Roger Helmer MEP

Generally roasting things twice is not to be advised, although re-fried beans spring to mind.  Alan Duncan MP, our man in Rutland and Melton, was given a going-over in the early days of the Telegraph expenses revelations, over his gardening claims.  I recall that some practical joker cut out a neat Pound Sign in his lawn, and planted it with herbaceous blossoms.  It seems that the same joker, in an amusing but generous gesture, also pinned ten-pound notes to the trees.  I’ve been kind of hoping that the same joker might pin a few tenners on my trees, but no joy so far.
 
Now the Telegraph is having a second go, claiming that Alan bought his constituency home outright (seems that Alan is not short of a bob or two) and then, later, took out a mortgage so that he could claim the interest against his second home allowance.  Is that scandalous or what?
 
But before we rush to judgement, let’s pause and reflect.  Which of us, offered a perfectly legitimate allowance as part of our conditions of employment, would not arrange our affairs so as to take advantage of it?  This was not money dishonestly or fraudulently obtained.  It was entirely within the rules.  The rules are, by common consent, appalling, but an individual MP can scarcely be held personally responsible for bad rules, especially if he’s been in opposition for twelve years.
 
The worst feature of the rules (in my view) is that fact that expenses can be charged in respect of a constituency home.  The intention, surely, is to reimburse Members of Parliament for the costs of accommodation incurred by staying in London overnight, in order to perform their parliamentary duties (and they are equally entitled to that reimbursement if they are independently wealthy, or poor as church mice).  I should have thought that the very first reform was to link the expenses solely to accommodation close to the House of Commons.  But Alan did indeed work in the House of Commons.  He did indeed incur expenses in staying in London, away from home, to perform those duties on behalf of his constituents.  And he was entitled to appropriate compensation.  Looked at this way, he was not a greedy MP exploiting the system, but (dare I say it?) the victim of bizarre rules which forced him into complex and arcane arrangements to enable him to claim what he was entitled to in the first place.
 
I am not an enthusiast for the European Union or its institutions.  But I believe that in one respect we have a better system in the European parliament, where we have a flat-rate daily allowance, which broadly covers the costs of a decent hotel room and an evening meal.  The system is simple, transparent, cheap to administer (how much does all that correspondence with the Commons Fees Office cost us in admin?), and entirely neutral with regard to the member’s personal arrangements.  MEPs can stay in an hotel, or in a small or large rented apartment, or they can buy any property they want to buy, with or without a mortgage, and they get the same allowance regardless.  It is right they get the same money, because it compensates them for fulfilling the same obligation — to be in Brussels or Strasbourg to do their work.  If they don’t attend, they don’t get the money.
 
This idea has been rejected by prominent MPs in Westminster because, they say, it represents “a payment for just coming to work”, and would be “unacceptable to the public”.  But it’s not a payment for coming to work.  It’s a reimbursement of the costs inevitably and properly incurred in staying in a remote capital city in order to perform their duties.  It’s a helluva a lot better than the scheme we have at the moment.  We should look at it again.

Now that Michael Jackson has checked out of Neverland for the last and final time, it seems that Prime Minister Gordon Brown has taken up residence there.  Or maybe it’s Never-Never-land.  Facing the worst peace-time fiscal crisis this country has ever seen, Gordon’s only solution is to borrow and spend.  He’s in the deepest hole in living memory, and his plan is to keep right on digging.
 
With a straight face he has announced his umpty-umpth relaunch, with a hubristically titled programme “Building Britain’s Future” — as though he imagined that he and his government might be there to carry it through.  Everyone from the OECD to Mervyn King at the Bank of England, right through to the man in the street, understands the obvious — that Britain’s borrowing needs to be brought under control.  Labour Ministers and back-benchers know it.  The public knows it.  Only Gordon (and perhaps Ed Balls) are in a state of denial.
 
Asked a series of questions in the Commons, to which his Eminence Grise Peter Mandelson had already given answers on the Today programme, Brown’s answer was “Errr, don’t know”.   Gordon has announced a major programme of public housing.  How will he pay for it?  Easy.  He will do it at no cost by “transferring money from other programmes”.  Which other programmes?  Errr, don’t know.  He will hire 100,000 tutors at £25 an hour to provide one-to-one tuition to children struggling with English or arithmetic.  How will he pay for them?  You know the answer, but Gordon doesn’t.  But I wonder if he should declare an interest?  He’s already speculated in public about his ambitions to become a teacher after his political career.  Is this man who by his own admission is rather poor at communicating information, planning to ensure his employment after Number Ten?  Will he be one of the 100,000?  Will he play his part in creating thousands of new little Chancellors of the Exchequer?  Classes in how to sell the nation’s gold reserves at the bottom of the market, perhaps?
 
