COMMENT: I’m an MEP... get me out of here!
Martin Daubney is Brexit Party MEP for the West Midlands. In the second of a series of diary pieces, he takes Express & Star readers inside the “belly of the EU beast” - this time in Strasbourg.
Did you know it costs taxpayers €114 million per year to move the EU entire set-up in Brussels to Strasbourg, France every month for a big voting session, for no reason at all other than it keeps the French happy?
Well, you do now – and it’s just another example of the huge financial wastage that is the European Union, writes Martin Daubney.
They move the lot: all 750 MEPs, their staff, stationary... they even drive the entire fleet of luxury cars from Belgium to France for the week, so MEPs can be ferried around like rock stars.
For an institution that loves to drone on about climate change, what is the carbon footprint of this jamboree?
Recently, MEPs voted on a new President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen.
Not that we had a choice: the former German Defence Minister was the only candidate on the ballot paper (curiously, the same thing happened when Kim Jong Un won a one horse Presidential race in North Korea).
Before the vote, Ms Von der Leyen made it plain she was a rabid federalist. She talked of her lust for “more Europe” and of a desire for the EU to rule over all European courts.
She drooled at the prospect of a European Army – that Nigel Farage had long warned us about and Nick Clegg at al lied was Brexit fantasy.
Add a “carbon bank” (more taxes on anything that moves, or is manufactured) and calls for compulsory gender quotas in boardrooms and it was clear the Brexit Party had to cry “non, madame!” We unanimously voted against her.
Yet she scraped home by nine votes – aided, I’m sure, by all the other West Midlands MEPs, who merrily sold us out to Brussels.
The following day, up for vote was the rubber-stamping of Inter-Parliamentery Delegations, which are basically MEP staff jollies, Caribbean, Tahiti, Mongolia, New Zealand disguised as “fact-finding missions”.
We tried to save taxpayers countless millions in pointless jollies – but to absolutely nobody’s surprise, every other MEP in the chamber voted for this through, no doubt already Googling the best cocktail bars.
All those air miles might seem at odds with our opponents’ Messianic preachings on climate change, but they voted to clamber aboard the gravy train.
To cap off an action-packed period, Theresa May used her final speech to condemn Brexiteers and “populism” – without a fag-end of self-awareness that the Brexit Party was only born out of her utter inability and failure to deliver Brexit.
None of us would be sat here in Strasbourg if we’d left the European Union on March 29, as Mrs May promised us 108 times. This singular inability to deliver a Brexit has now cost two Conservative Prime Ministers their jobs.
Will we make it a hat-trick if Boris serves up a trick, and not a treat on Halloween?
The Brexit Party will be breathing down his neck all the way. And if a snap a General Election is called we will be ready.
Why don’t you come and tell me, plus your other West Midlands Brexit Party MEPs Rupert Lowe and Andrew Kerr you thoughts?
We are holding a FREE public meeting at Wolverhampton Race Course on July 30 from 7pm.
It would be lovely to meet Express & Star readers and thank you for your votes. There’s even a bar. Until then... I’m an MEP... get me out of here!
