Expressez-Vous

By Matthew Bruce

This decision to keep the Euro was very influential indeed as the UK wanted to keep sovereignty in the country, but also it would only be a step closer to handing over more power to the EU.

Since 1973, the UK’s membership to the EU has been an awkward one since. The UK had joined the EU at a very euro sceptical time, with many political parties unwelcome to the idea of an almost federalist state that was the European Union. In this, since 1973, major parties have always had precise views on the EU and in this the UK has been almost an outsider party in the EU to this day. Evidence to support this would the UK’s decision not to join the Eurozone, thus not adopting the Euro and keeping the Great British Pound Sterling.

This decision to keep the Euro was very influential indeed as the UK wanted to keep sovereignty in the country, but also it would only be a step closer to handing over more power to the EU. One major plan that the UK have is to keep this sovereignty in the UK, in Parliament and not hand power over to Brussels in the process. In this, many citizens wonder why the UK even joined the European Union in the first place, and there are good reasons behind this. The UK joined the EU first and foremost so that we were allowed to trade anywhere within the EU, any citizen was allowed to live and work abroad and people from other countries were allowed to come work and live in the UK. This brought to the UK more money and more profession, but in some ways it may not work as well as some people have become increasingly frustrated with migrant workers taking jobs and leaving British workers unemployed and without a job, but it is hard for the government to do anything around this subject as the EU citizens are entitled to work here, with migrant workers working sometimes for less than the national minimum wage.

Also people abroad come to live in the UK because of our welfare state, as the UK is one of the few countries in the whole world that offers a free national health service (NHS), all the other countries within the EU do not offer a free national health service and in this, people are coming to live in the UK for the use of the NHS as a priority.

What makes the UK awkward in these situations is the fact that UK citizens don’t pay attention to the EU and feel that the European Union doesn’t really affect them, this could be because of the attitudes that politicians have towards the EU, when Politicians show a lack of enthusiasm towards the EU, the citizen’s opinion isn’t really to pay attention towards the EU. In this, the UK is increasingly becoming an outside member state in the EU, really the UK is only in the EU as they get a matter of opinion and say into the formation of EU law, as EU law does affect UK law today and the UK need the beneficiaries of the EU in order to maintain a healthy society, even though most political observers and citizens today are confused about the EU’s strategy and its actual democratic legitimacy in today’s world.

By Matthew Bruce

Terrorism has come to the forefront of World Politics after 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London

Labour were never seen as an authoritarian party unlike their counter-part Tory Party who were the authoritarian party. In 1992, there was primary evidence to show Labour didn’t really take heed of Law and Order policies with a small paragraph in their General Election Manifesto, but when Blair was elected as Labour leader in 1994 and he wanted to take Labour in a new direction, which would be known as New Labour from here. And Blair wanted to make Labour different by making the party “Tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime”. Here, Blair wanted a more authoritarian party so that Labour could be more electable once more and take power away from the Conservatives. Here there were a variety of ways that Labour wanted to be tough on crime. And they made many achievements and failures which will be assessed.

Prison population has risen a lot over the last 10 years since New Labour have governed. And in this, there are many reasons that this has happened. Overall, crime has fallen since Labour has governed the UK, but the problem is that violent crime has risen a lot, this includes firearms offences and knife crimes. There has also been a rise in youth crimes, and the problem here is that Judges are more obliged to send Young People to adult prisons, here Adults are also given more custodial sentences and forced to serve more mandatory sentences; this is why Political Party Policies on Law Order always include allocation of extra Prison Places.

Terrorism has come to the forefront of World Politics after 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London. Labour had introduced plans to introduce ID Cards so that security was at a higher level, but criticism came from Civil Rights Groups and other parties as Labours requirements of information for the ID Cards seemed to be a breach of civil rights. ID cards seemed to be also not even needed, even after 9/11 the US did not turn towards Identification. And EU cards are used around the EU, but they did not stop the Madrid attacks in 2004. Labour scrapped the introduction of ID cards in their Labour Conference in 2009.

The shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes did not help the Police or the government after the attacks in 2004, after they chased a wrong suspect into a subway and onto a train and laid excessive force of bullets into him killing him. Here the Metropolitan Police were slammed for this attack after the stories made by the police were falsely led and Menezes was found out to be a electrician. Here the trust in the police from the public was damaged somewhat, the 2002 Anti- Terrorism Act was set  in place to detain suspected terrorists, in 2008, Labour tried to raise the detention of a terrorist to 42 days from 28 but was blocked by the House of Lords to keep civil Liberties of UK citizens intact to an extent.

Police Powers have also grown majorly since 1997, there was a lot of handover of power to the police in the early 90’s and when Labour implemented the Freedom of Information Act 1997 and the Human Rights Act 1998, citizens felt there civil liberties were being listed and listened too. Here though Labour gave more powers to the Police, this included greater stop and search powers, action to implement curfews and the detainment of a suspected criminal’s DNA for up to six years. In this, individual’s feel that the Police are given more power than they should. CCTV is a known as a breach to Civil Liberties as a ¼ of the world’s cameras are actually UK CCTV cameras. Here campaign group Liberty believe that we live in a nanny state and is a total erosion to our civil liberties.

In this Labour’s view to been tough on crime and tough on the causes have worked to an extent as they have brought crime down overall, but there are sharp rises in Prison Population and Violent Crime. Violent Crime can almost be seen as worse than crime itself because of the dangers and the damage it can do. In this Labour has been tough on the causes but the effects have come off worse for Labour, this could signal the need for a codified constitution as Labour have eroded the civil Liberties of UK Citizens a lot since their election in 1997.