Union of denial

Max Kaye

A second referendum asking the Irish to 'correct their stupid mistake' would backfire. As an Englishman I am well aware that the Irish don't take kindly to being bullied.

Liz Brown

MacShane (and his fellow band Brussels bandits) really gets up my nose - he simply doesn't "get it" but then again, he and they get a very generous pension from Brussels

Slim Jim

This just demonstrates how desperate the political elites of Europe have become. Today, Guido Fawkes makes a very good point about the tiny amount of legislators across the EU who are trying to force this con through on behalf of millions of us. Heaven forbid that a few million Irish could have scuppered their plans! That's why traitorous bastards like Brown & McShane were so intent on denying us our opportunity. God bless the Irish!

Dave Burns

He stood on a manifesto that said we would have a vote on the changes. The only democracy in the EU has voted against, the rest of us are expected to accept the judgement of the elites.

Travis Bickle

I would like to see a referendum along the basis of "we the British people totally agree to cede all our parliamentary decision making to Brussels and become fully paid up member of the EU. This includes dissolving the Westminster Parliament, sacking all of our existing MPs and setting up much smaller regional assemblies".

Let's see how many of our MPs would be supporting a yes vote on those terms.

David Lindsay

MacShane is of course a signatory both to the Euston Manifesto and, perhaps even more significantly, to the Statement of Principles of the Henry Jackson Society, signed by several Tory MPs and a couple of Labour ones (and with several of the leading American neocons as its Patrons), which calls of a single EU defence "capability" under overall American command.

MacShane has this in common with numerous regular or occasional Murdoch cheque-cashers, one of whom the Eustonite-Jacksonites are now putting up, at Murdoch's expense, as the anti-liberty candidate against David Davis.

TGF UKIP

Slim Jim "traitorous bastards like Brown & McShane" and don't forget Kenneth the mouth Clarke and John the gerrymander Maples and the rest of their Tory gang who are just as keen on the sell-out as Brown and McShane. And, for God's sake, don't for one moment think Cameron is to be trusted on Europe - he ain't.

Athesius the Facilitator

Mcshane is bonkers and anybody with half a brain knows that. This is the man that blamed the Tories for shutting down the steel industry. It was Bill Sirs the less than useless union leader who was responsible for that. Can the media oulets not find someone better than him to put up. He was sacked by Blair as euro minister for being a plonker, no other reason. Even my fellow work mate Anthony the Sensitive could give Mcshane a good kicking in a debate.

Jack R

This deviously, self-styled, 'listening' Labour government, is only listening to the EU bureaucrats, not to the views of the British people who, by a large majority, despite no Referendum, opposed the Lisbon Constitution/Treaty. Even now, after the Irish 'NO' vote, the likes of Labour's Brown-Miliband-Murphy-MacShane are already plotting ways to circumvent the wishes of the British people.

This could be good news for the Conservatives. Cameron must keep the issue of the EU, an undesirable block to UK national sovereignty, as a Manifesto and campaigning priority from now on. With a commitment to hold a Referendum against encroachments of EU power. The excellent work of the (minority)of stalwart Tory MPs who opposed the Lisbon Treaty in the Commons, must be extended. On the EU front, the main political competition may well not be from Labour or LibDems, but from UKIP, which aim to make progress in the 2009 European elections.

wonderfulforhisage

Travis B.

What if you added; "all MPs will be entitled to their current salary and expenses, indexed linked, for life" to your first paragraph.

My guess is that it would probably make a difference.

Nicholas

"Cameron must keep the issue of the EU, an undesirable block to UK national sovereignty, as a Manifesto and campaigning priority from now on."

Cameron, I hate to say it, has missed the boat. He has missed the boat on DD and EU. I don't see any campaigning or any fighting by the Conservatives as the Labour pariahs compound their arrogance and duplicity. Just old Conservative grandees like Heseltine and Portillo living in the past and wittering on as though they were talking over lunch at the club. Where are the fighters?

The only person to stick it to them is DD. I hope that it brings about huge public unrest and demonstration, to take all the stifling, repressive national socialist bureaucracy we have put up with for 11 years and fling it back in their smug socialist faces.

For goodness sake Conservatives, the moment is here, get off your arses and do some proper political fighting.

TGF UKIP

Nicholas, if it be the same Nicholas, you have taken the stick to me in the past for my anti-Cameronism but it is this very aversion he and this Tory Party have for presenting and arguing the case for conservative principles that I so abhor.

A political party gets nowhere if it seems to comprise only idelogical headbangers but to thrive and prosper it must have a distinctly identifiable ideology and be willing on all occasions to argue the case for its principles.

There are those, Tiberius and Fraser to name two, who hold to the Ugly Duckling theory on Cameron, namely that he is presently running as a Blue Labour SocDem "so as not to frighten the horses" but post 2010 in office he will metamorphose into a beautiful conservative swan.

As time passes, through, and the polls increasingly demonstrate a massive public move away from tax and spend, political correctness and immigration laxity etc the Ugly Duckling theory seems to me less tenable. Indeed, as the months and weeks pass by Cameron looks more and more like the paternalistic, patrician High Tory social democrat that I have always believed him to be.

EyeSee

In fact Denis, every time a country is allowed to vote on Europe they say no. In this case, France, Holland and Ireland.

Nicholas

TGF UKIP I have indeed. But a week in politics is a long time and that was before 42 days, the Declaration of Haltemplace and Howden, the Irish 'No' and the Brown Lisbon Continuum.

Timing in politics, as in war, is everything, and there is a need for a great political leader to be instinctive to the winds of change. The last week has been momentous, whether the "Westminster village" choose to believe that or not. In fact, in their wry denial they reveal the shallow and dry parochialism of their position. A killer whale has just launched itself offshore and all the little penguins on the ice floeshuffle backward a few steps and look on.

Now, if ever, is the time for the Cameron to seize the day, to mobilise the Conservative machine and advance in the new direction. James Forsyth notes that the Cameron was 'strong, accusing the government of the “height of arrogance”'. In the circumstances prevailing this week that is pathetic. The equivalent of the indignant but slightly scared middle class father demanding that the gang of Hells Angels leave his daughter's birthday party.

The Cameron, we are told, has the cold ruthlessness of the leader. Well, what we need to see now is Henry V before Harfleur. He needs to get behind DD and inspire a great wave of rebellion in this country against the petty tyrants who have ruined and oppressed it for so long and the all noisome paraphernalia of their regime.

DD has brought back drama and destiny to a politics trampled beneath the prosaic feet of glorified bureaucrats. The Cameron needs to rise to the occasion. The era of Blair and the New Labour charade is dead. The curtains have parted to reveal a great fascist beast in its death throes. The beast must now be slain and the era of renewal and glory begin.

Can you do it, Cameron, or are you content just to tut tut to the camera and prod the dying beast at PMQs?