Nosemonkey's EUtopia

In search of a European identity

The Enabling Act

In case you’ve come in late, a handy summary of the current state of the nation. If what is said sounds alarming and over-the-top, that’s largely because the legislation it’s discussing is also alarming and over-the-top:

“Tyranny is sidling in. It is entering with face averted, under cover of a host of laws whose ostensible purpose is the reverse of their actual effect…

“The Regulatory Reform Bill is an Enabling Act, identical in spirit to the one the Nazis passed in 1933. On that occasion, Hitler promised that ‘the government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures…

‘The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is a limited one.’ Our Government says much the same about the legislation it is passing today…

“But our concern should not be with today or tomorrow, but with the day after tomorrow, when different, nastier politicians might be in power, and the habits of decency and common sense have been even further eroded.”