In out last major referendum in 1975 I campaigned and voted to stay in the EEC. I remained of that opinion until the days of Delors.

I now question whether we can reform this organisation while ruling out the possibility of leaving it and the day is fast approaching when we must bite the bullet and consult the people on whether they wish to stay in or not.

However, he is the Prime Minister in a Coalition government and he ought to be able to speak with authority on the Coalition’s behalf. Yet here we have Cable not just disagreeing with Cameron as a Liberal Democrat but usurping his position into the bargain by laying down what is Coalition policy and what isn’t.

Isn’t it time Cameron and/or Clegg called this maverick to order?

‘LibDem Immigration Policy Unravels

Iain Dale 2:40 PM

At the best of times, Ed Davey is a politician who I find intensely irritating. He looks and sounds so holier than thou. I console myself that whenever he appears on TV it loses the LibDems votes. And his appearance on the Politics Show today was no exception. He made Pinocchio look truthful. He made so many spurious claims about immigration that it was difficult to know where to start to refute them……………

• Davey repeated Nick Clegg’s claim in the final Leaders’ Debate that 80 per cent of immigration comes from the EU and therefore can’t be controlled. The real figure is less than a third.

• Davey said that the Conservatives supported ‘an amnesty called the 14 year rule.’ This is not true. Conservatives do not support the 14 year rule, which is in any case for exceptional cases, unlike the Lib Dems’ blanket amnesty.
• Davey said that his party’s amnesty was ‘a one-off’ that ‘would have no impact’ on immigration. Evidence from other countries that have tried amnesties shows that they lead to more illegal immigration and more amnesties as they encourage more illegal immigrants to try their luck.
• Davey claimed that the Conservatives removed exit checks when they were last in Government. This is not true – it was Labour who removed them in 1998 and the Conservatives support their reintroduction.

And to add insult to injury, Davey finished his comments on immigration by saying that ‘People dislike politicians because they don’t tell the truth’. Pot, Kettle, Black.’

Apart from the ones you’d expect there will also be a Monster Raving Loony. But the name that caught my eye was that of Mr. Ed Rosenthal.

He has been listed as the UKIP candidate. What’s interesting about that? Unless I’m mistaken he was, 12 years ago, a Lib Dem councillor in Tolworth East ward (now about 2/3 of Alexandra Ward). And he was very much a Lib Dem’s Lib Dem with a fine line in guitar playing and recycling tea bags and as keen on all things European as any! Since then he seems to have undergone a Damascene conversion, though I believe he still has the guitar and, I hope, still recycles his teabags!

I was very sad to hear last night, however, that there has been some fluttering in the UKIP dovecot and Mr. R is not to stand for Parliament after all – on a UKIP ticket, anyway.

Sir,

It is a pity that your headline of yesterday (3^rd. November) accused David Cameron of ‘reneging’ on his commitment to a referendum on Lisbon, when in fact he had no choice in the matter.

The pledge he gave in 2007 was sincere and would have been implemented if it lawfully could have been. Very sadly, now, it can’t. If this broken Parliament had been dissolved after four years like the previous two we would have a new government by now and the referendum would almost certainly have occurred. The Irish changed their mind in their referendum, encouraged no doubt by the intervention of Nigel Farage of Ukip in the Republic’s domestic affairs. The Czech President has attached his signature to it. And Gordon Brown continues to cling on for dear life as the Parliament Act permits him to, more’s the pity. So the ghastly treaty has become Law, but David Cameron is not responsible at all for any of this.

The ‘reneging’ was done by Blair and Brown – and their Liberal Democrat fellow travellers – not by Cameron. However some of your correspondents want to punish the innocent Conservatives by voting for Ukip or some such. When will they ever learn that fragmentation on the right in politics merely lets in the left? If they want another five years of Gordon Brown and his Lib Dem Europhile allies, let them vote Ukip by all means. But let them be aware of the consequences and not expect to find much left of the Britain they have known and loved at the end of them.

I must say that I had hoped that by now we would have had the general election the country is crying out for. In all my years in politics (back to the Macmillan era) I’ve never known a government – or a Parliament! – that needed to be put to sleep more than this one. Both lack moral authority and credibility, are turning the country I love into a laughing stock, undermining its institutions and leading us sleepwalking into a federalist Europe, having broken faith with us over a Referendum on Lisbon. And spare us the casuistry about Lisbon not being the Constitution – as a document it may lack the baroque flourishes of Giscard D’Estaing’s original but it is the same thing in all essentials as the Constitution.

Autumn is a sad time with leaves falling from trees, exposing the stark reality underneath. But it is also a time of promise of new leaves and new growth to come in the Spring. Let us hope that the metaphor is good for this government and that the people of Britain will see the stark reality of its ugly cluelessness and despatch it to the oblivion it has shunned for far too long.

It’s great to see that Ulster is starting out on the road back into the mainstream of British politics. There are lots of Johnstons in Belfast and environs, quite a few of whom have complained in the past that they were unable to affect the government of their country by their votes. Now I hope they will be able to!