European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am glad the noble Lord raises that as I was just going to come to it; he anticipated my remarks. What Mr Benn did is entirely up to him. He is—let us be polite—an eccentric and was eccentric over that. The noble Lord, Lord Radice, has raised the issue of whether UKIP or this side—let us call them Eurosceptics to use an awful shorthand—would accept the result of a referendum. Yes, of course we would—unlike the European Union. During the interesting debates earlier, I made a short list of the referendums that have occurred within the European Union, or just without it, in the last few years. The Danish referendum on Maastricht voted it down. The European Union did not accept that; they had to have another go and then come up with the right answer. They were given a protocol on something, a bribe to vote yes—which they did. Next—these are not necessarily in chronological order; there were so many defeats of the European Union in democratic elections I cannot remember which order they came in—there was the Irish referendum on the Nice treaty. They voted that down and were given a bribe, told to go away and have another think. They did so. The Danish voted down the euro; they were asked to think again a couple of years later, then they voted it down again. There is nothing like a Dane. Then we had the Swedish referendum on the euro; that was voted down. The French voted down the constitutional treaty, as did the Dutch. The Norwegians have repeatedly voted against joining Europe, despite, according to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, apparently being run by fax-democracy from Europe. Of course they are not; they are not in the agricultural policy or the fisheries policy. They do roughly what they want and put into law what is required. Just to mention the Swiss again, they have repeatedly by large majority voted against joining the European Union. The European apparat simply cannot accept the result of a democratic poll—