Cameron at PMQs: It would be ridiculous to ask the Irish people to vote twice when the British people haven't voted once

1.30pm: Watch highlights of the exchanges.

Highlights, not verbatim:

12.26pm: Great question from Michael Spicer: Why are there always so many strikes at the end of a Labour government?

12.23pm: In response to a question from Labour's backbenches Gordon Brown says that the Conservatives are taking risks with the fight against crime and against terrorism by questioning the value of the DNA database and of CCTV.

12.15pm: Nick Clegg urges the PM to enact a windfall tax on the energy companies so that poorer households can be given better insulation and smart meters.  Brown says that the Government is already doing much to help poorer families with their energy bills.

12.12pm: Cameron calls for leadership from Brown but jokes that there is more spine in jellyfish than on Labour's frontbench.  Brown quotes Ken Clarke's view that a referendum would be "crackpot", "dotty" and "absurd".  He urges David Cameron to lead his party away from the Euroscepticism of the Conservative backbenches.

12.10pm: The Irish people have spoken.  They've said "no" says David Cameron.  What part of "no" doesn't he understand?  Brown responds by reminding the House of John Major's words when he urged continued ratification of Maastricht after the Danes had said "no".

12.09pm: Wouldn't it "ridiculous" and "high-handed" Cameron continues, to ask the Irish to vote twice when the people of Britain haven't had an opportunity to vote once?  Have the courage to declare it dead, urges the Tory leader.

12.07pm: Rapid change of tone when Cameron invites Brown to declare the Lisbon Treaty "dead".  We must have respect for the Irish, says the PM, but the Irish have not asked us to delay our own ratification process.

12.05pm: David Cameron asks what progress has been made in creating one central command in Afghanistan.

12.04pm: The PM says that the Taliban has been defeated as an army and are now fighting as an insurgency, using weapons like suicide and roadside bombs.

12.02pm: David Cameron, following Gordon Brown begins by paying tribute to the fallen in Afghanistan. He says that the Afghan fight is a vital fight against terrorism that we must win. It is about our security.

Comments

[Tony Makara]

A war of attrition can go on indefinitely. Not good for UK troops and leaving troops there for the long haul. Labour's war has become the Conservative's war. Sad.

[Paul D]

DC has seen "more spine from a jellyfish"

[Tony Makara]

More backbone in a platefull of jelly!

[Sam R]

Brown seems to be hoping that the "democrats" at their next get-together will pound the Irish into holding another referendum. From recent comments from the Dublin establishment, they have no thought to do so, as it is beginning to dawn on them there that if they attempted another referendum they would get an even more emphatic "no".
Pity Brown's avowed respect for the House of Commons would translate into action - tell us how much his "victory" on the 42 days has cost the already-overdrawn exchequer, or call an election and put the country out of its misery.
Remember Waterloo!

[Tory Owl]

The EU: Magabe without the violence. Well not yet so far.

[Gezmond007]

Just the beginning of the Conservatives getting bashed on being weak on crime, CCTV, being against a DNA data base and terrorism.

Well done Mr Cameron for saying that you will go and support Davies in his stupid By-election. You will be sorry for this ! This will be with you right up to and after the next Election.

[Tony Makara]

Nice to hear Brown admitting that over 60% of our trade is with the EU, most of which involves us importing their food, which is getting ever more expensive as the Pound shrinks against the Euro. Isn't it time we started looking to supply ourselves with food and thus avoiding the inflation that comes with importing food from Europe?

[Gezmond007]

Just the beginning of the Conservatives getting bashed on being weak on crime, CCTV, being against a DNA data base and terrorism.

Well done Mr Cameron for saying that you will go and support Davies in his stupid By-election. You will be sorry for this ! This will be with you right up to and after the next Election.

[Serf]

Brown responds by reminding the House of John Major's words when he urged continued ratification of Maastricht after the Danes had said "no".

Earth calling Gordon Brown, John Major is no longer the leader of the Conservative Party.

What John Major did (rightly or wrongly) 15 years ago, is irrelevant. It was a different treaty and a different leader.

Though Eurosceptics thought differently, Major himself thought he could push the EU in his prefered direction. Years later, older and wiser,we see that whaever justification is given for a new treaty, the reality is that itis ultimately used for Federalist ends.

Above and beyond all that, we were promised a referendum. Grabber Gordon stole our right to choose along with our pensions.

[Nigel Rathbone]

The EU: Magabe without the violence. Well not yet so far.

Posted by: Tory Owl | June 18, 2008 at 12:51

A ridiculous comparison, and rather offensive.

Statements such as this achieve nothing, apart from illustrating your own profound ignorance of both the situation in Zimbabwe and the EU and its workings.

