of these meetings, or hear of any more, I reckon they’d be grateful of a tad more publicity – after all, the whole point of this scheme is to have more information, surely?

Following yesterday’s decision by the European Parliament to approve the constitution, things are kicking off a bit (even though the parliament’s decision actually means very little with all these referenda coming up).

Blogging Labour MEP Richard Corbett, co-rapporteur for the European Parliament’s report on the European Constitution, has done a piece for EU Observer trying to convince Eurosceptics to vote for the constitution.

He points out near the end that “If it fails to be adopted, we can look forward to several years of bitter wrangling on the future structure of the enlarged EU.” Personally I reckon that could be a very worthwhile exercise – rushing things through tends to lead to mistakes being made, but at the same time I think the point Mr Corbett is trying to make is the old one about “too many cooks”.

Eurosceptic EU Serf – I suspect like many of his ideological kin – remains unconvinced by Corbett’s arguments, and provides a handy point-by-point demolition job of the article: “So far each treaty we have signed has been a vehicle for further integration. Why should this document be any different? …The EU seems to work like a bicycle, it needs to continuously go forward. Perhaps we can all now fall off.”

North Sea Diaries notes that a quarter of MEPs voted against, while Martin at Ironies, a Eurosceptic blog I only found out about yesterday, points out that a majority of three countries’ MEPs voted against the constitution – Britain, the Czech Republic and Poland. The Financial Times article he links to notes that 40 of 70 British MEPs voted against – where were the rest of them for such an historic vote?

Not constitution-specific, per se, at Straight Banana Toby has, as promised, started a series of articles which should be worth a read: Sentimentality (1), Sentimentality (2) – European Parliament vs House of Commons, and Anti Auntie – a discussion of the perrennial Eurosceptic claim that the BBC is biased in favour of the EU.

Perhaps it is the length of these which has prompted EU Referendum’s latest attack on Toby – including outing his real-world identity (bad form – and unecessary really, as it’s fairly obvious anyway). I am assuming that this must be an example of how “the Eurosceptic sites are dominating the high ground, displaying wit, humour and depth of coverage that is not matched by the Europhiles”, as EU Referendum’s Richard North claims. Personally, I’d say it’s a rather petty jab combined with a generalisation based on, well, not a lot of anything, really.

As I have pointed out in a comment to Lose the Delusion’s post on North’s latest snipe, it rather appears from his blogroll that North rarely bothers to read pro-EU blogs other than Straight Banana (which I’d say often displays wit and humour, although what with being run by one chap with a full-time job is unsurprisingly not quite so obsessive with its coverage), so quite where he gets this idea from I have no idea… Perhaps he may wish to elaborate at some point, although frankly I’m not too bothered – although North is evidently intelligent and knows his subject well, he has a tendency not so much to argue as to lecture, not so much to refute other arguments as to simply say “that’s wrong”. It reminds me a bit of my Dad over Christmas lunch…

However, what North’s comments do (sort of) point out is that the eurobloggosphere (certainly the Anglophone part of it) does seem to be somewhat dominated by Eurosceptic voices. Of the fairly regular, non-official pro-EU lot who try and focus on the EU more than anything else, there’s really only here, Straight Banana and Lose the Delusion that I’m aware of – and until a few months ago Straight Banana was on its own. Anyone know of any more? Who has North been reading to get such a poor impression of the internet’s pro-EU voices?