Thursday 2 June 2011

Beyond The Sunset

Neither Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, sometime Principal Private Secretary to Ted Heath, nor Lord Liddle of Carlisle, perpetual acolyte of Peter Mandelson, need worry about the "referendum lock" to which they wish to attach a sunset clause. The Lisbon Treaty is self-amending. So there can never be another treaty on which there might be that utterly foreign and deeply flawed thing, a referendum.

There would certainly be no need of such to restore the supremacy of British over EU law, to use that provision in order to restore the United Kingdom's historic fishing rights in accordance with international law, to prevent any EU law from applying in the United Kingdom unless it had passed through both Houses of Parliament exactly as if it had originated in one or other of them, to require British Ministers to adopt the showstopping Empty Chair Policy in the Council of Ministers until such time as it met in public and published an Official Report akin to Hansard, to disapply in the United Kingdom any ruling of either of the European Courts (or of the "Supreme Court") unless and until ratified by a resolution of the House of Commons, and to disapply any law passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs whom one or more seat-taking MPs had publicly certified to be politically acceptable.

How would Lords Armstrong and Liddle vote on a Bill to those effects, and why?

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