The Tories' Euro Curse

Avudale

One referendum. In or out of Europe.

We know which way the result will turn. It's why they've refused to give us a vote for over 30 years since joining the Common Market.

Scoundrels the lot of them.

Edmund Jerk

Isolation in Europe sounds great to me; to quote that great Liberal (and he really was a liberal unlike you and your social-democratic chums) Lord Palmerston: Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests. It's in our permanent interest to resist integration and hopefully that's what Cameron will do.

denverthen

And your employment with this magazine is looking increasingly temporary.

Labour needs you, activist.

Jonathan Woolf

Why does it always escape you champagne socialists that the majority of the British people are more Eurosceptic than the Tories, let alone the rest of the political and commentariat classes? It is a heroic rhetorical leap to assert that Cameron is "isolated at home" on the basis that a bunch of Brussels worshipping FCO civil servants are in favour of surrendering our national sovereignty to unelected foreign officials.

It is also worth noting, again, that the French and Dutch electorates, and the Irish electorate (before they were shamelessly frightened into it), all rejected Lisbon when given the chance. Or is that your definition of our being "isolated in Europe"?

If you and your Europhile media buddies love Europe so much, why don't you all do the rest of us an immense favour and up sticks to Paris?

Chris

We had "one referendum, in or out". It was made very plain that we were voting for ever closer union and we voted for it.

Yam Yam

Probably the same Foreign Office types who were cheering when they heard the news that the Czechs had agreed to hand the Sudetenland over to Der Fuhrer.

In2minds

Edmund Jerk and Yam Yam, I agree with both of you. I also like the title here, 'The Tories' Euro Curse', for it implies that Nulabour always get it right. This is a form of smugness common with the left/liberal folk.

Fergus Pickering

Come on Chris, it was not made plain at all. Remember Henryb Cooper's cauliflowers. We all thought we were voting for a customs union. Made plain, my bottom. Perhaps you were too young to know and you've bought some crap from other people. Heath was a lying bastard and if Wilson wasn't he didn't know much about it and wasn't very interested either.

Vulture

Let me get this straight, Martin. You don't approve of supposedly politically neutral civil servants cheering the surrender of their country's sovereignity? Yet you yourself do approve that surrender for partisan political motives? Is that right?

The FCO, since time immemorial, have betrayed British interests. If Dave has any sense he will follow the example of all previous Prime Ministers and by-pass it.

Dave B

"... his decision to leave the European People's Party is looking increasingly eccentric. "

No, it isn't. It's a necessary first step.

Sir Graophus

It’s a puzzle how Lib and Lab both reneged on their 2005 manifesto promise of a referendum, while Dave did not, yet it is Dave who feels the heat.

mckenzie

Totally agree here. They have played this one like a pack of school kids somking behind the bike shed.

Barbara

They can cheer, for now, but the retribution will come when we, the public get our vote in the general election. On Mr Cameron's pledges today, that may be quite different from what they expect. We will not be deceived twice, once enough. We've had enough of Stalinistic government we are looking for fresh democratic one, Cameron fails hands down with his ideas, so, we have to seek redress with the new, and that's the publics weapon, freedom to choose. Choose they will from the two parties that will give them a referendum, and let us know from day one where they intend going without the waffle, and we will follow for that is what we want.

Richard

As usual when you have no reasoning you simply assert. In what way is the decision to leave the ridiculous eurofederalist mainstream ridiculous? Surely far more ridiculous is the idea that Europe has to go one way, to closer integration, regardless of the will and the interests of the people and without any opposition.

denverthen

"His promise of a referendum is dead and his decision to leave the European People's Party is looking increasingly eccentric."

The perfect encapsulation of the Left's inane doublethink. Brown and Labour's broken promise of a referendum (which Cameron was trying desperately to honour) is dead.

Cameron's decision to form a new, independent centre right grouping in Europe is now looking like a stroke of political genius.

Check the polls over the next few weeks if you think I'm wrong, Bright. You will be amazed. No doubt the quality of your journalism - sorry, activism - will not improve on these issues, however.

Merlyn

Cameron is powerless in Europe, its time the press stopped trying to fool us.

Tyndale

Never mind the rest of the comments, Martin, you are a bright star in the firmament of the foggily confused. Daily Express opinion polls are not the measure of the British people and they nver will be. Democracy here is representative, not populist, and always has been. However strong the whips on both sides of the commons, if the British people has really wanted a referendum, they would have got it by now. Actually Europe is quite a nice place, where they have espoused values [learnt largely from or reminded by the English] of liberty, democracy, juries, an independent judiciary etc. [Think of Hugh Greene rebuilding German radio along democratic lines after WW2] It's all been a great conversation which bonkers Tory Eurosceptics want to stop. Go Martin!

Diversity

Martin,

There was probably just as loud a cheer in the FO when the Irish first rejected the Lisbon Treaty. It is such a pain in most parts of the anatomy document that anybody who has to do detailed work on it can be expected to cheer at any development which gets the text off their desks.