The EU resembles a criminal organisation.

The EU resembles a criminal organisation. Its supporters – including Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg – are compromising their integrity, 

For half a century Perry Anderson has been one of Britain’s most brilliant historians and political observers. His two great works of Marxist theory – Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism and Lineages of the Absolutist State – had an enormous effect on history undergraduates like me in the Seventies. Editor of the New Left Review for many years, he is today Professor of History and Sociology at the University of California. There is no doubting Professor Anderson’s academic credentials.
This is what makes his article in this week’s London Review of Books so important. Prof Anderson makes clear that many of the leading figures in the construction of the EU have been fraudsters and thieves on a scale that boggles the mind.
Prof Anderson reminds us of ex-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s “two million Deutschemarks in slush funds from illegal donors”. He notes that Jacques Chirac, 12 years the president of France, was "convicted of embezzling public funds, abuse of office and conflicts of interest". He points out that neither was punished.
Meanwhile, the French politician and IMF chief Christine Lagarde is “under interrogation” in a financial misconduct case. Irish Fianna Fáil leader Bertie Ahern “channelled more than €400,000 in unexplained payments before becoming taoiseach, [he then] voted himself the highest salary of any premier in Europe – €310,000, more even that the US president – a year before having to quit in obloquy for all-round dishonesty.”
And here is Professor Anderson on Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy:

[He has been] caught red-handed in receipt of kickbacks on construction and other deals totalling a quarter of a million euros over a decade, passed to him by Luis Bárcenas. His party’s treasurer for twenty years, Bárcenas is now under arrest for accumulating a hoard of €48 million in undeclared Swiss accounts. The handwritten ledgers detailing his transfers to Rajoy and other People’s Party notables – including Rodrigo Rato, another former head of the IMF – have featured in abundant facsimile in the Spanish press… Brazening out a scandal in which 85 per cent of the Spanish public believes he is lying, he sits tight in the Moncloa Palace.

Prof Anderson’s great merit as a historian is synthesis; he has a remarkable gift for bringing together unrelated information to construct a wider thesis. This quality singles him out from more workaday historians whose empiricist approaches are much more cautious. I cannot recommend his expo of the European Project in this week’s LRB highly enough.
How do senior British politicians, who care about their reputation for integrity, continue to support the EU? It is a well-known fact that the EU’s accounts have not been given a clean bill of health for the last 18 years. They have frequently not even been signed off because auditors simply don’t know where all of the money goes. If the EU were a business concern, then a fraud squad would have closed it down years ago.

I can of course understand why men like Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson should feel at home in the EU. But why do decent politicians, like Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, continue to compromise their integrity by throwing a supportive arm around the EU at a time when it looks more and more like a criminal organisation
If the EU was a business the fraud squad would have closed it down.

Source Peter Osborne

Peter Oborne is the Daily Telegraph's chief political commentator

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100272263/the-eu-resembles-a-criminal-organisation-its-supporters-including-ed-miliband-and-nick-clegg-are-compromising-their-integrity/