On Wednesday, I woke up thinking that I had a chance to represent millions of Brits by opposing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and debating its merits with elected representatives from across the European continent in the European Parliament. I was hopeful that I would be able to speak up for the writers of the thousands of emails I've had from my people who find this EU inspired agreement abhorrent. How wrong I was. From the moment we entered the parliamentary chamber I knew that a stitch up was well way underway. The typical bureaucratic, undemocratic EU type of stitch up that only the big conservative and socialists groups can get away with.
Those who oppose TTIP have every right to worry. This is a deal which could force governments to contract out public services, like the NHS, something I never want to see happen . It will elevate multi-national corporations over elected parliaments, something which should never be allowed to happen and will create a free pass for letting vested interests conspire against the public will. Last but not least, it will allow the democratic decisions of tribunes to be struck down by supranational courts under something known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). These points should have been debated and made clear to every MEP in that chamber yesterday.
So as people might have seen, I wasn't happy. The opponents of TTIP were wrongly robbed of their chance to voice discontent over TTIP. Even when we lost the vote by two UKIP still tried to fight the lunacy by pointing out that 40 MEPs could stop the session - 40 MEPS that our EEFD group had managed to muster through an internationally coordinated effort. But yet again the Chair of the session wrongly applied parliamentary procedures to shore up the EU Commission's position that TTIP must be forced through at all costs.
Ukip believes that TTIP and all trade agreements made on behalf of the UK should be signed by the UK government and ratified by the UK parliament alone. It is important to recognise that the European Union's interests are not necessarily synonymous with the UK interests. This deal impacts UK public services and is an example of the EU doing something that the British people have not voted for. I will never vote to give more powers away to the EU. This is something I shall be fighting for during the upcoming referendum on our membership of the European Union, British free trade agreements made by the British parliament.
So when we do finally get our debate and vote on this issue, Ukip MEPs like myself will be voting against the proposal. I believe that the British parliament should be making our trade deals but in this instance I still wouldn't support it even if it was made by British government, I couldn't ever support a trade deal that threatens our most vital of services. This deal is for the crony corporates, not for the hard working business owners in the UK.
#StopTTIP