If you can't say something sensible, better to say nothing.

[Editor]

Thank you Nigel. Well said.

[johnC]

I think it is an extremely apposite comparison between two regimes who refuse to accept the public's democratic decision and want to repeat the vote until they come up with the right result as the EU did previously with the Danes over Maastricht.

[Irish Observer]

If I was to a bit cheeky, since when did the Conservative party care about the democratic decisions of the Irish electorate? Whether it was Home Rule bills or the Government of Ireland act, conservative opinion thwarted Irish self-determination at every juncture.

[Serf]

Whether it was Home Rule bills or the Government of Ireland act, conservative opinion thwarted Irish self-determination at every juncture.

:o And I thought it a bit rich that Brown was harking back to John Major.

[Anna Rasmussen]

What a wonderful opportunity for our farmers to prove to politicians that we can be entirely self sufficient in the UK! However, this will mean letting the farmer plant and husband what the country needs and not what the MPs order them to do. It also means an end to food out of season unless people are prepared to pay the higher price. By the way, our supermarkets in this country are way off on market prices: the Danish supermarkets sell cheaper than here even though they have 25% VAT on everything including food.

[Tony Makara]

Anna, food security has to become a priority issue. I can't see the Pound ever getting as close to the Euro again and seeing as we are never going to join the Euro we need to scale down our depedence on EU foodstuffs. Otherwise high prices will be a permanent feature of life in the UK. Certainly the easiest way to do this is to free up all the regulation around agriculture and internal trade. The problem currently is that our consumers don't have the option of import substitution. If we can produce food in sufficent quantity we can keep the cost low.

Serious thought needs to go into this with a Conservative government getting their heads together with farmers and retailers, forming a strategy and working together so that we don't have to suffer the nightmare of food inflation again. The great problem with such inflation is that food has to be bought, and bought weekly, unlike a new TV or car. So the pressure on wages is greater, as the Labour government is finding out.

Anna, er det mulig at du er maske dansker? Jeg ved godt nok at Rasmussen er en aeget dansk navn, mon fordi du har talte om dansk supermarkeder?

[Conand]

Irish Observer, Conservative relations within and with regard to the island of Ireland are far more complex than is usually portrayed.
The first example of that came with the first leader of the faction that became the Conservative party (William Pitt The Younger). He resigned from his post as PM/Chancellor/First Lord of the Treasury when the King wouldn't support his policy of giving catholics the vote. The pre-existing arrangement of having a Dublin parliament that most people couldn't vote for he saw as untenable. (With much justification)
Indeed the term 'Tory' originated as a nickname which compared a 17th century parliamentary faction to catholic rebels in Ireland (Tory island etc) as they were seen as too supportive of James II, Jacobites etc (or 'Soft on Catholicism, soft on the causes of Catholicism')
As a Conservative who visits Ireland at least three times a year I am well aware of subsequent history.
For my own part I was extremely troubled by the EU treaty, not least by the say it potentially gives the UK over the foreign policy of the Republic, and indeed over many internal matters. This could be seen as 'progressive', but the UK doesn't really have an impressive track record in those regards.
Above and beyond that the present UK government promotes cultural imperialism and high taxation, two things that don't work very well in Ireland.

[Conand]

On the question of EU/Mugabe I agree with johnC @ 13:24.

They both seem to say, ''Keep asking the question (with some menace) until you get the answer you want' is a good rule of thumb.'

It's a scary distortion of democracy and should be fought wherever it appears.

[Steve Garner]

I agree with John C and Conand. I can't imagine who is offended, or why? Conand's summed it up rather nicely.

[Nigel Rathbone]

Please, PLEASE, stop trying to draw any parallel whatsoever between these two situations.

If you seriously think there is any comparison between the actions of the EU and that of Mugabe's regime, you are at best ignorant and at worst sick.

How many of its citizens has the EU ordered to be murdered?

How many people were beaten up or threatened with a beating - or to have their families beaten, or kidnapped - in order to ensure a Yes vote on the Lisbon treaty?

More than 100 opposition supporters have been killed and 200 have disappeared in the current Zimbabwe election.

Ponder this from the shocking Guardian report:

Thousands more have been beaten so badly they will bear the scars for life. A number of rapes have also been reported, including of three women who had wooden poles thrust into their vaginas. But it is not clear at this stage if the attacks are a deliberate part of the terror strategy.

Often the corpses are hidden, but occasionally the killers like to display their handiwork as a warning. Chokuse Muphango was murdered in Buhera South last week. His killers put his body on the back of a truck and drove it through town announcing: "We have killed the dog."

