CAMERON BOTTLES IT

It appears that Eton/Oxford/Bullingdon Boy David Cameron has bottled it.

For years he has ranted and ranted and ranted about getting us out of the EU.

He will no doubt soon have the power to destroy the Treaty of Lisbon when the Tories are elected into government next year. If given the chance to vote on the treaty the British people would rip it to shreds, wipe their arses with it and shove that soiled paper down the throats of those forcing it down our throats. He knows it. We know it. They know it.

But Cameron has come up with this compromise that if the Czech Republic and Poland ratify the treaty then he won't give us a vote, but he will instead negotiate to opt out of certain parts of the treaty.

Whenever the people have been given a chance to vote on the treaty it has been rejected, except just recently in Ireland when the EU and the Irish government both illegally used taxpayer money to pay for and distribute pro-EU propaganda and used the Bilderberg-engineered financial crisis to make false promises on the Irish economy.

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from http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/05/conservatives-eu-lisbon-treaty-referendum


Tories may offer voters a 'consultation' on EU instead of referendum

As Conservatives indicate they will not hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, Boris Johnson suggests the party could find other ways of consulting voters

Boris Johnson today suggested the Tories could offer voters a "consultation" on relations with Europe after it emerged that David Cameron is to rule out a referendum on the Lisbon treaty if the measure is ratified by all 27 members of the EU before next year's general election in Britain.

Amid signs the measure will enter EU law by the end of the year – as the Czech Republic and Poland indicated over the weekend they will fall into line – Tory sources told the Guardian yesterday that Cameron will not try to unpick the treaty's main reforms.

In a move to assuage Eurosceptic anger inside and outside his party, Cameron will instead launch a campaign to repatriate powers which the Tories believe should be held at a national level. Party sources say Cameron is planning to

• Repatriate social and employment powers to a national level. This would effectively mean restoring Britain's opt-out from the social chapter and would need the agreement of all 27 member states

• Demand greater power over justice and home affairs. Under Lisbon these are voted on under a system which gives no member state a veto. France and Germany are likely to resist change here because it would mean unpicking this part of the treaty which gives Britain an "opt in" – the right to refuse to sign up to laws in this area

• Issue a warning to the EU that a Tory government will adopt a hardline stance if its demands are not accepted. This could involve holding a UK referendum on Cameron's more modest proposals or holding up the next round of EU treaties to admit Croatia and Iceland into the union

Today, in an interview on BBC Breakfast, Johnson suggested that if the Lisbon treaty has been ratified by the time of the election, a Conservative government could find other ways of consulting voters as a substitute for a full, retrospective referendum.

"If and when the treaty is ratified and that's before a Conservative government comes in, then it's a difficult matter, and obviously William Hague and David Cameron will have to give effect to the consultation I think people will want to have," the London mayor said.

"I think you will find that there are things that could be done, and it's certainly the case that you could put key parts of this treaty to the people and you could certainly find out what people thought about it."

Cameron is deeply irritated that the EU is set to dominate this week's Tory conference, the last before the general election. He wants to use the week to outline a series of carefully prepared policies to tackle unemployment and the fiscal deficit. Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, held the line in interviews this morning, insisting the party had "only one policy at a time".

After Ireland voted to accept the Lisbon treaty on Friday, the foreign secretary, David Miliband, accused Cameron of a "real failure of leadership".

The Tories are now having to contemplate what they will do as Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy step up the pressure on Warsaw and Prague to ratify the treaty in the wake of Ireland's yes vote. Poland and the Czech Republic have indicated that they will ratify the measure within months.

Senior Conservative sources say that Cameron will abandon a referendum on Lisbon if the measure enters EU law because he had accepted that it would be virtually impossible to unpick the main institutional EU changes in the Lisbon treaty. These are the new president of the European council, a new "high representative" for foreign affairs and greater powers for the European parliament.

One well placed Tory said: "There is virtually no hope of changing the main institutional architecture of the EU once Lisbon enters into force. If the treaty enters EU law you will find that a Conservative government will want to focus on repatriating powers that affect the UK. This is not going soft. If other EU leaders say they will not accommodate us, then we have the threat of a referendum on our reforms."

Cameron gave a hint of his plans when he appeared on The Andrew Marr Show yesterday. Asked what powers he would like to repatriate, he said: "We've said that we think that the social and employment legislation, we think that's an area that ought to be determined nationally rather than at the European level. There are many things in the Lisbon treaty – giving more power over home affairs and justice – that we don't think is right."

William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, told Radio 4's The World This Weekend: "If it is [ratified] then we will spell out exactly how we intend to proceed, we will seek a mandate for that in our election manifesto. But we are entitled to say that we still want to hold, before ratification, the referendum that we have always wanted and that the people were promised at the last election."

Daniel Hannan, the Eurosceptic Tory MEP who was instrumental in persuading Cameron to abandon the main centre-right grouping in the European parliament, accepted last night that a referendum on Lisbon is unlikely to take place.

"The reason why we're pushing for a referendum on Lisbon was because Tony Blair promised one. If we are drawing up our own referendum it would have been issues stretching back to the treaty of Rome. Plainly the other member states want to go further than we do. We are in the business not of preventing others from embarking on deeper integration, but withdrawing from those parts we do not want to be part of."

Warsaw has told Sweden, which holds the rotating EU presidency, that it will ratify the measure within weeks. Vaclav Klaus, the Eurosceptic Czech president who had indicated he would delay ratifying the treaty until after the British general election, indicated he might change his mind.

"There will never be another referendum in Europe," he told the BBC after the Irish vote. "The people of Britain should have been doing something much earlier and not just now, too late, saying something and waiting for my decision."