We all know that whichever government is elected next time, it will have to take urgent and painful action to close the fiscal gap.  Of course in his heart Gordon knows it too, which is why it is particularly tragic and pathetic to see him desperately trying to pretend otherwise.  But what I fear he genuinely doesn’t understand is how that gap is to be closed.  He will think of a judicious mix of spending cuts and tax rises, and given his need to pander to his own constituency of trade unions and public servants, his instinct will be to lean more towards tax rises than towards spending cuts.  Gordon may have been Chancellor, but I fear he is woefully ignorant of economics.  He will have heard of the Laffer curve, but he doesn’t understand it, and in his heart he doesn’t believe it.  The idea that raising tax rates could actually reduce government revenues must surely be (Gordon will think) the voodoo economics of the neo-con right.  Surely it’s obvious that higher tax rates must raise revenues?  Yes Gordon.  It’s obvious.  But it’s wrong.

According to news reports, the government is planning to spend more of our money, this time to warn us of the dangers of climate change, to soften us up for the massive amounts it wants to spend to combat it, and to prepare us for the very painful policy prescriptions which it seems to expect will come out of the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December. 
 
But they won’t tell us that tens of thousands of scientists around the world, many from prestigious academic institutions, disagree with the theory of man-made climate change.  They won’t tell us that the slight warming we have seen in the last century is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate cycles.  They won’t tell us that the observed pattern of warming is entirely different from that predicted by the computer models on which the Great Carbon Myth is based, or that global temperatures correlate much better with solar variation than with the steady rise in atmospheric CO2. 
 
They won’t remind us that in the 1970s, governments were worried about global cooling, and warning us of the coming Ice Age.  And they certainly won’t tell us that for the last five years, the trend of global average temperature has again been downward.
 
They will talk about tipping points, but they won’t tell us that today’s temperatures are entirely normal, and that 800 years ago the world was warmer than today, during the Mediaeval Warm Period (when grapes grew in northern England), as it was 1800 years ago, during the Roman Optimum.
 
They won’t tell us that the eye-watering amount they propose to spend on climate mitigation far exceeds any conceivable benefit.  But the public are wising-up to the green agenda.  Increasingly voters recognise that green taxes are about raising revenue, not saving the planet.
 
There are real and urgent issues around energy security which we need to address, but global warming hysteria is distorting our priorities.

Consistent with his long-term plan of stealing the Opposition’s clothes, Gordon Brown is set to announce a new range of citizens’ “entitlements” shortly — although it seems he is thinking in terms of access guarantees to public services (which hard-pressed public servants will then be pressured to deliver), rather than any relief from the burden of government nannying and nit-picking.  The government is trailing “an end of the target culture”, though if they’re announcing entitlements (for example, and as quoted on the BBC) for minimum waiting times in doctors’ surgeries, it’s quite difficult to see how that’s different from a target.
 
But never mind.  Entitlements sound good, and I’ve been thinking about some entitlements I’d like to have.  I’d like to be entitled to go about my business without any requirement to carry, or to possess, an ID card.  I’d like an entitlement to privacy, so that no government agency aspired to have my DNA, or my medical records, on its leaky data-base.  I’d like to be entitled to express contentious opinions without the threat from the ghastly regiment of politically-correct thought police.  I’d like to be able to go for a drive in the country without constantly worrying about speed cameras — and without the proposed “black box” in my car, which would tell the government where I was, where I was going, and how fast.  I’d like to travel abroad without the proposed government controls on information about my journey.
 
I’d like to be entitled to be governed democratically by people we’ve elected to our own parliament in our own country — not by anti-democratic and unaccountable foreign institutions in Brussels, where we have no control and little influence.
 
