Yesterday (Nov 4th) I joined a phone-in programme on the Lisbon Treaty on BBC Radio Northampton.  I am well aware of public attitudes to the EU, yet even I was taken aback by the relentlessly hostile flow of comment about the Lisbon Treaty, and the way that it has been rail-roaded through in the teeth of public opposition.  It is clear that the EU has lost any claim it might have had to democracy and legitimacy.  Many speakers were also very unhappy about the withdrawal by the Conservative Party of its commitment to a Lisbon referendum.
 
The presenter turned to me in the forlorn hope that, as an MEP in Brussels, I might have an alternative view.  He was disappointed.
 
Like all Conservative MPs and MEPs, I was elected on an explicit Manifesto Commitment to a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.  Yesterday, David Cameron rejected that commitment and repudiated that policy.
 
I respect the view of those who say that you can’t have a referendum on a fully-ratified treaty, but I think they’re wrong.  Such a referendum would serve three ends: first we should be keeping our word.  Second, we should put the spotlight on the shocking betrayal of the British people by this Labour government.  But third, and most important, we should give a future Conservative government a rock-solid mandate for renegotiation.
 
Yet if those who argue against such a referendum win the day, we at least have an obligation to give the British people a say in some form, perhaps along the lines proposed recently by David Davis in the Daily Mail.  We have a clear duty to let the British people speak at last on this vexed issue.
 
Our new policy is confused.  We have said that now that the Lisbon Treaty is EU law, we are not in a position to repudiate it.  Yet we have made a series of proposals which repudiate significant parts of it, and run counter to EU law — for example the proposed Sovereignty Bill.  But as we all know, the supremacy of EU Law is explicit in the Lisbon Treaty.  If we accept Lisbon, we accept the supremacy of EU law.
 
A “Referendum Lock” will not work, because we have already thrown away the key.  Our policy fails to recognise the self-amending nature of Lisbon, with its passerelle clauses.  Until now, EU integration has been step-wise, Treaty by Treaty.  Now it will become a continuous process of daily attrition, successive salami slices.  That is, in large part, the main point of Lisbon.  It is designed to eliminate the problems and referenda defeats which successive Treaties have faced, and to provide for integration by stealth.   If we are not prepared to stand and fight on the enormity of the Treaty itself, we will scarcely stand and fight on the subsequent salami slices.
 
What we have is an essentially cosmetic policy.  We are installing a largely ineffective burglar alarm when the family silver has already been stolen.  But the British people don’t want vague promises.  They want the family silver back in good order.
 
I intend to continue to support the Party, and to work for a Conservative victory in 2010, since it is overwhelmingly in the best interests of my constituents, and of the country, to have a Conservative government under David Cameron, rather than the present failing and disastrous Labour administration.
 
But I can neither justify nor support our new EU policy.  In these circumstances, I have concluded that I can no longer continue to serve as a spokesman for the delegation.  I have accordingly resigned both my spokesmanships with immediate effect.
 
So have I given up in despair?  Not yet.  These developments are a set-back, but not yet a death-knell.  For years I have publicly supported the Better Off Out campaign (www.tfa.net/betteroffout), and I will continue to do so.  You can only defy the will of the people for so long, and the longer you do so the angrier they get.  Transnational governments that fail to respect the identity and aspirations of the people cannot survive — consider Yugoslavia, or the USSR.  We have lost the hope of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, but I believe that I shall live to see the day when we have a referendum on EU membership, and Brussels is working hard, if unconsciously, to firm up the OUT vote.  I put my faith in the angry callers of Northamptonshire, and others like them up and down the country.

In 2007, David Cameron gave what he called “a cast-iron commitment” that if he became Prime Minister, he would hold a referendum on Lisbon.  No ifs.  No buts.  No conditionality.
 
More recently, the condition “if not fully ratified” has crept in, with the rider that if the Treaty is ratified “We will not let matters rest”.
 
Today, William Hague has confirmed that there will be no post-ratification referendum.  The Party will make a full statement tomorrow.
 
