European Union (Amendment) Bill

Let me disappoint and reassure my hon. Friend at the same time. No institutional framework can replace or command the national will of sovereign nation states to send their young men and women to put themselves in harm's way, or the national will of nation states to recognise or refuse to recognise Kosovo. That must be understood. The notion that, as a result of the treaty, President Sarkozy or Chancellor Merkel will substantially change their actions as the democratically elected heads of the Governments of France and of Germany, or that what the Bundestag allows Chancellor Merkel to do or what President Sarkozy chooses to do about rejoining NATO will be affected, is wrong. In pure theory, one can claim anything about any treaty, but that does not reflect what happens on the ground. We have heard some enjoyable speeches. I have enjoyed the contributions of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty). I commend him, as Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, for reading into the record extracts from the treaty, especially on social rights and other matters that far too many members of my party and political family do not realise are in the text. I commend especially the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) and the right hon. Members for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) and for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), who have done the best debating from behind their Front Bench. The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who is not in his place, punctured the windy bombast of the shadow Foreign Secretary's claims that the new president of the EU or the high representative would be omnipotent and infallible and dictate to the world. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, who knows of what he speaks as a former Foreign Secretary—and I do not believe that he opposes the pro-referendum rhetoric of his party—effectively told the shadow Foreign Secretary, ““Stop talking through your backside. This is utter nonsense.”” I hope that someone will put together a compendium of those speeches, because they represent common sense in the Conservative party. When Britain joined the EU, my party opposed that. Several young Labour Members of Parliament, including John Smith, Lord Radice and Lord Hattersley, defied the Labour party and voted for Europe. They kept the idea of Europe alive as serious politics in the Labour party and, when the time came, after the lunacy of the 1983 election manifesto, enough Labour Members of Parliament were ready to make the case for Europe. We see none of that in the Conservative party. Never, in the Conservative party's history, have such isolationist prejudices been given free rein, with hardly a check, especially from younger Members. If no young Conservative Members are prepared to speak for Europe, that proves to me that they are wholly unfit to govern this country in the foreseeable future.