I’d even like pub and club landlords to have an entitlement to provide well-ventilated smoking-rooms, available for their customers who choose to smoke.  Not because I want to smoke (I hate smoking) but because I feel that the pendulum has swung too far against the rights and liberties of those who do choose, however unwisely, to do so.  I’d like an entitlement to be free of advice on healthy eating and healthy drinking, and exercise and obesity.  These may be real issues, but they are the citizen’s issues, not the government’s.
 
I’d like an entitlement to spend more of my income as I choose, with less taken by the state in punitive taxation.  I’d like the entitlement to regard my home as my castle, and to deny access to the busy-body agents of bureaucracy if I choose to do so.
 
In fact I’d like a general entitlement to get the government off our backs.  But I suspect that Labour doesn’t quite have that in mind.

The government (I suppose we must still call it that) has announced plans to make available the sum of £4 million, from the funds recovered from criminals, and make it available across the country for community projects.  It is inviting the public to propose suitable projects.  Several thoughts spring to mind.
 
First, the government must think it’s good value to spend £4 million (of what is essentially public money) to buy positive national press coverage and several minutes discussion on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
 
Second, spread across the country and amongst dozens of community projects, £4 million is almost trivial.  It’s a drop in the ocean.
 
Third, given all the people who will be setting up web-sites, sending in ideas, analysing the ideas, and sending them up to the Home Office for adjudication and authorisation, the administrative costs of the exercise will far exceed the sum to be disbursed.  Come to think of it, that’s exactly how EU grant funding works.  Maybe the government got the idea from Brussels.
 
Fourthly, if this is the best sort of initiative that our fag-end government can think of, it’s yet further evidence that they’ve run out of steam, run out of ideas, and need to go to the country.
 
But in a positive and constructive spirit nonetheless, I have a suggestion of my own.  Given the disastrous and unprecedented deficit which the government has created, and the fact that our children and grandchildren will be saddled with Gordon Brown’s debt for decades, any spare money the government can lay hand on should be used for one purpose, and one purpose only.  It should be used to pay down debt.

This was a front-page headline in this morning’s Daily Telegraph, and it appears to quote Bank of England Governor Mervyn King.
 
I hate to disagree with such an authority as Mervyn King, who seems exceptionally wise and well-balanced.  His recent castigation of the government, and by implication of Gordon Brown’s economic stewardship, have been splendid to watch.
 
And yet he’s wrong.  Wrong to repeat the schoolboy howler that tax rises raise revenues, and can therefore help to fill the government’s deficit.
 
After a certain point, tax rates become counter-productive.  Companies move off-shore, or fail to invest.  Individuals have less incentive to work, more incentive to hire accountants to think of creative tax-avoidance measures.  Entrepreneurs have fewer opportunities for capital accumulation.  At the margin, it becomes less attractive for the unemployed to find work, less attractive for the employed to do overtime.
 
This is well-known to economists, and is expressed in the “Laffer Curve”, which shows that if you raise tax rates from very low levels, revenues initially increase.  But as rates get higher and people are less willing to pay, the curve flattens and starts to fall.  Britain is already over the hump, and any further tax rises will damage revenues.
 
This sounds like a neat theory, but it has been proven over and over again in dozens of countries over many decades.  When Russia reduced tax rates from 90% to 19%, revenues tripled.  Suddenly it was easier to pay the tax than to evade it.
 
It is time to ditch the childish delusion that high-tax countries like Britain can raise revenues, and reduce deficits, by raising tax rates.  Gordon Brown’s disastrous mis-management of the British economy has left us boxed in to a position where tax hikes will be counter-productive.  Only spending reductions can address the Labour deficit.

A key objective of political leaders is to avoid being seen as a “Lame Duck”.  Once that label sticks, the expectation of mortality is established, the prophecy becomes self-fulfilling, and the only way is down.  This is a professional hazard for second-term US Presidents, where mortality is burned into the Constitutional time-table, and power and authority visibly drain away.  No leader ever announces in advance that he is shortly going to quit.
 
So what on earth possessed our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to go public recently with his private reveries about “life after politics”?  Is he (as many fear) “losing it”?  He says he could walk away from it all with equanimity, and as one letter-writer said in the press “You don’t need to walk away from Number Ten, Gordon — I’ll pay for the taxi”.  So my challenge to the Prime Minister is simple: you’ve said you can walk away, Gordon.  So go on.  Prove it.  Show us.
 
