Of Busses and Brussels

MPs cling to their final power, to pretend that they're in power.

By Christoper Booker

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Our politicians continue to show an extraordinary reluctance to admit that thereis an "elephant in the room" in the matter of how we are governed.Boris Johnson makes the disaster of Ken Livingstone's scrapping of Routemaster buses{pictured above} in favour of ridiculous, Continental-style "bendies" the flagship issue of his bid to become London Mayor.

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Yet, as he coyly admits in The Daily Telegraph, "alas, I don't think that current legislation would permit me to reintroduce the Routemasters as they were". What he is too lily-livered to explain is that the law that would make itillegal to bring back the much-loved, user-friendly Routemaster is the EU's Busand Coach Directive, 2001/85.

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"The government," we are told, "plans to introduce new pictorial health warningson cigarette packets," showing close-ups of diseased lungs and the corpses ofthose who have died from smoking-related diseases.

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What we are not told is that "the government" that ordered us to do this is not the one we used to have in Westminster, but the new government we now have in Brussels, which laid down through directive 2001/37 just which shocking pictures we must place on our fag packets.

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Again, when we are told that "the government" plans to introduce compulsory water metering, we are not told that the government proposing this is the EU -any more than that the reason our ministers cannot scrap their absurd HomeInformation Packs is because this would put them in breach of directive 2002/01on the "energy performance of buildings", issued by the EU to combat globalwarming.

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Finally last week, just to bring home where our seat of government now is, therewas the campaign to stamp out food additives. When the Food Standards Agency was asked to introduce such a ban, to stop ourchildren behaving badly, it had to admit that it no longer has the power to make laws on food safety, because this has been handed over to head office, the European Food Safety Authority.

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Presumably the reason that our MPs are so reluctant to explain how little powerthey have left to make our laws is that this might make us wonder why we bother to elect them at all.