Euroskepticism and other creeds

The term Euroskeptic (or Eurosceptic) has been used misleadingly to lend adversaries of European integration an aura of intellectual respectability.

Here are a few suggestions for a new and more accurate political EU vocabulary in a UK context, ahead of the European elections.


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Constructive

Liberals

Stronger Together Poorer Apart

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Euroskeptic

Labour Party

Behind the slipstream of Europe, paring down the Lisbon Treaty and approving it with four opt-outs.

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Anti-European

Libertas

Campaigns to take the European Union back to the Treaty of Nice and to put an end to free movement.


Conservative Party

Wants to wreck the Lisbon Treaty, leave the mainstream EPP-ED parliamentary group and commence integration in reverse. The ones who love French wine and cheese and holidays on the Riviera may object to being called anti-Europeans, which however refers to their political views.

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Eurotoxic

UKIP and BNP want Britain to exit.


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Reasoned suggestions are welcome.


Ralf Grahn

Gravy train stops at Westminster (European elections)

Once upon a time, Carlo Levi wrote a moving account of how Christ stopped at Eboli.

For the British, with their keen sense of irony, it must be another kind of revelation to see how the Brussels gravy train they have been fed by Eurotoxic tabloids during the last decades has come to a stop at Westminster.


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Why not use the opportunity to think about the challenges for Europe in a turbulent world, and to vote wisely in the European elections?


Ralf Grahn