Charter of Fundamental Rights
Why is the Government so frightened of the Charter of Fundamental Rights as part of a new constitution or reformed treaty being negotiated today? In 2004 the Government had already secured that any right to collective action or extension of employment rights was, in accordance with Art. 28, "in accordance with national laws and practices". With that proviso formally included (although now in the current further text Art. 88), why the panic about demanding a red line to stop fundamental rights, which every other country in the EU 27 signs up to, being incorporated in EU law and being applied in Britain?
But why indeed is the Government still so utterly determined, even to the point of vetoing this whole new treaty, to prevent the right to strike action becoming part of UK law? The Government's answer of course is that labour market "flexibilities" (i.e. Thatcherite labour laws) have to be preserved at all costs as the foundation of the UK's economic success over the last decade. But in fact Norway and Sweden, for example, have performed economically far better than the UK over the last decade, without any of these labour market flexibilities, and with social policy outcomes hugely superior to Britain's on ever count.