The IGC, it is said, is the final chance to stop the emergence of the Euro-superstate. Depending on which way it goes, the doom of Britain is at hand. A complete European constitution is being readied for foisting upon us. European law, product of the infamous Code Napoleon, is about to efface habeas corpus and the rest of the common law. A European army beckons, wiping out national control, by-passing Nato, and giving corrupt or incompetent Brussels bureaucrats a handle on the life and death of British soldiers.
Tax is about to be forcibly harmonised.
And, of course, the secret agenda is being furthered, by Britain's very participation in this monstrosity, of the merger of the pound into the euro. Yet all of these things have been canvassed by reputedly serious papers as the hidden purpose behind it, the insidious pattern of which Britain must beware, the test therefore of how the British negotiators perform. In the defence field, Lord Owen and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, once persons of measured judgment, were displaying their lurid plumage of alarm yesterday. Across the whole arena, William Hague, who occupies a position from which some faint vestige of veracity was once expected, sprays generalised terrors that long ago stopped even attempting to connect with the truth. But they escape unexamined.