"That Wasn't What The British People Voted For"

Oh yes, it was, John Redwood. Oh, yes, it was. And you know it. Though not as well as your fellow Any Questions panellist, Tony Benn, knows it. He said it all at the time, that the thing was a federal state.

Anyone who had read the legislation would have known that, anyway. Presumably, next to no one in the general electorate did so, which is entirely their own fault. There has never been any such body as "the Common Market", and I am as amazed at Benn's allowing Redwood to use the term as I am heartened by the panel's unanimity (Benn, Redwood, Dominic Lawson and Maria Eagle) in always having been opposed to the euro.

Eagle, a member of the Shadow Cabinet, could muster up no more enthusiasm than the admission that she had supported accession to the EU itself, "but I was only 13 or 14 at the time". Well, since she is a member of the present Shadow Cabinet, that makes her a raging Europhile by its standards. Most of her colleagues either would have been actively opposed to accession or actually were so, and a key role has been given to an MP who voted against Maastricht.

Whereas the man who signed it on the United Kingdom's behalf is now a Cabinet Minister, and John Redwood was in the Cabinet that pushed it through. Redwood no more joined Peter Shore in opposing Maastricht than he joined Peter Shore is opposing the scrapping of the Royal Yacht, a move now regretted even by the SNP. Like Maastricht, I expect.