WHEN is a promise never binding? When it is made by a politician. We all knew that, so it would be inaccurate to claim that David Cameron's shameless reneging on his pledged word last week, when he repudiated his "cast-iron" commitment to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, came as a surprise. Yes, it was treacherous, cynical, dishonourable and despicable; but surprising, no.
For an Heir of Blair this kind of betrayal is business as usual: if you take the Great Charlatan as your guru and template, then doing the reverse of what you promised to perform and selling out the national interest are lessons learned on page one o
f the manual. Cast-Iron Cameron's followers are Britain's Vichy Tories. That title was earned by his party's pathetic Scottish subsidiary when its Holyrood MSPs embraced the devolution settlement and left Scots Tories and Unionists swinging in the wind.
The Vichy name now sits even more appropriately on the Cameron clique that has supinely endorsed a treaty that resigns the sovereignty and destiny of Britain pre-eminently into the hands of a German chancellor. From Labour, nothing else was to be expected: patriotism was never the strongest suit of The Party We Love. The Conservatives, however, once represented the patriotic instincts of Britain and embodied the principle "Trust the people."
The Boy David's fig-leaf is embarrassingly inadequate. The Big Lie, calculated to appeal to those who like to consider themselves sophisticated, the nodding donkeys who repeat as axioms the pap fed to them by snake-oil salesmen on the slime-green benches at Westminster, is that a ratified treaty cannot be abrogated and so a referendum on Lisbon would be pointless. Such fatalism relieves them of any necessity to take a stance; it is a convenient funk-hole.
It is also complete nonsense. A ratified treaty cannot be abrogated? So, are the Czechs still members of the Warsaw Pact? As recently as 2001 the United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, without even holding a referendum. Beyond that, in a democracy, the will of the nation is the highest authority. Britain has not voted on the European Union since 1975, but every opinion survey shows anti-EU sentiment increasing, far beyond a mere majority view. Yet, simultaneously, we are being enfolded ever more tightly in the toils of Euro-federalism.
Dave, however, has a cunning plan. Having meekly accepted the Lisbon settlement, he intends, as Prime Minister, to negotiate the "repatriation" of certain powers over employment law, the charter of fundamental rights and criminal law. Ambitious or what? Might not the recovery of such massive authority go to the head of any British government? Could they handle it? In any case, would Cameron's hand not be strengthened if he had a strong referendum result behind him?
The problem with Dave's wheeze is this: he has assured us the Lisbon Treaty is now set in concrete and cannot be reopened; but even these Mickey Mouse issues he aspires to address are embedded deep within the treaty, so, by Dave's own dictum, how would it be possible to revisit them?
The question is academic, since the dictators in Brussels, safely entrenched in control of their super-state at last, will give Dave short shrift. They are the masters now. By a process of osmosis and ruthless political will, democracy has become a memory in Europe. The people of France and the Netherlands voted against the European constitution. The Irish rejected it even in its cosmetic "treaty" guise; they were made to reconsider. Britain was promised a referendum by both Gordon Brown and David Cameron; both have reneged.
Yet today Brown, Cameron and the rest of the political canaille that has sold Britain's nationhood in a succession of cynical deals and denied the electorate a referendum stand hypocritically at cenotaphs to honour men who gave their lives to preserve what they have so lightly bartered away. It is beyond disgusting.
Loathing of the political class is not rooted solely, or even chiefly, in abuse of expenses. It is the endless deceit, the contempt for the electorate, the hatred of all things British that has now irretrievably alienated the public from politicians.
We often said it would lead to disaster and now it has: the liquidation of our national sovereignty. One clear fact emerges from this smog of infamy: the two-party political system, which has handed us over, bound and gagged, to Brussels, must end. Gordon Brown is inescapably set on the high road to political oblivion. David Cameron believes his hour has come. It must be the relentless endeavour of every true Tory – and every British patriot – to bring down this charlatan and the clique that surrounds him. After last week, we must never forget and never forgive.
