Daniel Hannan - The EU is stuck in the 1970s

Thank you Mr President.

Not for the first time in this chamber I feel like fallen through some kink in the space-time continuum, some warp or tunnel that has led me back to the 1970s.

Here we are in a world of state-control of industry, of prices and income policies, of limited working hours and subventions to unprofitable corporations. I can do no better than to read out the voting list of what we've been voting on today. Subsidies to SI/Mura of Slovenia to Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG in Germany, to Vikelpovski Automativ in Poland, to Aragon Retail in Spain, to Comunidad Valenciana Textiles in Spain, to Comunidad Valenciana Natural Stones in Spain, to Lehr in Spain, to H. Cegielski - Poznań in Poland, ...

You know in the seventies we used to talk about picking winners. What we are actually doing here is picking losers, we are making EU step in with money where the free market has decreed a failure. And why are we doing so? Because the EU is now a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth to favored client groups. You know mr. President as well as I do that it is nonsense, you were briliantly successful conservative leader in Catalonia, you understant the importance of free peoples and free market. And so do our voters, the money is running out. And we are reaching a moment when in George Orwell's magnificent metafor “the people will shake off the system like a horse shaking off flies.”