Brown playing for time in Lisbon treaty deal

Gordon’s re packaging of old policies has given him a bounce in the latest opinion polls despite the fact that there’s no financial substance to the building Britain manifesto. With one eye on the polls you think he’d be quivering like a whippet in the traps at Hackney to get out and push the election button, but he’s poured cold water on that idea. I wonder why? Well we all know. The Irish will have a re run of the NO vote in the hope that this time they come up with a YES vote. Since when has No meant Yes or indeed not meant NO.

So the Irish will have another referendum in October, that’s not a good time for Gordo to have a GE as the Conservatives have promised a referendum on the Lisbon treaty if it hasn’t been ratified. The longer Gordo can hold off calling the Election the more chance he has of ratifying the treaty. Most EU leaders want the treaty ratified by the end of the year.

Most EU member states have ratified the treaty, but the Eurosceptic presidents of the Czech Republic and Poland have not yet signed it, saying they will wait for the decision of Irish voters. The second Irish referendum is expected to happen in early October.

The treaty’s opponents argue that it is just the defunct EU Constitution repackaged, and say it will undermine national sovereignty. The constitution was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

Officials in Germany’s ruling coalition said parliament would vote on the legislation demanded by the court before Germany’s general election on 27 September.

German media say the judges want it spelled out in law that parliament will have to vote on any changes to the Lisbon Treaty, or any expansion of EU competencies that impacts on German sovereignty.

Ireland’s EU commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, has said the Lisbon Treaty would have been rejected in most EU countries if they had held referendums like in Ireland.

“I think all of the politicians of Europe would have known quite well that if a similar question had been put to their electorate in a referendum the answer in 95 percent of countries would have been ‘No’ as well,” he told a meeting of accountants in Dublin on Friday.

He said EU heads of state were “glad they didn’t have to put the question themselves to their people”.

But we as Conservatives want the chance to put that very question to the people. Have your say now – go to my on line Survey and let me know your thoughts on the election date, European issues and more.

http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07e2jfmdo9fwl8mnij/start

~ by Chris Walker on July 1, 2009.