And another thing…

I AM INCONSOLABLE. I can barely concentrate on anything, so frantic with worry am I that 63,000 convicted prisoners might be prevented from voting in the general election.

It’s an outrageous infringement of their human rights, according to the European Court of Human Rights. Mind you, so’s keeping people in a big, secure building for years. As is preventing you from living in your own home, or from going to work, or… well, you catch my drift.

Do I give a stuff that the Council of Europe is a bit annoyed at the UK for (ahem!) dragging our feet on implementing the court’s ruling? No, not really.

Am I incensed that 63,000 criminals who deliberately sacrificed their personal freedoms when they chose to break the law might be disenfranchised? No. At least, not as incensed as I was when the European Court made its original ruling that they should be enfranchised in the first place.

What a sad, dreary, frightening place must be the mind of the professional hand-wringer who frets about criminals not being allowed to vote.

Here’s a tip for those whose residence at Her Majesty’s pleasure might prevent them from expressing a preference for their chosen (LibDem, probably) candidate at the election: avoid prison in the first place by not breaking the law.

"Why would I want to vote for any of them anyway? They're all crooks..."

WE’VE ALL been having fun with Dave’s scrapping and melting down of his “cast iron” guarantee to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

And at 4.00 pm, the cast-iron laddie will take to the rostrum to explain a new policy which he hopes will be an effective sticking plaster over the newly exposed European wounds in his party. He’s been lucky in at least one respect: whatever he says will be lost in the acres of coverage of Kelly’s report into MPs’ expenses; so, for the time being at least, Dave’s difficulties won’t be too high up the media agenda.

Apparently he’ll announce a “manifesto mandate” to be obstructive and rude to foreigners, or something, which will go down well enough with his rank and file.

But all this dancing around the issue is getting silly. Dan “I’m not as mad as I look, honestly” Hannan MEP was on Newsnight last night insisting that a future Cameron government should hold a referendum on Europe. Which aspect of Europe? asked Paxo, reasonably enough. Doesn’t really matter, provided there’s a referendum, replied the party’s Great White Hope.

You know what he meant. I know what he meant. Paxo knew what he meant. There’s a more than 50 per cent chance that Hannan knew what he meant: the overwhelming majority of rank and file Conservative Party members want a referendum on withdrawal from the EU.

All this shilly-shallying over Lisbon, over the proposed repatriation of specific powers, none of this really matters to most Tories. The big issue for them is not a refinement of the UK’s relationship with Europe; it is Britain’s membership itself of the EU, and they will not rest until they get it.

Cameron would unite his party if today he were to announce exactly that (although there would then be the bear trap of which way any government led by him would campaign during the campaign).

Of course, not all Tories go along with the foamers; Ken Clarke, distrusted by most of his party, has reportedly pulled out of his appearance on today’s The Daily Politics. A straw in the wind, perhaps?

Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM, a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations

So that’s clear then. Admirably unambiguous.

That’s what David Cameron told The Sun in 2007. So, obviously, whatever happens to the Lisbon Treaty (that’s the Treaty, not the Constitution, incidentally), in the next few days, a government led by David Cameron would hold a referendum.

And yet, Paul Waugh has reported that the Great Leader is about to announce  that he’s ditching his own plans for a referendum once Lisbon is fully ratified. Surely Paul is wrong? After all, Cameron must have known when he made that promise that there was a better than even chance of the treaty being ratified before the general election. And if you read that quote from Cameron at the top of the post again, it’s unthinkable that he would have made a “cast iron” guarantee and then renege on it.

Unless, of course, Cameron has the alchemist’s ability to transform base metals into… I don’t know… soggy tissue paper?

I SIMPLY cannot understand why, as David Miliband says, the Tories are “playing the man, not the ball” with regards to Tony Blair and the European presidency.

Despite my profound doubts about David Cameron’s suitability for office, I’ve always accepted that he’s a clever politician. Objecting to the former Prime Minister becoming the new president seems peculiarly petty and short-sighted for someone who needs the votes of former Labour voters in order to become PM himself.

Obviously Tony Blair is eminently qualified for the job and would do it well. You’d have to be pretty stupid to dispute that. So what are Cameron’s objections? Primarily among them, we have to assume, is that Blair is guilty of the heinous crime of smashing Cameron’s party at three general elections in a  row.

All the more reason to appoint him, I would have thought.

APOLOGIES for banging on about Europe again, but those of you who are obsessed by interested in the subject might also be vaguely interested in this 2003 speech I made to the Commons. It’s the only speech on Europe I can recall making.

I present it here with the various interventions from other members edited out. To read the full transcript in Hansard, click here.

