Over To You, Mr Brown

The predominantly Labour European Scrutiny Committee has published a report which contains the following:

4. The Reform Treaty on all these tests requires a referendum. It would be a deceit of the electorate (even by the criteria for a referendum set out by the Government) to refuse to hold one, unless the Treaty itself was rejected by the Prime Minister in the IGC on 18/19 October as he should. Unless this occurs, refusal to hold a referendum would be a breach of trust with respect to the Reform Treaty (let alone past promises about the original Constitutional Treaty made in 2004) and would run clearly contrary to the assertions of the present Prime Minister that he is committed to restoring good governance, democracy and trust.

That's that, then: Brown should reject it at the IGC, or, if he doesn't, then Parliament should throw it out (as it is clear from this that it wants to).

Who needs a referendum for the BBC to spend a month parading that clever Dr MacShane or that engaging Mr Clarke (not to say that nice Mr Cameron, who has never promised to campaign for a No vote) against Tony Benn once every three or four programmes and people who want to abolish the NHS the rest of the time? By the end of that month, there'd be a massive Yes vote.

So instead, let the Prime Minister and Parliament do their jobs properly. The latter, at least, clearly wants to. What's stopping it? And what's stopping Gordon Brown at the IGC?