...the understanding that a new Treaty will mean repatriation of powers by Britain, as José Manuel Barroso confirmed yesterday. The Eurocrats understand that this time having a new Treaty would not mean powers passing from London to Brussels, but the other way around. This time we want a new Treaty, and the Germans must have a new Treaty. Vince Cable is reported as stating the following:
But Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, on his first trip to Brussels, ruled out taking powers back from the EU, a Conservative election manifesto pledge dropped by the coalition government.
Instead, he said, the Conservative-Liberal government would pursue a "deregulation agenda" at EU meetings and summits.
"It is a way of making European processes work in a less cumbersome way, rather than reopening treaties," he said yesterday.
"We are not at the moment specifying powers that need to be repatriated. We think we can operate within the framework we've got."
Unacceptable. It is not nearly enough for the Coalition to say that it opposes any further passing of powers from London to Brussels. Cable goes on to try some smoke and mirrors, suggesting that there might be measures to strengthen social legislation. But the Conservative Party did not take the view that the status quo post-Lisbon was tolerable provided that no further powers were passed. Our leadership stated, in terms, that we would "not let matters rest there". This is a pledge to which we must hold them.
We cannot let this lie for a couple of years and then come back to it. The opportunity for a new Treaty is now, over the next few months. We need already to be stating what powers we shall be seeking to recover in that Treaty. If we forego this opportunity to renegotiate, firstly we cannot tell when another opportunity might come along, but, more fundamentally, if we don't have the will to renegotiate when circumstances are so favourable to our renegotiating - without a new Treaty, the euro might actually collapse - then why would our EU partners believe we were serious in our desire to renegotiate on a later occasion when our hand was much weaker?
And why should we let this lie and come back to it? We didn't leave announcing anything on our education policy for a couple of years, until (say) we had made more progress on the deficit. We don't consider reforming education a "distraction from more important matters". We started making progress on our policy straight away, through the Cabinet minister appointed to devise and implement policy in the area. We have announced a full programme of measures in our Queen's Speech. We haven't put most matters off so they don't distract us from the deficit. Why should we put off renegotiation until later? It's just a false argument.
Now is the appointed hour. If we don't renegotiate this time, then we are letting matters lie, clearly breaking the promises many of us made on Europe during the election campaign, and clearly breaking our leadership's undertakings after the Lisbon Treaty went through.
Mr Cameron. If you don't renegotiate now, you don't want to renegotiate. And if we had known you didn't want to renegotiate, you would not have been elected leader of the Conservative Party. It really is as simple as that.