Hon. Members are rarely given the opportunity to discuss Europe and its many facets, and this is the first opportunity that I have taken to discuss an issue that is extremely important to my constituents, as it is to those of every hon. Member. It is refreshing not to have to focus obsessively on the single currency, although I understand why many hon. Members have chosen to mention it in passing. Any debate on the euro tends to degenerate into name-calling, with Europhiles describing anybody with legitimate worries about the single currency as anti-European, and Europhobes describing anyone who is at all pro-European as selling the country’s sovereignty down the river. Of course those are caricatures and our electorates deserve better than that. I am delighted that those hon. Members on both sides who have spoken so far have generated more light than heat.

Few would cavil at the idea of enlarging the EU. The hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson)—whose speech I thoroughly enjoyed—was extremely critical of those hon. Members who oppose enlargement, but I have not yet heard any Member, even the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), oppose the principle of enlarging the EU.

The former Prime Minister, John Major, mentioned on a number of occasions the importance of widening the EU, but not deepening it. In 1995, the then Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, said:

“Enlargement is not a luxury. It is a necessity if we are to build a safe and successful Europe for the 21st century.”

Even the current Tory leadership agrees with that. Last year, the shadow Foreign Secretary said:

“EU enlargement is a project that has always enjoyed the total support of the Conservative party.”

I should like to know what the next sentence was, because that sounds like a preamble to a withdrawal of support.

Last October, even the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) said:

“enlargement is a great prize that is worth fighting for.”—[Official Report, 28 October 2002; Vol. 391, c. 543.]

There is no doubt that the enlargement that the Bill facilitates has led directly to the controversy over the new EU constitution that we have all been talking about in the past few months. I find it remarkable that, at Prime Minister’s questions last week and again this week, the Leader of the Opposition called for a referendum on that draft constitution specifically to persuade the British people to reject it unequivocally.

Even if the draft constitution discussed by the House rejects all forms of federalism—if it does not mention federalism but reinforces the nation state’s rights to sovereignty—the Conservatives will still call for a referendum and for it to be opposed. It is unreasonable and unrealistic simultaneously to support EU enlargement and oppose the constitution that will enable enlargement to work.

I tell the House unequivocally that, if I believed that the new European constitution would make this country subject to a federal Europe so that we were completely under the metal fist of Brussels, I would be one of those Members calling for a referendum on the constitution. The reason why I am confident that that will not happen is simply that I accept and trust implicitly the assurances given to the House by the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who said today and in a speech two days ago that, although the process of producing the new constitution was complex, the Government would not accept anything that compromised the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. I am absolutely happy to accept that assurance.

Why are the Government saying no to a referendum now when they do not know what the final form of words in the constitution will be? The reason is simply that the Government have insisted from the outset that the UK’s sovereignty must not be compromised in the new constitution. It seems an odd negotiating stance to say at the outset, “Here is what we will not stand for. Here are the red lines. If we lose that, we will have a referendum.” It is a ridiculous stance. We know already that the new constitution for Europe will not compromise the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. What it will do is put in place new arrangements to allow a 25-member EU to function properly. Because it does not take away any of the authority of this House, there is no need to put it to the people, any more than there was a need to put the Maastricht treaty or the Nice treaty to the British people.

I do not believe that a federal Europe will ever happen. Those who want to draw comparisons between a hypothetical united states of Europe and the United States of America are barking up the wrong tree and are very wide of the mark. Two things helped to create the United States of America: first, a single common language, and secondly, a brutal civil war that killed one in 50 of the population. Shelby Foote, the civil war historian, was once asked, “What was the great cultural legacy left by the civil war?” His answer was that the civil war made the United States a singular—before the civil war, the United States were; after the civil war, the United States was. Unless at some point in the future we miraculously have a single language in Europe and a brutal civil war, I would have to suggest that that path is not open to Europe. A federal Europe is nothing more than a Conservative chimera. It is something that nannies use to scare very young children who have an ambition to be Conservative Members into going to sleep: “If you don’t go to sleep, the federal Europe will get you.” Clearly, it will be used to scare voters, too.

What we have is a Europe of nation states co-operating on many levels. Each nation state fiercely guards its rights when necessary, and shares sovereignty when it is in its interest. I hope that we press ahead with the historic move to increase the size of the EU by 10 nations—an unprecedented number, and an achievement about which we should all be proud and happy.

We should press ahead with this historic move. Ten more nations understandably want to add the economic freedom of the world’s largest trading bloc to their new-found political freedom. Members of this House must extend a welcome to those nations, not slam the door in their face.

EUROPE, for me, is one of those “bleah” issues: it’s never lit my candle, as it were. I have much the same reaction to the subject as I do to vanilla ice cream, which is, I suspect, the same attitude as the vast majority of electors.

Most people do not obsess about what per centage of domestic legislation comes from Brussels (Eurosceptics tend to invent figures upwards of 70 per  cent; for the record, it’s actually less than ten). The vast majority of Tories and libertarians, of course, do little other than obsess about Europe: “Betrayal!” they cry, almost as if anyone were listening to them.

