Another one we missed

In the excitement of the Conservative Party conference (zzzzz), and the general boredom engendered by the thought of reading yet another opinionated piece about Turkey joining the EU, we actually missed quite a good comment on Thursday in The Times, written by Anatole Kaletsky.

Fortunately, one of our fellow Bloggers over on North Sea Diaries spotted it and pointed out the key comment, without us having to read the whole article – which can be somewhat trying, especially as the title seems to bear no relation to what Kaletsky actually had to say on tuis matter. "Turkey", he writes:

is likely to scupper the strongest argument in favour of ratifying the European constitution: the claim that voting rights among the EU member nations must be reformed to accommodate past and future enlargements. The fact is that, far from preparing the EU for the future, the constitution will have to be torn up if Turkey joins. Turkey’s rapidly growing population, which will overtake Germany’s by 2015, would give it more votes under the new constitution than any other nation. Since an EU with Turkey as the single most powerful member would make no sense to anyone, including even the Turks, enlargement would mean completely rewriting the constitution just five years after the new arrangements are supposed to come into force. While conspiracy theorists suspect that the constitution was drafted to block Turkey’s accession, it looks increasingly like Turkey will sabotage the new constitution.

Nice one "DaveVH" at the Diaries. Nice to know someone is awake.