I disagree with those who say that there is no sense in a post-ratification referendum.  For a start, we should simply be keeping our word, which is a great place to start.  In addition, we should be drawing attention to the enormity of Labour’s great betrayal.  With a clear manifesto commitment to a referendum, they have driven through this miserable Treaty without giving the people a say.  But most important, a NO vote in a Lisbon referendum would give an in-coming Conservative government the most powerful mandate for renegotiation that they could possibly have.
 
In today’s Daily Telegraph, Damian Chalmers, Professor of European Union Law at LSE, argues that a ratified treaty cannot be renegotiated, and that therefore a Lisbon referendum would in effect be a referendum on “In or Out”.  This is a typically narrow lawyer’s interpretation.  In the EU, realpolitik always trumps the letter of the treaty.  De Facto beats De Jure.  Cameron says he wants to stay in the EU.  Our partners in the EU will want to keep us in one way or the other, and they will negotiate — but only if we have a strong negotiating mandate, only if they think that a failed negotiation could indeed lead to the In/Out question being put.
 
I have even heard it argued that once ratified, Lisbon is no longer a treaty, but “part of EU law”, and therefore that there is nothing to have a referendum about.  This is playing with words.  We all know what the Treaty of Rome is, and the Maastricht Treaty.  No one pretends that they no longer exist.  Indeed the whole “body of EU law” is made up of successive treaties, and accretions around them.
 
To argue that once ratified, the Lisbon Treaty is no longer the Lisbon Treaty, is as disingenuous and self-serving as Labour’s argument that the Lisbon Treaty is not the same thing as the failed European Constitution, despite the fact that 99% of the text is the same.
 
I was born in England in the closing years of the Second World War.  My birthright was to be a free-born Englishman, a subject of the British Crown, and to live in a free and democratic country, governed by laws made by those I and other English folk had elected to parliament.  Freedom, independence, democracy, self-determination are the birthright now being taken from us.  That is why my business card says “Working to reclaim the independence and self-government of our country”.  That is why I am not prepared to end my days as a “European Citizen” in a remote offshore province of a new country called Europe.
 
The last referendum on the EU was in 1975 — more than a generation ago.  No one under 50 has had an opportunity to pass judgement on the European project, which is a world away today from the Common Market on which we voted in 1975.  We in the Conservative Party solemnly promised the British people that opportunity, in our last general election manifesto, and again and again afterwards.
 
It may be that if we have a hang-up on a post-ratification referendum, then we could offer the British people an EU referendum with slightly different wording (perhaps about the terms of renegotiation).  But what we cannot and must not do is to go back to our Party members, and to the voters of Britain, and say “Tough luck, lads.  We promised you that you could have a say on the EU, but we’ve changed our mind”.

It seems that Liz Truss is threatened with de-selection in Norfolk, because of an affair she had with a Conservative MP, Mark Field, some years ago.  (I thought at first she was the same excellent young lady who wrote that paean to punctuation, “Eats Shoots and Leaves”, but it turns out that that was Lynne Truss).
 
Now heaven knows I’m not usually considered a Tory Moderniser.  I am on the Conservative wing of the Conservative Party.  I believe in old-fashioned Conservative values, like freedom, enterprise, markets, small government, low taxes.  I believe that families are good for people and good for society, and should be recognised and encouraged in the tax system.  I believe in grammar schools, and believe we need more of them.  And I have views on homosexuality which Polly Toynbee would think were criminal, and fully-paid-up Tory modernisers would think were old-fashioned and regrettable (though I, and many ordinary folk like me, simply regard them as normal).
 
But to de-select an attractive young woman because — shock horror — she had an affair?  Would they apply the same criterion to a male candidate?  Would they have sacked John Major because he had an affair with Edwina Currie?  Or indeed sack Edwina Currie because she had an affair with John Major?  Would they chuck out all MPs who have ever had affairs?  If so, we shall see a great deal more green leather, and a great deal fewer bums on seats, around Westminster.
 
So let me urge the good Conservatives of Swaffham to think again.  If they de-select this young woman, they will lose an excellent candidate.  They will send out terrible messages about the way the Conservative Party treats women, and indeed terrible messages about the Party generally and its fitness to govern.  I wouldn’t ask them to join the 21st century, but maybe they could at least come to terms with the 20th?
 
