It has been clear for the last decade at least that Europe is in need of serious reform. Indeed, it is the lack of reform and the lack of democracy in its central systems that gave credibility to Mr Farage’s movement and ultimately to Brexit.
But simply because we have left Euope must not stop our interest in the wellbeing of our neighbour and must not silence us when we see grave wrongdoing.
In this case, Mrs Von der Leyen needs to lead by example and resign. She invoked Article 16 without reference to Ireland or the UK, she published the details of the EU contract with Astra Zenica (and inadvertantly revealed the secret deal struck that was probably itself against EU law, quite apart from the fact that the contract revealed that the prior UK agreement was perfectly sound). What she has done, most clearly is to demonstrate a level of hypocrisy that should not be tolerated. I spoke about this today in a Youtube video made on the back of an interview I did for a TV news show.
This evening, following exactly what I did while I was on “the Circle”, I drew a picture of Mrs von der Leyen. When I drew people in “the Circle”, it was an opportunity to get to know them. Nothing is as intimate and as revealing as the process of drawing a portrait, however cursory that sketch may be. My conclusions, therefore, about Mrs von der Leyen: I do not think she is a bad person. She has kindness and sincerity in her eyes. She wants to be liked. She likes to be led, to take advice. She needs to be persuaded to do the right thing, the bold thing and to set an example to the rest of the EU bureaucrats. I simply think this is a chance for the EU to look at the way it is working and nothing will effect this more dramatically than a clear resignation.
Here is a link to the video I made on Youtube:
animate-tim.com 