Debate on the Address

With all due respect to the hon. Gentleman, I think that is a judgment he must make. I do not want to trawl through a history lesson going back to the days of Maastricht, but the person I blame most on all of this is Tony Blair. He is the one Prime Minister who came into office with the wind behind him, and could have lanced the boil of the European issue for an entire political generation had he seized the opportunity. Sadly, he chose not to do so, which is why not only has it festered, but what began as a rather eccentric minority position is, as the hon. Gentleman says, now commanding 25% of the recent votes cast and, even more alarmingly, I suspect much more than 25% of the current parliamentary Conservative party.