In an astonishing moment of self-awareness from a PM almost totally lacking in empathy and intuition, he recognised that he was not as good as he would like to be at communication, and imparting information (recalling the favourite line of Brussels bureaucrats after a referendum set-back — “Perhaps we haven’t explained things well enough to the voters”).  Then this man who admits to his failures in imparting information suggests that maybe he could have a second career as a teacher.  A teacher!  And what do teachers do?  Well, impart information, mostly.  And a good teacher will enthuse and inspire — something else which Gordon finds challenging.  For heaven’s sake, hasn’t Labour done enough damage to our education system already without letting Gordon Brown loose in the classroom?
 
Gordon is not very good with politics (check the opinion polls).  He’s not very good at economics (check the National Debt).  He’s not very good, by his own admission, at communicating.  Gordon, for your own sake and the country’s, take that big black limo to the Palace, and resign.

After ten years of arguing and lobbying and campaigning, and many months of “will they/won’t they” speculation, we now have the prize that I’ve worked for and hoped for for the whole of my political career.  Despite all the attempts of the Brussels establishment and of European leaders to intimidate him, David Cameron has kept his promise to take his MEPs out of the federalist EPP group. 
 
Today, June 24th, we had the constitutive meeting of the new group, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).  The group was announced earlier this week with 55 MEPs and eight countries represented.  The tally of countries has already risen to ten, as other MEPs see that we’re serious and viable, and we are very close to having control of the swing vote in the parliament.  We expect more to apply to join.
 
We were told we’d be isolated and marginalised outside the EPP.  But the reality is different: already other groups are taking account of our position, and expressing interest in working with us.  Commission president Barosso has asked to meet us to promote his candidacy for re-election, and the candidates for President of the Parliament will also be lobbying us.
 
One of those candidates is Graham Watson, the British Lib-Dem who leads the European Liberal Group.  It is worth contrasting two statements from the man.  He has been at the forefront of deriding our decision to leave the EPP, saying it will leave us impotent and marginalised, on the fringes of the parliament.  But he also said that his own Liberal Group is highly influential, often the king-maker holding the swing vote on key decisions.  It’s odd to think that his Liberal Group is so powerful and influential, while the similarly-sized Conservative group is “isolated and marginalised” (but then we’re used to the Lib-Dems saying contradictory things at the same time).  In fact we’ll be the group that the EPP has to negotiate with if it wants to get its business through.
 
It was exhilarating this morning to hear our Czech and Polish colleagues, as well as members from Holland, Belgium, Finland and other countries, expressing their delight at the dawn of a new phase in the history of the European parliament, with the launch for the first time ever of a major, mainstream, centre-right euro-realist group.  At last we have a real opposition.  At last we have a voice for the millions of citizens and voters who want less Europe, not more.  At last the dream is reality.  It is a proud day, and a day of promise.

There is no doubt that the Daily Telegraph has done a huge service to the British people, and to the body politic, by publishing its MPs’ expenses files.  They have turned over some stones, and found some pretty unpleasant things underneath them.  It is clear now that a major restructuring of the MPs’ expenses system is needed (and let me remark in passing that a major restructuring of MEPs’ expenses, the so-called “Members’ Statute”, was agreed last year and becomes effective in July this year).  The whole scandal can only be brought to “closure” (in today’s trendy jargon) by a General Election, in which the public can pass their own judgement on their elected representatives — and the sooner the better.
 
But that said, it seems to me that the paper is now scraping the barrel.  When any MP is mentioned in another context, for example as a candidate for the Speaker’s post, we get the ritual restatement of the expenses files, as though that were the only relevant and defining feature of the MP.  We get lists of perfectly proper expenses items which are aired again, with the unspoken suggestion that any expense claim, of any sort, is in and of itself scandalous.  It’s time for the Telegraph to get over it, and to start reporting other news.
 
I have been particularly exercised over the finger-pointing associated with perfectly normal activities which, on reflection, are seen to be not only proper, but an essential part of a parliamentarian’s work.  Commentators and the general public constantly complain that they don’t have enough information about their MPs (and MEPs), who should do more to inform their electorates (though the information is usually there if the critics bothered to look for it).  I maintain a web-site (www.rogerhelmer.com) on which I post photographs of many of my activities, and I always carry a small digital camera in my jacket pocket.  I regard that camera as a key tool of my job.  Yet I see MPs accused — shock-horror — of making an expense claim for a digital camera!  Of course MPs should have digital cameras for their work, and they are entitled to charge a professional tool to expenses.  I certainly set my own digital camera against my office allowance.
 
