Tory backbencher wants vote on 1957 Euro Treaty

Eurosceptic hardliner Douglas Carswell has tabled a Private Member’s Bill calling for a vote on the 1957 Treaty of Rome.

The climate-denying Conservative has blogged that “it is too late to have a vote on the Lisbon Treaty” – yet apparently not too late to vote on a treaty 52 years older, and taking no account of the 1975 referendum in which the British public voted emphatically, by a two-to-one majority, to remain in the European Community.

The mere mention of his bill threatens to re-open Tory splits over Europe, which David Cameron had hoped to bury with his courageous decision to sideline the sceptics and promise not to hold a referendum on the already ratified Lisbon Treaty.

In full conspiracy theory mode, the Harwich and Clacton MP wrote:

“Naturally, given how government controls Parliament (as opposed to the other way around), my Private Members Bill faces an uphill struggle to become law. But it puts down a marker. It breaks the Westminster taboo. What has been unsaid for too long is now in print on the Order Paper.

“If it is too late to have a vote on the Lisbon Treaty – and I think it is – then we need to have a vote on Rome.”

Following the ongoing internal divisions over climate change, this outbreak of extreme Europhobia is probably the last thing the Tory leader needs.

1. Rory says:

   December 18, 2009 at 3:00 pm

   What’s a climate-denier?

   And how is being concerned about the way parliament has been cowed under New Labour a conspiracy theory? Many sensible people hold this view.
2. Bill Kristol-Balls says:

   December 18, 2009 at 3:06 pm

   Whilst I’m hugely enthusiastic about the raison d’être of this very fine website, I would suggest that you don’t refer to people as ‘climate deniers’.

   I’m sure Professor Frink, sorry I meant the Right Honourable Douglas Carswell MP, does not deny the reality of there being a climate, even though reality is well known to have an innate liberal bias (hat-tip S.Colbert).
3. Shamik Das says:

   December 18, 2009 at 3:27 pm

   Beleive it or not, there are some people out there who do deny the existence of man made climate change.
4. Anon E Mouse says:

   December 18, 2009 at 3:45 pm

   Shamik – You are absolutely right, more people believe it is NOT man made than think it is in all polls, both here and in the US…
5. Liz McShane says:

   December 18, 2009 at 3:52 pm

   Typical Tory looking back to some golden bygone era – a bit like Major’s cricket nostalgia. Thank God for what was the EEC, then EC and now EU it was the thing that got the country through the dark days of Thatcherism.
6. Henry says:

   December 18, 2009 at 4:08 pm

   Don’t think Anon E Mouse is quite right on the facts here. There was an ICM poll in the Torygraph (5th December) which showed:

   52% think climate change is largely man-made
   39% believe that it is not proven that climate change is man-made
   7% think there is no climate change

   Of course, it’s not the only poll on the subject.
7. Look Left – The Week in Fast Forward | Left Foot Forward says:

   December 18, 2009 at 6:12 pm

   [...] backbencher Douglas Carswell, who on Wednesday sought to turn back the clock half a century by demanding a referendum on the Treaty of Rome, putting him [...]