Ban the adulteress?  They’ll be burning witches next.

At the back end of September, US President Obama made a whistle-stop visit to the International Olympic Committee in Copenhagen to set the seal on the bid of his home city, Chicago, for the 2016 Olympics.  Hours later, in what looked like a calculated snub to the President, the IOC chose Rio de Janeiro, with Chicago out of the top two.
 
This week, Gordon Brown has been to Brussels to throw the full weight of his government behind Tony Blair’s unannounced candidacy for the yet-to-be-created post of EU President (OK, President of the Council, if we want to be pedantic).  Brown’s candidate is the man to “stop the traffic in Washington and Beijing”, we are told (although as David Cameron acutely suggested, maybe a man who could keep the traffic moving would be better value).  Yet this morning’s news is that sentiment in Brussels has turned decisively against Blair, with the big countries failing to back him, and the small countries and the socialist group opposing him.
 
It seems that Western political leaders are all too willing to squander their remaining political capital and credibility in backing losing projects.
 
There is only one reason why opponents of the Lisbon Treaty might have wanted Blair as EU President: to savour the piquant irony of his achieving a high-profile and highly rewarded position that would exist only as a result of the man himself breaking his government’s solemn manifesto pledge to the British people on a Constitutional referendum.
 
Yet bad news for Blair may be good news for David Miliband, and also for euro-sceptics.  It is now proposed, apparently with no sense of irony, that this callow youth, banana in hand, may be favoured for the EU Foreign Minister job (OK, High Representative for Foreign Affairs, if we want to be pedantic).  Miliband is totally lacking in presence, or charisma, or gravitas.  He lacks any sense of history or diplomacy.  Like most Blair apparatchiks, he seems to be seized with the idea that history began in Year Zero (OK, 1997, if we want to be pedantic) when the New Labour Era burst onto the scene.  His recent trip to India as British Foreign Secretary was widely regarded as the greatest diplomatic faux pas of recent decades.
 
Yet the timing could hardly be better for young David.  With Labour facing the prospect of defeat and opposition next year, what better for him than a move to a bigger job in Europe?  It is, after all, the usual rat-run for failed British ministers.
 
So why should opponents of the Lisbon Treaty be cheering for David Miliband at this point?  There is surely no better way to undermine the credibility and legitimacy of the Lisbon Treaty, and of the structures and institutions it creates, than to see non-entities in the top jobs.  It seems that Brussels has already decided that a nonentity from Luxembourg (or wherever) will make a better President than Tony Blair, who (hate him as we may) at least has a certain global stature.  It would surely suit us very well if the other great office of the EU were held by someone farcically inadequate to the task.  Go for it, Miliband!

Lord Stern, the pin-up economist of the climate hysteria movement, and author of of the Stern Report on the costs of global warming, has delivered himself of a new gem.  He predicts that “eating meat could become as socially unacceptable as drink-driving”.

Livestock farming has come under fire in recent years from environmental campaigners because methane from cattle and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases.  They seem to have forgotten that when humans first reached North America the plains were black with buffalo, and the savannahs of Africa with Wildebeest.  This is called life, and the earth has been quite good at sustaining it for many hundreds of millions of years.  They have also forgotten (if they ever knew) that compared to geological history, today’s atmosphere is impoverished in terms of CO2, levels of which have been up to ten times higher than today’s.  And in those CO2-rich days, did we observe a “tipping-point”, with “run-away global warming”?  We did not.  In fact we had the greatest ice-age in geological history.

Stern has a poor record in these matters.  Although his report is frequently quoted, it is in fact an outlier amongst economic analyses of climate mitigation measures.  Most reach the opposite conclusion — that the cost of our proposed climate mitigation policies is likely to exceed any damage that climate change might do, even if the alarmists are right.  If, as I believe, they’re wrong, we are beggaring our grandchildren for no good reason at all.  How did Stern get it so wrong?  By swallowing the IPCC position wholesale; by accounting for the downsides of global warming while ignoring the up-sides; and above all by using a wholly unrealistic discount rate for future costs and benefits (the costs are mostly up-front, while the benefits — if any — are many years in the future).

