European Union (Amendment) Bill

Come on! I must tell the hon. Gentleman, who intervenes quite a lot, that the politics of the situation dictate what happens at the time. In the time running up to Nice, his Government were not in trouble or difficulty and were able to envisage the coming election with some sanguine sense of success. Things were different by the time they hit 2004 and 2005. The reality was that the decision was taken. The intriguing thing, which really bothers me, is that as I watched and listened to the Foreign Secretary, it occurred to me that I had never seen somebody speak for a Government who has looked so contorted and so twisted, and who has so turned in one argument against another. At one moment, his point was only that it was fundamental, but then it was not fundamental; then we were clearing the air, but then we were not because we were clearing fundamentals instead. The argument went round and round. If he reads it in Hansard tomorrow, he will say to himself, ““What an awful day I had. I had to say something that I know is fundamentally not true. There is no major difference between the Lisbon treaty and the constitutional treaty. What happened in between was a political imperative.”” It is worth remembering that Valéry Giscard d’Estaing said something with which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) has agreed, although the latter supports the Government’s position on securing the ratification of the treaty. Mr. Giscard d’Estaing has said:"““In the Treaty of Lisbon, the tools are largely the same. Only the order in which they are arranged in the tool-box has been changed. Why this subtle change? Above all, it is to head off any threat of referenda by avoiding any form of constitutional vocabulary””." I do not know why we dance around as though this were a silly game. The truth is that the Heads of State and Governments of all the countries that negotiated the constitutional treaty have said to each other, ““We have got ourselves in a real mess over this. We allowed the public and politicians who are not responsible members of the Government to play a part””—politicians such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who speaks so cogently on these matters. The member states believe that allowing the vox populi to get involved by having referendums in France and Holland put a kibosh on the whole thing, so they concluded that they would not do that again. They learned the lesson of all this nonsense about consulting the public, which is that EU Governments do not get what they want by doing that. They believe that they have a purpose that was laid down by their forefathers, and that they must see it through. Europe’s bureaucrats have known for years that the way to get things done is never to ask the public if they want them to be done, because the answer will inevitably be no.