The seductiveness of the inner circle - why Brown signed the treaty

Hurrying in after the signing was over and signing the EU 'Reform' Treaty by himself, Gordon Brown reminded me of King John when he became a vassal of the Pope and made England a fiefdom of the Papacy. Like John, he was thinking only of himself.

The treaty that Brown has signed destroys Britain’s sovereignty, Britain’s common law, and the British people’s tradition of freedom. The British people do not want it.

Labour thinks it will push it through Parliament next year without allowing the British people to vote on it. Perhaps they are right, but we do not think so. The knights of Magna Carta were slow to respond to John. They were afraid to put their heads above the parapet, but two years later in 1215 they did, and with the knights of God and all the people of London they compelled John to give his assent to the rights and liberties of Magna Carta.

And that was not the end. The knights had to fight for Magna Carta, and when John had died, they spent the remaining years of the 13th century pressing Henry III and Edward I to affirm Magna Carta. When Henry refused, they took the field against him. Montfort and the bachelor knights died, but Prince Edward, later Edward I, was forced to reaffirm Magna Carta.

In 1279 the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham, was afraid that Magna Carta was being forgotten. He ordered all his bishops to post copies on the doors of their cathedrals and threatened to excommunicate anyone who violated its protections. In 1297 Parliament told Edward I that if wanted money from them he would have to reaffirm Magna Carta. Edward affixed his seal.

Just as in the 13th century, so in the 21st. Magna Carta has to be defended. Brown and company are destroying Magna Carta. They are continuing in the idiotic and treasonous steps of their political forbears who have made one treaty after another with European leaders and have illegally given away British rights and liberties.

For a mess of pottage they have sold the British birthright.

Why? Why would Brown do it?

One reason is that he is a Socialist and Socialism is a global religion. It hates nation states. It wants one allegiance to one global state in which national politicians such as Master Blair can play lofty roles. Socialism is an ignorant religion that ignores the scientific facts of freedom, the essential connection between a people being free and being prosperous, the indisputable link between a people’s safety and education and happiness and their ability to make local decisions about their police and their schools and their livelihoods.

But there is another reason for Brown and Miliband and Blair and Heath and Clarke and Major and Heseltine and all the rest of them to support the creation of the EU and the destruction of Britain, aside from the obvious reason that they do not like Britain much, do not understand or love her history, do not forgive her imperfections and seek to support her real goodness, and do not understand political or economic science, and that reason is this –

They want to be part of the inner circle. They want to be in the circle for exactly the same reason that there are circles of girls and boys in schools and circles of men and women in clubs and at work . They want to feel that they are in a special circle and you and most other people are outside it. They think that they are something because they are in the circle. They think the circle is superb.

To walk out of the circle is frightening and, almost worse, embarrassing. Everyone in the circle will dislike them. Those men who jovially put an arm around them will give them the cold shoulder. The man or woman who leaves the circle finds her very sense of self threatened, if not her job and her lucrative contacts.

Besides, everyone in the circle thinks the same thing. They must be right. The 'cascade of information effect' leads them all over the waterfall in the same boat.

To join in fellowship with others is a good thing, but because it is a human thing it has the possibility of being terrible, even monstrous. That is the inner circle of Europe with its circle of stars. It makes grown men and women want to be part of it – to enjoy its lavish pensions and perks, to feel specially precious, to secretly enjoy their snobbish elitism, and to simultaneously feel self-righteous because they are helping to establish a new world order of high-sounding platitudes. Never mind that it will be a disaster because it ignores political science.

That is why Mr Brown signed the treaty. It is irrelevant that he did not sign it with the other plenipotentiaries. He is with them. He is too afraid to be without them. He is too afraid to stand alone for the freedom of the British people.

This is a very bad day, but it is not the end.

Thanks to CS Lewis for brilliantly developing the theme of the inner circle in The Weight of Glory. Thanks to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the Nobel Prize winners who identified the 'cascade of information' effect.