William Rees-Mogg on Britain's Lost Liberties

"The dispute all starts with a European regulation — with one of those European incursions into British sovereignty that hardly one British person in a thousand was aware of at the time it happened. We think that we are free people, but 80 per cent of our laws come from Brussels, and cannot be rejected by the British Parliament or, indeed, by the British electorate.

If we do not like what Brussels decrees, there is only one thing that we can do. We can lump it. We certainly have no power to repeal it. Christopher Booker, who reports on European law very thoroughly, has told us where the story did actually begin. Brussels adopted a general directive, 2000/78, that gave a framework for equal treatment in "employment and education". It outlaws any "discrimination based on religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation". There is a feast of possible future litigation in those words..."

The Times