Does Douglas Carswell believe in our parliamentary democracy, or not? We do not need to introduce that foreign and deeply flawed thing which is known both to his patrimony and to mine as "a device of demagogues and dictators".
Rather, we need better MPs, selected locally and by means involving the electorate as a whole, elected so as to guarantee a more accurate reflection of the breadth of public opinion, and therefore drawn from formations genuinely giving expression to this country's deep and wide political traditions.
As for "a referendum on further European integration", what should the question be? What would be the occasion of such a plebiscite, since the Lisbon Treaty is self-amending? And why would Carswell want to give the last word to the BBC, over the course of the month leading up to the poll? Look what happened in 1975.
If we had MPs as set out above, then they would restore the supremacy of British over EU law, a single amendment or one-clause Bill requiring neither referendum nor renegotiation. Why doesn't Carswell table that, instead of issuing grandstanding calls for a referendum which is never going to happen?
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