Then MPs have been criticised for paying for video clips of themselves to put on YouTube, or on to their own web-sites.  They’re criticised for providing the public with information, yet they’re criticised if they fail to inform the public.  I personally don’t charge anyone for video clips of my speeches in the “Hemicycle” in Brux or Straz, but only because the parliament video service provides these clips free of charge to members.  If I had to pay for them, I would regard that as an entirely proper and necessary expense.
 
So by all means let’s criticise the genuine failures of judgement and of probity that have taken place, but let’s not devalue political discourse in our country (and devalue our valid criticisms) with shot-gun witch-hunts against perfectly reasonable behaviour.

Our Labour government, and its Lib-Dem fellow travellers, have tried to pretend that the Lisbon Treaty is materially different from the European Constitution which preceded it.  This is the fig-leaf clutched at by Labour to justify their shameful volte face on their manifesto commitment to a referendum on the Constitution.  Yet those who have studied both documents, the Constitution and the Treaty, understand that they are functionally identical.
 
Pressed to outline the differences, defenders of the Treaty argue that it eliminates the pseudo-national symbols like the EU flag and the anthem.  Critics respond that this is a distinction without a difference — the use of the flag and the anthem will be exactly the same, whether or not they are mentioned explicitly in the Treaty.  And to prove the point, I have just received the following e-mail:
 
Hans-Gert Pöttering
President of the European Parliament
 
requests the pleasure of your company at the ceremony of the raising of the colours of the European Union, which will take place on the eve of the opening of the 7th legislature of the European Parliament, Monday 13th July 2009 at 3.30 p.m., on the “forecourt” of the Louise Weiss Building, European Parliament, Strasbourg.
 
The European flag will be raised by a detachment of the Eurocorps and the European anthem will be sung by the “Petits Chanteurs de Strasbourg” accompanied by the Philharmonic – Strasbourg Symphonic Orchestra.
 
Attendance from 3.00 p.m
R.S.V.P. Protocol Service
Protocole@europarl.europa.eu
 
The invitation card will follow.
 
Needless to say, I shall not be attending this event.  But I shall be happy to refer to it when the Euro-luvvies try to tell me that the Treaty and the Constitution are different.

It seems that the Heir to the Throne has won a victory over the development plans for the Chelsea Barracks site in London — and thus a victory over the architect Lord Rogers, and the modern architectural establishment.  And he has been accordingly attacked and vilified by the profession and their associated luvvies and critics and experts.  The Prince is an “architectural Luddite”.  He is, according to Lord Rogers, abusing his constitutional powers.  It is no business of his, they say, and he should let the planners and the architects carry on playing their own élitist, self-referential games with our city landscapes, in defiance of common sense and public opinion.  After all, if we let the great unwashed masses have a view on architecture, we shall end up with “mere pastiche”, a sort of second-hand set for a BBC costume drama, rather like the Prince’s village of Poundbury near Dorchester.
 
But oddly, as it turns out, the Prince did not abuse his constitutional powers.  He did not use any constitutional powers at all.  He merely “phoned a friend” — or, as reported in the media, wrote to an acquaintance on Dubai, who happens to control the funding of the development.  Now I have no doubt that Lord Rogers would argue that the Prince has a special position of influence, and so he does.  And so does Lord Rogers, come to that.  Many people have positions of influence, some earned, some not.  Most celebrities can get the sort of news coverage denied to the average man or woman — that, indeed, is what celebrity means.  It may not be fair, but it’s unavoidable.
 
The Prince is a subject of the Queen, and like any subject of the Queen, including you and me, he has a perfect right to express a view about architecture, or indeed about any other subject that occurs to him, and he also has the right to contact and lobby anyone whom he thinks may support his cause.  You and I have just the same right.  As an MEP, I frequently find people lobbying me, and I frequently lobby others and seek to recruit them to one cause or another.
 
The Prince’s moral authority, and the esteem in which he is held by the people, will depend to some extent on how he chooses to exercise such powers of influence as he has.  And I believe that generally speaking, he does so in a way which is much more in tune with the mood of the public than are the positions of the architectural establishment.  (There is a parallel here with another unelected body, the House of Lords, which frequently seems more in tune with the public mood than the elected Lower House).
 