But of course Stern is not the first one to raise concerns about meat-eating.  The Chairman of the IPCC since 2002, Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, has been on the same tack for years — not surprising, perhaps, seeing that in terms of faith he is a Hindu.  Dr. Pachauri is often represented as a global authority on climate change, which is a bit bizarre when you look at his education record.  He commenced his tertiary education at the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at Jamalpur, Bihar, and began his career at the Diesel Locomotive Works in Varanasi.  He later received an Masters degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, in 1972, as well as a joint Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics in 1974. Nothing much there on climatology or atmospheric physics — a level of unfamiliarity with the subject that he still shows to this day.

A new book by New Zealand authors Robert and Brenda Vale urges pet owners to “Eat the dog”, since the carbon footprint of a year’s dog-food is too awful to contemplate.  The hysteria of the climate alarmists has gone from worrying, to pathetic, to richly comical.  It’s enough to make you order a fillet steak, medium rare, with a good portion of gratin dauphinois.  Meantime I shall continue to patronise Mr. Chapman, who runs an excellent old-fashioned butcher’s shop in Lutterworth High Street.

Oct 25th: RFH and David Tredinnick MP join villagers concerned about a wind turbine proposal at Peckleton, Kirkby Mallory and Desford, on a fact-finding mission

On Sunday Oct 25th I joined local MP David Tredinnick and a group of villagers outside Peckleton Village Hall, in Leicestershire, to set off on a walk over the local fields to see an anemometer mast on the site of a proposed wind farm development.  The walk was billed as a fact-finding exercise rather than a protest, but I found no one with a good word to say about the proposal for massive industrial machines in this rural environment.
 
The proposed turbines will be 125 meters high — around 400 feet.  Roughly as tall as the London Eye, they will bestride the landscape like H.G. Wells’ Martian fighting machines.  The initial plan is for two turbines, but to adapt the old adage, “If two turbines come, can the other half dozen be far behind?”.
 
The event, organised by local resident Angelina Thorne and her committee, started off in teeming rain, but soon the weather gods smiled, the sun shone, and we had clear blue skies for the rest of the afternoon.  We were joined by other walkers from nearby Desford and Kirkby Mallory, and there were around 100 people. plus assorted children and dogs, by the time we reached Stocks House, a few hundred yards from the proposed development, for tea and marvellous home-made cakes.  Both David Tredinnick and I said a few well-chosen words to the walkers.
 
It was particularly good to see David, as the local MP, playing a key rôle in opposing this unwanted and inappropriate development.  I commend him, and Angelina and her Committee, and the good people of the three villages.  I am proud to have been able to support their campaign.

 Photo Courtesy of Leicester Mercury.

I have warned repeatedly that the European Arrest Warrant would lead to the extradition of British citizens to foreign jurisdictions, where their treatment would fail to meet decent standards of justice.  We now have a case in point, here

David Birkinshaw, Rachel Gee and myself

 in the region.
 
David Birkinshaw and Matthew Neale were enjoying a stag weekend in Riga, when they found themselves accused of assaulting a policeman.  There is no doubt that a scuffle of some kind took place, and a Latvian policeman claimed to have been hurt, although his injuries were described as “minor”.  It was never clear that the two Derby men had any part at all in the fracas.
 
Initially they came home to Derby, where David Birkinshaw was planning to marry his long-time fiancée, and mother of his child, Rachel Gee.  But both men were sent back to Latvia under the European Arrest Warrant, where they spent ten weeks in a Stalin-era prison described by Latvia’s own President as “not fit for animals”.  This was a time of appalling uncertainty.  For a long time they had no details of charges, no assurance of a trial date, no assurance that adequate translation would be provided — and the looming possibility that they might be found guilty, and imprisoned in dreadful conditions for a lengthy period.
 