So much time has passed since there was a Tory government in this country that many have forgotten just how the issue of Europe turned them into a dysfunctional entity. And it would happen again if they ever formed a government again. Not because they’re particularly disunited on Europe this time round; in fact the Tories are probably more united on Europe since at any time since our entry to the EEC. The problem is, they’re united around overt Europhobia.

Sure, Cameron keeps Ken Clarke, his pet Europhile, in the Shadow Cabinet, just to prove to the world what a big tent the modern Conservative Party is. But Clarke is very much the exception. The vast majority of Conservative MPs, candidates and members would vote to leave the EU in a heartbeat if they got the chance.

So what of it? That’s arguably more in tune with the views of the British people right now. Arguably.

The problem, of course, is that even though they believe they’re more in tune than Labour with the public on Europe, they can’t act on it, for fear that they will appear dogmatic and extreme. Which is why we have this ridiculous argument over the Lisbon Treaty. Dave has said he “will not let the matter rest there” if the treaty has already been ratified by the time of the general election and if he becomes Prime Minister. Yesterday I had a bit of fun baiting some foamers into explaining what this actually meant. We all know what it meant: nothing at all. But Cameron must keep up the pretence of opposition to a fully ratified treaty if he’s to stop his right wing rebelling.

Cameron, ultimately, despite being anti-EU, is a pragmatic politician; he doesn’t want any government he might form bogged down for its first 18 months in a pointless and costly referendum campaign which could achieve nothing other than isolating the UK within Europe. But he desperately needs to keep his right wing on board until 10.00 pm on polling day. Hence the silly “we won’t let matter rest there” soundbite.

That won’t work for very long if the Tories – God help us – ever do form a government. The likes of John Redwood and Bill Cash and a hundred others won’t allow a little thing like electoral credibility get in the way of their ideological purity.

On the evidence of the past couple of days, there’s plenty of fun to be had in baiting the Tories on the subject between now and the election.

DAVID Cameron seems to be rather nervous about his party’s reaction to Ireland’s “Yes” to Lisbon.

He’s issued a statement saying that he won’t be saying anything and that nothing has changed. Or something. Makes you wonder why he bothered to make the statement if he’s nothing to say. And in saying nothing, he’s repeated something he’s said before.

If the Treaty is ratified and in force in all Member States, we have repeatedly said we would not let matters rest there

And, like last tme he said this, it means nothing.

He’s petrified, naturally, that divisions in his party will become more apparent at Manchester next week, so he’s warning everyoone that “there will be no change in our policy on Europe and no new announcements at the Conference.”

Paradoxically, he starts off his email with the message: “Next week, we won’t be playing it safe.” Well, apart from him and his Shadow Cabinet refusing to countenance any discussion on party policy on the one issue that the vast majority of ordinary members and MPs regularly foam at the mouth over. I would call that “playing it safe”, wouldn’t you?

And anyway, what exactly does “we would not let matters rest there” mean? Is it some kind of veiled threat? “Just watch it, Europe, that’s all I’m saying…”

We’ll see if the media do their job next week and try to get to the bottom of what the Tories’ European policy actually is, perhaps even challenging them on their peculiar choice of words with which they’re hoping to mislead the electorate.

DAVID Cameron insisted today that the new grouping formed by his MEPs at Strasbourg, the European Conservatives and Reformist, or ECR, is "definitely not bonkers".

Mr Cameron gave his assurances after the ECR’s newest member (pictured right) arrived for the group’s AGM and Tory MEPs reacted by looking at their desks and shuffling their feet.

"Definitely not," added Mr Cameron. "Bonkers, I mean."

NATURALLY I share the sentiments of everyone who was appalled at two BNP MEPs being elected last week.

But this is not the way to deal with them. It just gives them even more publicity than they’ve received already and makes them look like victims. And they’re not victims, they’re fascists.

Democracy sometimes throws up uncomfortable results. As I’ve said here before, the election of fascists at some point or other was always on the cards once we decided to introduce proportional representation for the European elections. I’m not sure why anyone is surprised that it’s actually happened.

But democracy also demands that those who are elected on a free vote, however obnoxious those individuals are, should be able to go about their lawful business without the stupid student politics antics like we’ve seen today.

The BNP press office couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome.

SO, to sum up…

The SNP won 700 more votes in Glasgow South, my own seat, than Labour.

The SNP beat Labour into a poor second place in Scotland, one of Labour’s “strongholds”.

The Tories and the SNP beat Labour into third place in East Renfrewshire, the seat of Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy.

The Conservatives beat Labour in the the popular vote in Wales (and no number of exclamation marks after that sentence could do that statement justice).

Voters chose two fascists to represent them in Strasbourg.

Labour looks like coming third, behind Ukip, with less than 16 per cent of the vote.

Now, I don’t want to sound alarmist or defeatist or anything, but I’m willing to stick my neck out here and suggest that this was not the best Labour performance of recent years. Or am I being too pessimistic?