Last month, David Cameron went to great obfuscatory pains to refuse to give a straight answer to journalists asking if the Tory party would offer a post-ratification referendum on the EU Reform Treaty if they found themselves in government – a position not helped by a member of his shadow cabinet promising “absolutely” that the Tories would.
Now it’s Dave’s own shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, who’s broken ranks with his leader in today’s Commons debate on the Queen’s Speech – as the BBC’s Nick Robinson notes on his blog:
The Shadow Foreign Secretary went through the usual list of “ifs” implicit in that question – if there’s no referendum, if the treaty’s ratified elsewhere, if there’s an election after that process is over – before going on to say that if all those “ifs” came to pass “We could not let matters rest there”.
In other words Hague is saying that the Tories would not accept that ratification by the Commons and by all other EU nations put an end to the debate. They would insist, presumably, on either a post ratification referendum or, if that were not possible, a re-negotiation of Britain’s membership of the EU.
Messrs Cameron and Hague are, it seems, tying themselves in knots trying to maintain a sensible policy on Europe while appeasing their swivel-eyed Europhobic colleagues. Or perhaps they’re simply limbering up to accept the Lib Dem amendment proposing a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU?
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A power vacuum?
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4 Comments
Anyone know what the Tory party’s policy on Europe is today?
I should imagine it’s to be relentlessly negative on the subject.
It is amazing how the EU twists and turns in political debate. No party seems unscathed.
David Cameron will have to find a way of agreeing with his foreign secretary whilst maintaining that his position has not changed. I suspect he will find a way somehow.
Curious also that the debate over whether the Conservatives should leave the EPP seems to have gone quiet. How did that debate end – with a decision, or did everyone just decide not to talk about it anymore?
I think the Conservatives have agreed to stay in the EPP-ED until 2009, when they will form a new Group in the EP with an as-yet-unspecified grouping of parties from other countries which agree with them.
There’s quite a lot of scepticism about whether this idea is remotely practical (I think so far they only have one Czech party to join it with them, and they need at least five), still less wise, but it seems to get them off the hook until 2009….
Well, it’s Tuesday tomorrow, so it must be Belgium