A TURKEY OF AN ARREST WARRANT

One of the things I noticed during the election campaign for the European Parliament was how pally and supportive of each other were the Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat candidates in the West Midlands. Everytime they spoke together at a hustings meeting or during TV debates the only odd one out was the UK Independence Party candidate, Mike Nattrass.

Everytime he spoke out against the folly of EU membership the other three, usually Michael Cashman for Labour, Malcolm Harbour for the Tories and Liz Lynne for the Liberal Democrats, would all join forces and attack Mike in unison. It was hard to believe that these three were, or are supposed to be, politically opposed to each other as they were all singing from the same pro-EU hymn sheet.

One of the things they all supported was the EU arrest warrant, that nasty bit of legislation that now means no British subject can expect their own Government to come to their defence from arrest by foreign courts on suspect evidence, as seen with the Andrew Symeou case. No matter who we are or where we are in this once sovereign land of our, we can all now fear the knock on the door and face a British bobby who has come to clap us in irons acting under the orders of a foreign court for a possible crime that may not even be a crime in our own country.

We all remember a few years back that bunch of plane spotting anoraks who went out to Greece to watch planes taking off and landing from the perimeter of a Greek airport - rather than doing what most Brits do when in Greece which is to cook themselves on the beach during the day and get well and truly sozzled by night. This lot were locked up not for behaving badly, but for watching planes.

I often wonder what would have happened had the EU arrest warrant been in force and they had returned home to Blighty before the Greek authorities had found out what they had been up to - would a British police officer been sent to arrest them for the crime of plane spotting which is not a crime here?

The thing that struck me even further when listening to our pro-EU Tory, Labour and Lib Dem Euro candidates prattling on about cross border crime was that the Tories have been promoting Turkish membership of the EU for quite some time. As we all know Turkey does not have the best record on earth for an impartial justice system, so what would they do as members of the EU and have their mits on the EU arrest warrant?

As an Islamic nation whose laws and customs are very different to those of our Christian culture, could the Turkish courts, if and when Turkey joins the EU, begin to demand the arrest of British subjects for contravening their Islamic laws while on holiday of visiting Turkey? The whole thing from my point of view is a legalistic minefield. What if Turkey joins and then becomes more militant if fanatical Islamists take over - could we see demands from them for the arrest of British people who they suspect had intimate relationships out marriage while in Turkey? Or for drinking alcohol? 

The more I think about these things the more evident it becomes that the whole concept of European Union with its mad laws and even madder arrest warrant is a seriously bad idea. As the Freedom Association never fail to say, we would be far 'Better Off Out'.