Treaty of Lisbon (No. 5)

Not at all. The case I am making is that the European approach has often lacked momentum and has occasionally been disjointed: an example is the rotating presidency. When we sought a statement on Litvinenko, we had to go to the Portuguese presidency—the route to an EU statement was through Lisbon. By the time of our disagreement with Russia over the British Council, the presidency had moved to Slovenia because of that ridiculous charade—that game of musical chairs with European diplomacy—and the route to a European statement on Russia was through Ljubljana. We are more effective when we work through the European Union, but we could be made much more effective still by some of the reforms in the treaty.