Junked and Red Carded

Even though the S&D was widely expected to emerge as the single largest group in the European Parliament, Labour's National Executive Committee explicitly refused to nominate Martin Schulz for President of the Commission, specifically because he was a federalist.

That was the word used.

Therefore, Labour was hardly going to support Jean-Claude Juncker instead.

A number of retirements have made it unlikely that there might have been many, if any Labour MEPs with ideas above their station in this regard, who imagined that this matter ought somehow to be up to them.

But just in case, the deceptively unprepossessing Ed Miliband has left them in no doubt whatever as to who is in charge.

Now, on to a forced Commons division on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

There is nothing for which it is necessary to wait. That vote ought to proceed forthwith.

"We in the European Parliament have the final say"? Course you do, darlings. Course you do...

In any case, who among the new intake of Labour MEPs is anything less than opposed to the entire principle of the TTIP? Like the core of the Labour Movement, so that at least 100 Labour MPs would always have voted against it, no matter what.

Let any irreconcilable Blairite in the Commons be told to expect the withdrawal of the Whip in the event of a failure to vote, as ought of course to be the headline, to save the National Health Service.

The success of the likes of the Front National, Golden Dawn, and a real, live, twice-imprisoned German Nazi in the European Elections also gives Labour the opportunity to present itself as the voice of centrist moderation by calling for legislation to disapply in the United Kingdom anything passed by that body but not by the majority of those MEPs who had been publicly certified as politically acceptable by and to at least one seat-taking Member of the House of Commons.

On this as on the TTIP, that would be a very direct challenge to all other parties, but most especially to the Lib Dems.

As would the call for all EU legislation to require to be passed by both Houses of Parliament as if it had originated in one or other of them.

And as would the promise of legislation to compel British Ministers to adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of Ministers met in public and published an Official Report akin to Hansard.

The Conservatives are already being challenged by Labour's commitments to extend the period of time that people from new member states have to wait before being able to come to the United Kingdom to look for work, to stop the payment of benefits to those not resident in this country, to deport anyone who received a custodial sentence shortly after arriving in the United Kingdom, and to double the time that an EU migrant had to wait before being able to claim Jobseeker's Allowance.

Yes, an individual member state can do these things. Yes, it is Labour Party policy to do them.

As it is to repatriate industrial and regional policy, whereas there is no specific Conservative commitment to any repatriation.

As it is implicitly, although this does need to be made explicit, to repatriate agricultural policy, and to restore the United Kingdom's historic fishing rights in accordance with international law: 200 miles, or to the median line.

And as it is to introduce the red card system whereby Britain would not approve any new EU law without the prior approval of a resolution of the House of Commons.

Not only would no such law apply in this country. No such law could come into effect at all, anywhere.

What if every member state did that? By all means let it.

But this one will only begin that domino process once Labour has won the next General Election.