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Papers

Submitting to authority dressed as virtue

Are the British a Servile People? Idealism and the EU

Professor Kenneth Minogue

As we look at the way our country is governed now and compare it with the situation around the time of the Second World War, we can see many changes and none for the better.

In this paper it is explained how successive British governments have surrendered our democracy to layers of international bureaucracy which have acquired completely unaccountable power over our legal, political, economic and social decisions. The largest of these transnational bureaucracies is the United Nations and the most powerful is the European Union, whose aim it is to turn itself into a post-national state.

This process has, Kenneth Minogue argues, deprived our elected politicians of real power and taken away their opportunity to behave in a genuinely statesmanlike manner, leaving them to become involved in make-believe changes to society, expenses manipulation and general nest-feathering.

Professor Minogue analyses the transnational bureaucracies that add to the burden of regulation and increasingly control so much of our lives. This increased meddling, he argues, is creating a feedback loop where ever more regulations are required in an attempt to undo the damage caused by the initial unnecessary state interference.

At the heart of the matter, Professor Minogue argues, is the curious form of idealism that disdains pride in Britain and British culture, preferring to give allegiance to a far more vaguely defined ideology of internationalism. This rejection of national sovereignty, and the subsequent embracing of unaccountable transnational institutions, as advocated by our political establishment, has led to the British people submitting to more and more authority which comes dressed as virtue.

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The Bruges Group spearheads the intellectual battle against the notion of "ever-closer Union" in Europe and, above all, against British involvement in a single European state.

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Paper No. 43
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Paper No. 42
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Paper No. 41
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Paper No. 39
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Paper No. 38
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Paper No. 37
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Paper No. 33
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Paper No. 32
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Paper No. 30
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Paper No. 28
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Paper No. 26
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Paper No. 23
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Paper No. 34
Bruges Revisited
The Rt Hon. Baroness Thatcher LG, OM, FRS

Founder President: The Rt Hon. the Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, LG, OM, FRS
President: The Rt Hon. the Lord Tebbit of Chingford, CH, PC
Vice-President: The Rt Hon. the Lord Lamont of Lerwick, Chairman: Barry Legg
Director: Robert Oulds MA, Head of Research: Dr Helen Szamuely, Washington D.C. Representative: John O'Sullivan CBE
Founder Chairman: Lord Harris of High Cross, Former Chairmen: Dr Brian Hindley, Dr Martin Holmes & Professor Kenneth Minogue