Hostages to fortune

BBC reports:
David Cameron has postponed a long-awaited speech on the UK's relationship with Europe to respond to the hostage crisis in Algeria.

Well, that was lucky for him - a jolly good reason not to make that speech yet, but he'll have to do it some time.    Cameron is like a man in a mire.  If he stands still he sinks slowly but if he tries to move out, he may sink faster.    If, as we all expect, he promises a referendum after a negotiation to make the UK different from every other member-state, then he will be a hostage and so will we all.  Cameron will be a hostage to a negotiation that he cannot win and we - the whole country - will be hostages to the prospect of the referendum and the uncertainty of our membership of the European Union.   Investment in the UK will fall and some firms may even move their work to less ambivalent member-states.   

Europhobes waking up to Cameron's failure

The Independent reports that David Cameron has now pulled off the remarkable feat of alienating both our European partners and his own party's Europhobes. Brilliant ! In December he managed to isolate the UK and fail to get anything he wanted out of the summit other than the temporary admiration of the europhobic press and MPs. Now the consequences of his incompetent negotiating are becoming clear, the same little Englanders are angry with him for not behaving like an idiot at this week's summit as well.

Even Douglas Carswell, one of the Tory nationalist pygmies, is beginning to understand: "I don't see how the veto is really a veto if we allow the fiscal union to form, and then find ourselves subject to the EU institutions being used to govern that. In effect we will find that for all the talk of a veto, we find ourselves hauled into this process.". Well done, Douglas ! Beginning to dawn on you now, is it ?

Matthew Parris on Afghanistan

Parris writes in The Times "Cameron and Clegg have made a calculation: sacrifice more soldiers in Afghanistan to keep on side with the US"

Fair votes referendum NOW !

Alan Johnson has called for a referendum on PR to be held on the day of the next general election. What is the logic of voting to change the electoral system on the same day as electing a new House of Commons under the old system ??? Of course, a referendum on the Jenkins Commission's recommended Alternative Vote top-up System is now more than ten years overdue. Labour's manifesto commitment to hold a referendum was the first of many promises broken by Tony Blair's government.

Small problem: under our daft, archaic and essentially monarchical non-constitution, the PM only needs to give everyone about four weeks' notice of when his time runs out, whereas public debates on referendums should last longer.

Big problem: The main block to PR has always been the strange unwillingness of MPs elected under first-past-the-post (stupid name for a system without a post) to vote for their own demise. However, we are now in a most unusual period when many MPs do not expect to be re-elected anyway. Perhaps Labour MPs would be willing to respond to a referendum now, as a way of avoiding a huge Conservative majority next year. If we wait to hold a referendum until general election day, we can be certain that a new government led by David Cameron will ignore the result. They would probably set up a new Royal Commission to think about it for another ten years.