Pulling Up The Ladder

Wittgenstein famously argued in “ Pull Up The Ladder” that in order to proceed to higher ethical planes you were allowed to discard assumptions made in order to get to your starting point . Epistemologically, for all I know, this is sound reasoning. It is also , in a technical sense , “A load of bollocks “

The vernacular category of un-knowledge commonly designated “A load of bollocks “ is a set of near identity with the set “ What Labour and the wider left Constituency talk...”. The desperate slithering on the Constitution has brought this into sharp relief

Consider the basis upon which the Referendum was originally offered. Was it because there was a fundamental loss of sovereignty? Mais Non mon freres . This is what B Liar had to say in 2004
“( a Press campaign) ...it is all nonsense , myth, designed to distance people’s understanding of what Europe is truly about and loosen this country’s belief in its place in Europe ...It is right to confront this campaign head on”. There is a no admission there was any fundamental loss of sovereignty. The reason for the plebiscite was merely to clear the air .
“ Parliament should debate the treaty in detail , decide upon it .Then let the people have the final say”....

OK got that. Now lets pull up the ladder and proceed to the entirely different view of the treaty espoused by Mazola Milliband . In order to avoid a referendum he is at pains to show what a profound change the ” Old “ Constitution was and how the Reform treaty is entirely different “
“,,,The constitution that was signed in 2004 got rid of the previous EU treaties and created a new re-founding document of the European Union”, by way of contrast the 2007 reform treaty “ ...does not do that , it leaves in place the existing structure and puts forward some institutional reforms .”

So we see how useful Wittgenstein is to the Labour Party. The Old Constitution was not a profound change in order to win a referendum but the old Constitution ,at the same time, “was a profound change” in order to avoid having one at all. Cunning .


Polly filler is another Wittgenstein acolyte. In her recent Guardian article she argued that in view of the complexity of the agreement this was... “ ..the stuff of representative government” . In other words we mere mortals are just to thick to know which way to vote. Clearly she would be horrified at the thought of an untutored electorate taking a mallet to 300 years of Constitutional refinement by entering the Common Market in 1972 . Well no actually , she considers us to have been amply endowed with the requisite perspicacity for that task.

Pull the ladder up behind you Poll. Of course we need a referendum and in the words of Anthony Blair “Let the issue be out , let battle be joined”