David and Rachel’s wedding, of course, was cancelled.  Rachel Gee was in despair, as was their daughter.  They had few to turn to for help.  The British Embassy recommended an English-speaking lawyer, who in the end did a good job, but the Embassy provided little further help.  The line was that “Latvian justice must take its course”.  I spoke to friendly Latvian MEPs in Brussels, but their view was that there was considerable public resentment in Latvia against foreign stag party groups, and that the accused could expect little sympathy.
 
Eventually the trial took place.  No credible evidence was presented against the two men.  There was extensive CCTV coverage, but none showed any interaction between the accused and the policeman.  A number of witnesses expected to testify simply failed to show up for the trial.
 
The two men were acquitted and came home.
 
So two British citizens who insist they were innocent were sent to uncertain and degrading conditions in a foreign capital, in the absence of any credible evidence against them.   They (and I) are delighted they are back, but they and their loved ones have still suffered terrible uncertainty and anxiety, David and Rachel have had a wedding cancelled, and both men have three months loss of earnings.  And all for nothing. 
 
I had the pleasure of meeting Rachel and David at the Starbucks café in Derby on Oct 23rd, and they struck me as thoroughly decent and respectable people.  They are delighted to have David home, delighted that the ordeal is over (though even now there is talk of an appeal), and they are planning a wedding next year.  One other piece of good news: the employers of both men have kept their jobs open, and they will be returning to work where they left off.  David makes turbine blades with Rolls Royce, and I commend the company on its fair and enlightened attitude.
 
But the overwhelming lesson is that the European Arrest Warrant cannot be allowed to stand.  It is an affront to British justice and fundamental freedoms, where a magistrate in bandit countries like Bulgaria or Romania or (next year perhaps) Croatia can require a British citizen to be sent abroad on the strength of no evidence at all, with no checks and balances, other than proof of identity.
 
As a minimum, we should require:
 
1  That the offence is sufficiently serious to justify sending the accused abroad;
 
2  That the accused is guaranteed the same rights and standards that he would be entitled to in the UK;
 
3  That there is sufficient prima facie evidence to justify a trial in the first place.
 
None of these conditions was met in this case, and the two accused have been the victims of a serious injustice.  I shall be writing to the Home Secretary on the issue.  And if I were the Derby Two, I should be talking to my lawyers about compensation.

On Friday October 23rd it was my privilege to attend a Speed Awareness Course, run by Leicestershire County Council at Syston.  Yes.  I admit it. Hands up.  I was done for 36 mph in a 30 limit, on the Welford Road, on a three-lane dual carriageway, with barriers, and no pedestrians about.
 
Asked to explain why I was driving at that speed, I replied “Because I judged it was a safe and reasonable speed in the circumstances”, and I hold to that view.  I have been driving for nearly 50 years.  I have driven probably a million miles in that time.  Apart from a few minor bumps, I have never (touch wood) had a significant accident.  In a lifetime of driving, I have been done for speeding only three times (once in Singapore).
 
There were twenty-one victims in the audience, and they represented a cross-section of society.  Young and old. Nine women.  Three ethnic minorities.  And they all struck me as perfectly reasonable, responsible citizens.  One was a grandmother who had been taking her grandson to rugby practice.  Another an elderly gentleman who had been taking an elderly lady to the station to catch a train.  So far as I could judge, no lager louts, no tear-aways, no alcoholics, no joy-riders.  Just safe, steady, reliable citizens.  I suspect that most of them also thought that the speeds for which they were summonsed were reasonable in the circumstances.
 
Someone asked why speed limits could not be varied according to time of day, and the answer (quite reasonably) was that this would be too expensive (and perhaps too confusing).  But it would be nice if the prosecuting authorities could exercise some discretion, and recognise that driving past a school at three in the afternoon is a rather different thing from driving past at three in the morning.  Arbitrary and indiscriminate speed limits, coupled with cameras, are persecuting responsible drivers unfairly and squeezing the joy out of motoring.
 
Knowing that the course organisers could still apply points to the licence of any victim who “failed to cooperate”, I had taken a self-denying ordinance, determined to plead the Fifth Amendment rather than give replies that might incriminate me.  In fact the event was relaxed and non-confrontational, but I stuck to my determination to avoid making trouble.  Until, that was, they were inviting suggestions for the fact that most accidents take place on urban roads, rather than on rural roads or motorways.  As several participants suggested “More congestion” or “more traffic”, I could not resist adding the suggestion: “more speed limits”.
 
