Mr van who?

Last year, William Hague predicted the scene when the new President of Europe visited Downing Street for the first time. The long presidential motorcade would draw up outside Number 10, police outriders would clear the streets, the European flag would be flying on the bonnet of the car, the world’s press assembled for this historic occasion. Then out of the car would step…Herman van Rompuy. Who? A bit of an anti-climax I know. After week of hype and speculation that none other than Tony Blair would get the job he created for himself we get Mr van Rompuy (pictured right).

I am sure Mr van Rompuy is a very nice man - a typical Benelux politician who is very good at running Belgium. But is he really the sort of the bloke we want running Europe? Well apparently he is. According to our dear leader he is a ‘consensus builder’ who brought ‘stability’ to his country after ‘months of uncertainty’ – how admirable. To you and I that means he has about as much political clout as…well Gordon Brown, is very good at sitting and Chairing meetings whilst having no opinions of his own and doing what the French, the British and the Germans tell him to do. A victory for Brussels bureaucracy! So rather than giving the people of Europe a dynamic leader who can actually lead Europe in dealing with the issues such as climate change. As much as I don’t like him, at least Tony Blair would have the charisma to actually make an impact.

But don’t start getting sulky yet, there is something to celebrate for us Brits. None other than our own Cathy Ashton has landed the new number 2 job in Brussels, European High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Cathy Ashton? Yes she is British I can assure you. Haven’t heard of her? No, nor have I. But she is the best politician we can come up with to represent us in Europe.

Baroness Ashton as she is entitled to be known went to Brussels after Mandy came back to save Brown last October. Before that she did a short stint as Labour’s leader in the House of Lords but her political credentials don’t go much further than that. She will be responsible for being Europe’s top negotiator in diplomatic relations and will have to represent Europe to everyone from Barack Obama to Robert Mugabe. Yet Baroness Ashton’s foreign affairs experience probably extends to the couple of bits of foreign languages she picked up on the odd holiday to the continent. Her job before she joined the Lords? She was Chairman of Hertfordshire Health Authority. Good preparation for the international stage indeed.

If Europe wants to be taken seriously by other countries then we’re going to have to start coming up with something better than the two nobodies European leaders produced today.

We must never forget

Today is Remembrance Sunday when the nation remembers its war dead and mourns their selfless sacrifice in the name of our freedom.

In 1929, the then Secretary of State for War was once asked, 'when the last of the Great War veterans die, will people still commemorate Armistice Day?' his reply 'when the last of the Great War veterans die, people will not know the horrors of war'. The irony of this statement is so potent in the year the last of the Great War veterans died yet now, more than ever in recent years, we do seem to be aware of the great dangers our Armed Forces are facing.

With the death of two more soldiers in Afghanistan today, the total number killed in that conflict comes to 232. The rights and wrongs of that conflict are for another day. Today is about honouring those who have fought and died for this country. And in a year when so many of our brave servicemen have died, it is even more important that we do honour them and never forget their sacrifice.

Why bother with a pointless referendum?

Once again Europe is causing division within the Tory Party. David Cameron’s decision not to offer the British people a post-ratification referendum on the Lisbon Treaty has got the usual suspects quite annoyed. However I would like to defend Mr Cameron and make the case that giving the British people a post-ratification referendum on Lisbon would be as deceitful as Labour and the LibDems have been about their failure to honour their pledges when they had the chance.

Lisbon is now a done deal; there is no turning back the clock. With the Czech President’s signature the treaty has been ratified and Europe will now have its own President, Foreign Minister and legal personality. It doesn’t matter if Nigel Farrage became Prime Minister after the next election, the Treaty cannot be undone.

It is therefore wrong to suggest that we could still have a referendum after the next election. There would be absolutely no point in a post-ratification referendum whatsoever – it would achieve nothing. We would be asking the British people to go to vote in a referendum which would have no impact whatsoever. I think saying to people ‘go and vote in this referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and vote no’, giving them false hope that the referendum will actually have any effect, is deceitful – as deceitful as the Lib-Lab failure to vote for a referendum in the Commons last year.

Instead, David Cameron seems to have taken exactly the right approach and a one that should appeal to Eurosceptics. I myself am firmly in favour of Britain’s continuing membership of the European Union; I do not support the Better Off Out Campaign and would probably have voted yes to the Lisbon Treaty had we had a referendum. But the Eurosceptic mainstream in the Tory Party has won a victory yesterday; a Tory leader saying that the Conservative Party will seek a mandate from the British people at the next election to repatriate powers to Britain from Brussels and a promise of a binding requirement for future treaties to be approved by a referendum. What more could Eurosceptics want than wholesale withdrawal?

We should not kid ourselves that a referendum on Lisbon now would make the blindest bit of difference. The best Eurosceptics can now hope for is a Conservative Government after the next election delivering a manifesto pledge to restore powers to Britain, a pledge that would not need a referendum to substantiate it.