It is perhaps clear by now that my personal tastes in architecture are much closer to the Prince than to Lord Rogers.  I think that developments in cities (and in the countryside) should take more account of the preferences and aspirations of the people, and less of the self-appointed experts in the architectural profession — or indeed the elected members of local authority planning committees, who may have more sense, but are also subjected to egregious pressures to do things that lack public support, like building large new housing estates in market towns, or erecting wind farms in the countryside that tower over villages and homes — or putting up glass and concrete monstrosities in inappropriate places, like the Chelsea Barracks site.

A senior Church of England Bishop, The Rt Rev John Gladwin, the Bishop of Chelmsford, argues that middle-class folk who drink at home are just as bad as the louts and ladettes who drink on the streets and create mayhem in town centres.  He attacks “double standards”, and argues that middle class drinkers are “just as irresponsible”.  Those middle-aged folk in leafy suburbs behind the net curtains may drink just as much, and do similar harm to their livers, as youthful bingers.  They are equally to blame, so they have no right to speak out against the binge-drinking culture.
 
I should make a declaration of interest here.  For four very happy years of my earlier career I worked in Asia for United Distillers/Guinness PLC, now Diageo.  I was Mr. Johnnie Walker in Seoul, Korea for much of that time (giving up when my liver could stand it no more).  So I have a special sympathy for the Scotch whisky business.
 
But hang on a minute.  Middle class drinkers are “just as bad”?  I have a confession to make.  I am a middle class drinker.  I enjoy a beer before dinner, and a glass (or two) of wine with dinner, and, on high days and holidays, perhaps a small glass of good malt whisky before bed-time.  Rated against the government’s absurdly parsimonious recommendations for alcohol consumption (does anyone take them seriously?), I guess I am just exactly the sort of problem middle-class drinker whom the good Bishop had in mind.  But do I create mayhem in the streets, and intimidate passers-by?  Do I lie snoring in the gutter?  Do I throw up on the pavement after a curry supper and eight pints of Stella Artois?  Do I break a bottle against a lamp-post and thrust the broken shards of glass into the face of some fellow carouser who has offered me some slight or imagined affront?   No.  I do not.  I do none of these things.  I drink quietly and go to bed.  So I’m sorry, Bishop Gladwin, but you’re wrong.
 
And not only wrong, but showing exactly the kind of vacant moral relativism which is bringing the Church into disrepute.  It seems that Bishop Gladwin cannot tell the difference between decent and courteous behaviour on the one hand, and being drunk and disorderly on the other.  He has lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong.  I am sad to say so, but I fear that moral relativism will be the death of the Church of England.
 
And a charming footnote: when one of the good Bishop’s fellow prelates was alleged to have been drunk in charge of a vehicle after a cocktail party, it seems that this, far from showing moral turpitude, just showed what a decent, engaging likable, fallible sort of chap he was.  Good to know that our bishops are such normal, approachable, drunken souls.  How do you spell H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y, by the way?

A chance meeting: Roger and Sara meet Shoghi Emerson, former Brussels assistant, on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, June 11th

After the euro-elections, Sara and I decided to take a short break in Italy.  One evening we were walking amongst the crowds on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, the old colonnaded bridge over the Arno, with shops along its length, when I caught sight of a face I knew in the crowd.  After a moment’s double-take, I realised it was Shoghi Emerson, who had served as my Brussels assistant for a year, leaving around a year ago to pursue his studies in Bologna.  He was making a short visit with his brother to Florence, and just happened to be on the bridge.  Looking fit and tanned, with a short beard, he could have been auditioning for a Hollywood movie.  But his ambitions are more modest: with luck, we may see him back in Brussels.  I hope so.
 
Tolkein’s “Chance Meeting” quote seemed entirely appropriate.

It is reported that Ken Clarke has appeared in the media, to say that if the Conservatives form a government after the EU Constitution (aka The Lisbon Treaty) is fully ratified, then they will certainly not want to re-open the Treaty.  They will allow it to stand.
 
Compare that with our declared policy that in these circumstances “We will not accept its legitimacy and we will not allow it to stand”, and “We will not let matters rest there”.
 
