In the UK, both sovereign and subject are bound by 820 years of the Common Law, a system that is taken for granted, and understood by few. I have chosen three quotations to explain how important it is to understand the differences between Common and Civil Law as the differences are not about law, but about a system that has created the culture in which those in the Anglosphere live. That culture is under threat on both sides of the atlantic.

Rulers don't like Common Law as it gives individuals rights and thus rulers seem determined to undermine it. Rulers like Civil Law as through it they can control its citizens rather than allow its citizens control of the state. In the UK we have just had our first trial without jury. The European Arrest Warrant allows people to be taken from the UK with no examination of the evidence, no right of appeal, just on the say so of another European court. Habeas Corpus is dead.

Also, Common Law breeds individualism that can flourish in a spirit of freedom. Great men and woman have grown in this culture of freedom. Civil Law breeds or rather forces conformity. Individualism is frowned upon and even repressed.

The answer, of course, is very little.

 The Lisbon Treaty acknowledges the importance of tourism outlining, for the first time, a specific competence for the European Union in this field and allowing for decisions to be taken by qualified majority (Title XXII Tourism, Art. 195)

From The European Commissions DECLARATION OF MADRID WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THE INFORMAL MINISTERIAL MEETING FOR TOURISM UNDER THE SPANISH PRESIDENCY IN APRIL 2010 IN MADRID UNDER THE MOTTO "TOWARDS A SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE TOURISM MODEL"

Doesn't it make you wonder why we  bother to have a parliamentary election in the UK, when even tourism is controlled by our real government in Brussels.

St George was not English. Indeed, he was born in (what is now) Turkey and was martyred in Israel (which some prefer to call Palestine). Yet his story is bound up with that of England, for it is a story of a quest for religious liberty. Born of Christian parents during the late third century, George became a soldier - a loyal and successful one - in the army of Emperor Diocletian. When in AD302 the Emperor issued an edict that every Christian soldier in the army should be arrested and every other soldier forced to offer a sacrifice to the Pagan gods, George refused. He was neither going to bow the knee to false idols nor honour religious tyranny. Just as the English were eventually to do, George rejected the notion of ‘Divine Right' and king worship. He renounced the Emperor's edict and declared before his fellow soldiers that he was a Christian and would worship only Jesus Christ. Diocletian had George tortured by laceration on a wheel of swords. He was eventually beheaded for his faith, a witness which caused others to convert to Christianity who were themselves martyred for their faith in Jesus."

  By Bryan, via Cranmer

'I see the debate is framed here as it is in my own country; as a struggle between liberalism and conservatism.

'Yet no matter how the struggle turns out, both the liberals and the conservatives feel frustration, no matter who "wins", neither seem to enjoy the victory as "their" party fails to live up to its promises once in power.