THE SPECTATOR VERSUS THE GOVERMNENT: NOW HAVE YOUR SAY

The Laughing Cavalier

In order to become a Junior Minister in the NuLabour regime you have to be able to believe six impossible things before breakfast. That's how Murphy is able to argue that the Treaty isn't the Constitution by another name.

Open Europe blog team

If it's any help you can get a compare and contrast here: http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/comparative.pdf and a guide to the Constitution here: http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/guide.pdf

albert hammond bootleg

Treaty or constitution?.. who knows. What I do know is that at the heart of the EU lies corruption (auditors fail to sign off accounts for how many years..?) and a law making commission answerable to no one. Add to this an inflated bureaucracy geared to self perpetuation, jobs for the boys and snouts in the trough. I haven’t even mentioned the weak minded gravy train politicians and the ridiculous and expensive spectacle of switching between strassbourg and brussels. Of course the British government is complicit in all of this, Mr Murphy admits as much at the beginning of the last paragraph. My point is as a governing body the EU is rotten to the core. Should we have a referendum.. of course we should, anything to throw a spanner in the works. And that, I think, is what Mr Murphy is afraid of.

Michael Huntsman

Murphy duly fisked here: http://tinyurl.com/3cur8e MH

J H Holloway

All this can be pinned down in two sentences.

One parliament should never bind a subsequent parliament.

On the rare occasions that it seeks to do so, there must be a referendum.

Could somebody send this to the Tory party pagers....

David Lindsay

Such a referendum would deliver a Yes vote. In 1975, the federalists managed to convince two thirds of the electorate that they were merely voting for “a free trade area” called “the Common Market”, even though the first clause of the European Communities Act was, and is, a textbook definition of a federal state. This was achieved by persistently putting up Tony Benn and Enoch Powell to state the case for a No vote. Most people voted instead for the position espoused by politicians with whom they felt more comfortable. The same thing would happen again. Powell’s place would be filled by that nasty fringe which holds his economic views untempered by his romantic Toryism. Such would be the sole No campaigners on at least two out of every three, and quite possibly three out of every four, programmes. The rest of the time, Benn would be back. No Ian Davidson. No Frank Field. No Kate Hoey. Just Wedgie occasionally, and the Genghis Khan Institute the rest of the time. Even fewer people would identify with Benn now than in 1975. And do even tribal Tories, never mind anybody else, believe in unrestricted immigration to feed unbridled capitalism? Or the total deregulation of alcohol, gambling and pornography? Or the legalisation of drugs and prostitution? Or the wholesale privatisation of health, education and pensions? Or the abolition of farm subsidies? “Well, then,” the federalists would say, “what makes you think that you agree with these people about this, and this alone? Their position is coherent. It all fits together. And your views don’t fit into it at all. Vote Yes, if only because they want you to Vote No.” And people would. Instead, Parliament should do its duty by throwing out the Constitreaty without any need for a referendum. Not least, the unions should be refusing to fund any MP who does not vote in Parliament both against the Constitreaty and in favour of securing workers’ rights (among other things) through the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and should instead be undertaking to fund alternative parliamentary candidates who will do both of those things. For we don’t need the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, we need a proper party like Labour of old, dedicated to just that: securing workers’ rights (among other things) through the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Northern Ron

Mr Murphy does neither himself nor his cause any good by pretending the EU Treaty doesn't matter much to us (transport subsidies in Germany) at the same time as saying that the whole thing is excellent for the UK. If he so sure its what we want, why not have the courage/decency/honesty to actually ask us as he promised to in his last election manifesto? All he's managed to do is make the political class seem even shiftier than it did before and that's going it some.

Howard Tolman

Murphy's rambling tome was as depressing as it was dishonest. Does the new treaty/constitution give more powers to Brussels? Surely this was the issue on which a referendum was promised. If the treaty/constitution, or whatever other euphemism you want to use to describe it does indeed give away yet more sovereignty, I believe the British people should be given a chance to vote on it. Murphy is just another charlatan.

William Merton

"Only" 50 additions to the majority voting list! Does Murphy not realise that other members have different objectives to us; we do not,for example, subsidise tobacco growing and the creation of wine lakes.