During the recent euro-election campaign, this was our firm and declared policy, and both our Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, and our Shadow Europe Minister Mark Francois, were happy to abbreviate that pledge for sound-bite purposes to “Vote Conservative for a referendum”.  This is the basis and the commitment on which I and the other Conservative MEPs were re-elected.
 
It would be charitable to assume that Ken was merely expressing a personal view, rather than seeking unilaterally to re-write Conservative policy.  But even so, he has dismayed most of the party, and offered comfort to those in other parties, especially UKIP, who derided our commitment on the referendum as too vague to count for much.
 
I personally regard our commitment not to accept the Lisbon Treaty as the heart of the Manifesto on which I was elected two weeks ago, and I should regard any retreat from it as a betrayal of our supporters, and of the British people.  This is not the way to restore trust in politics.  I am confident that the Party will indeed do what it says it will do — if I were not, I should not have stood as a Conservative.  If however I am wrong, and at some future stage it becomes clear that it would not, that the Conservative Party intended to resile from the referendum promise, then I for one should have to consider my position very carefully.  Then again, perhaps Ken should consider carefully, too.

Amidst the rout of the left across the EU, and especially the rout of Labour in the UK, the lefties have scored one minor success.  Labour, and their fellow-travellers in the media, have repeated their mantra about “Tory MEPs sitting with extremists and fascists” and Tories being “isolated and marginalised in Europe”, until it has started to seep into the public consciousness.  I realised we had a problem when, before election day, a Conservative voter phoned me to ask for an assurance that if elected I would not sit with the BNP in Brussels.  Taken aback, I replied “I am astonished that a Conservative would even ask such a question, but No, we will not sit with the BNP”.
 
It came up again at the count in Leicester.  A candidate for another party (even if only for Sir Paul Judge’s Jury Rigs) asked me how I would feel about sitting with the BNP.  I replied that I should not be sitting with the BNP — why on earth should he think I might?  “Well”, he replied, “the BBC says you’re going to sit with right-wing extremists like the BNP”.  I should add that I talked to this feckless young man for some time, and it was clear that he simply had no idea about the EU, and the opinions he purported to have might have come straight from a Labour propaganda sheet.  Where on earth did Sir Paul find these guys?
 
After the count, Bill Turncoat Dunn, newly re-elected as a Lib-Dem MEP, used his acceptance speech to attack the Conservatives in vindictive terms.  Cameron had made “an extremely stupid decision”.  He would be “isolated and marginalised”.  By leaving the EPP, he was condemning Conservative MEPs to impotence, and was destroying British influence and letting the country down.
 
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, this is a bit rich coming from Bill.  In 2000, he did exactly the same thing that he condemns us for doing.  He left the EPP and joined a smaller group, where (according to his own analysis) he is presumably isolated and marginalised, and letting Britain down.  And he did it for exactly the same reason as we are doing it: because he profoundly disagreed with his colleagues on the future direction and shape of the European project.  I suspect that his leader in the European parliament, Graham Watson, would not agree.  I heard Watson on the radio arguing that the group of the European Liberals, though much smaller than the EPP or the European socialists, “frequently acts as the King-maker”.  There is some truth in Watson’s claim.  It does often happen that where the EPP and the PES disagree, the Liberal group vote can be the decider.  As a result, the Liberals have considerable influence with the big groups.
 
So, reflect and contrast.  A small Liberal group has great influence and can act as a “King-maker”.  But a small Conservative group will be “isolated and marginalised”.  Doesn’t make sense, does it?  In fact our new group, like the Liberals, will exercise considerable influence with the large groups, and for the same reason: we will often be able to influence the outcome of a vote.  So we will have far more influence than we had when we were buried in the belly of the EPP beast, when they safely could (and did) ignore us.
 
Aha, I hear you ask, but surely your proposed partners are racist and homophobic?  Didn’t the Guardian say so?  It is true that if you scour the records you can find that a few individuals made foolish and disobliging remarks.  But that comment applies equally to the EPP, and to the socialists, and to any group you care to look at.  Certainly some EPP sister parties have been racist and anti-immigrant.  The fact is that we are forming a group with respectable, mainstream, centre-right euro-realist parties who are in, or close to, government.  And at last, after ten years in Brussels, I will find myself sitting with colleagues that I broadly agree with.  I can’t wait.