But the real problem, both with speed cameras and with Speed Awareness Courses, is that they focus on one factor, speed, and ignore everything else.  The instructor admitted that human error was a factor in 95% of accidents.  Of course if speed were zero — if we never drove at all — presumably we could eliminate road accidents entirely.  Yet speed is only the primary factor in a small minority of accidents.
 
There was little or no mention of inexperienced and inconsiderate driving; of competitive and aggressive driving; of lane-changing and tail-gating; of vehicle condition or road and weather conditions; or of drink and drugs.  The powers that be love to focus on speed because (A) it is easy to measure; and (B) it is a nice little earner.  But in doing so, they distort our approach to road safety and do us all a disservice.  Thank heaven that it is Conservative policy to stop the proliferation of speed cameras.

Gordon Brown predicted the start of economic recovery in the third quarter.  Instead, the economy shrank by 0.4% on the preliminary figures.  Unabashed, our Prime Minister now returns to the fray to say that he promises — yes, promises — that growth will resume next quarter.
 
It may.  But it may not.
 
It is slightly bizarre that a leading politician would pledge his word on a prediction that he clearly cannot guarantee, and at this stage may not even be able to influence a great deal.  In fact it’s not a promise at all.  At best it’s an educated guess, at worst it’s wishful thinking.
 
The implication is clear: you can’t trust Gordon’s promises.  But then we knew that to start with.

Everyone is talking about Nick Griffin’s rather tentative and embarrassing performance on Question Time, and whether the BBC should have invited him, so I’ll add my tuppenceworth.
 
I absolutely condemn the racist and fascist BNP, and I hope that no one ever votes for it again.  Before the euro-elections last June, both Conservatives and Labour had a clear policy of not sharing a platform with the BNP, and I was happy to support that policy.  But the fact is that some six percent of our fellow citizens voted BNP in June, and returned two BNP MEPs.  We may think that these voters were wrong — I certainly do — but the fact remains that we live in a democracy.  Those voters were entitled to their point of view, and much as we may regret the outcome, they have in effect legitimised the BNP as an elected political party.
 
Sadly and reluctantly, therefore, I think we have to accept that we have no alternative but to share platforms with these people, and debate against them, and take them on in public.  And by the same token, the BBC as our national broadcaster has an obligation to involve them in broadcast debate in something like the measure relevant to their electoral performance.
 
I was astonished by a report today in the Sunday Telegraph that “the BBC’s decision to invite him may have back-fired”, in view of the interest generated by the programme and the apparent twitch in the BNP’s polling figures.  This statement suggests that the BBC had an agenda to vilify or belittle Mr. Griffin.  Appalling as the BNP is, it would surely be equally appalling if the BBC had such a biased agenda against an elected parliamentarian (though many may say that this is typical of the BBC).  The BBC’s job is to give elected politicians a platform and allow licence payers to form a judgement; not to set up hunting parties and elephant traps for elected parliamentarians, however odious.
 
Of course many politicians and commentators were hoping that Griffin would make an odious fool of himself, and most commentators thought he did.  He smirked; he wriggled; he failed to answer questions; he made remarks about the Holocaust and the Ku Klux Klan that were simply not credible, and were offensive.  Yet he claims that his appearance generated a great deal of traffic on the BNP web-site, and a surge in membership applications.  Certainly the published opinion polls suggest a small increase in BNP support.  Prominent Labour politicians like Peter Hain are lamenting the oxygen of publicity given to the BNP, and fearing a surge in far-right activity.
 
It is now the job of mainstream politicians to take the BNP’s arguments head-on, and to beat them in debate.  But as many have remarked, to an extent we mainstream politicians must take some of the blame.  Bound hand and foot by political correctness, we have been frightened to address vital issues that matter to voters on the doorstep, like crime and immigration.  We have left a vacuum in which the BNP can sweep up votes.  We can best stop the march of fascism by responding to voters’ concerns with effective, fearless and credible policy initiatives in these areas.