MDC members of parliament, mayors and councillors have been burned out of their homes and terrorised into fleeing. Hundreds of opposition activists are in jail on trumped up charges of inciting violence after being tortured and dumped at police stations.

Tens of thousands of known opposition supporters have been forced from their homes or had their identity cards destroyed so they cannot vote. The government is also laying the ground for extensive rigging by purging the election process of independent officials, such as teachers, and putting state workers and soldiers in their place.

There is much more. I urge you to read it.

There is NO comparison between the above and the European Union, for all its faults. The horror of the situation in Zimbabwe is a million miles away from the comfortable lives of the armchair commentators on this website making glib comparisons to score cheap anti-EU points.

So come on people, engage your brains before you speak. Otherwise, please shut up.

[johnC]

'a million miles away from the comfortable lives of the armchair commentators on this website'

I think you are making some rather rash assumptions about the contributors to this site. Personally speaking, I spent several years as a missionary in Africa and have plenty of first hand experience of African brutality and corruption. Insofar as both the EU and Zimbabwean leadership is seeking to ignore the result of a popular vote I think it is perfectly valid to make the comparison. And if the EU wanted to avoid being associated with Mugabe it should have thought twice before inviting him to the recent EU-African summit in Lisbon, an act with which even Gordon Brown was so disgusted that he stayed away.

[carol42]

Why was Gordon Brown allowed to get away with the blatant lie that David Davis wanted no DNA database at all? all he is saying is that the DNA of innocent people, including children, should not be kept. When he returns to the Commons he should be given a post as a new Minister for civil rights and liberty.

[Tony Hannon]

It's a smack of Jellyfish not a bunch.

[Norm Brainer]

Nigel... The comment was comparing the EU to mugabe without the violence.
You say that is offensive but give the violence as the reason, which has been removed from the equation!

[Nigel Rathbone]

I spent several years as a missionary in Africa and have plenty of first hand experience of African brutality and corruption.

If that is the case, all the more reason why you should be ashamed of yourself for making such a fatuous comparison.

Insofar as both the EU and Zimbabwean leadership is seeking to ignore the result of a popular vote I think it is perfectly valid to make the comparison.

No it is not. As I said above, whatever else it is doing the EU is NOT murdering, kidnapping, torturing or beating its opponents.

The EU is a vast beaurocracy which sometimes seems remote from its citizens. The Mugabe regime is evil and represses its citizens. That is quite a difference.

[Dale]

Norm Brainer beat me to it!

The comparison was Mugabe's Regime without the violence, which is absolutely true.

Nigel Rathbone (can't even be bothered to make up his own psuedonym) ha continuouly argued that the two situations are incomporable because of the violence, stupid much?

[Nigel Rathbone]

Nigel Rathbone (can't even be bothered to make up his own psuedonym)

Sorry, and your point is...? The level of debate here is becoming rather juvenile.

ha continuouly argued that the two situations are incomporable because of the violence, stupid much?

Is this sentence in English? It does not make sense.

I mention the violence because those glib enough to bring Zimbabwe into the EU debate clearly need a little education on the true situation there.

[Dale]

"Sorry, and your point is...? The level of debate here is becoming rather juvenile."

Says the man, or woman, posting under a psuedonym thatdoesn't even seem to be able to read the first comment.

"Is this sentence in English? It does not make sense."

Sorry for the 2 spelling mistakes, it's abit difficult typing with a broken hand.

PS You a surely appreciate the irony that you have you have never heard anyone say 'stupid much?' or '(insert whatever you want here) much?'

Try spending some time with people under 40.

[Dale]

Sorry to double post, but if our friend Mr too ashamed to use his own name, wanted too understand the way that yong people speak he could check the 'urban dictionary' (type 'urban dictionary' into google) and search for 'much'.

Thats assuming you know how to use this new fandangled interweb.

[Norm Brainer]

um.. I'm under 40 and ain't nayer gone done hearded nobodies ended an sentence in stupid much.

Apart from I just did!

[Dale]

I have never met anyone that really speaks that way.

Perhaps it's because I went to catholic shool.

[Pete]

Mugabe for EU President. Two problems solved in one stroke.

[John Waine]

Nigel Rathbone may have a point when he refers to the debate becoming "juvenile". Nonetheless, he cannot (reasonably) deny that he seems deliberately to have ignored the "without the violence" clause from the original statement - which may have caused the frustration which led to the "juvenile" comments.

EU leaders may not be "wicked" in the sense of Mugabe's homicidal tendencies; but they are certainly wicked in the sense that they don't give a damn for democracy (indeed, they seem to consider it a very bad thing, since it gives power to ordinary, ignorant people who fail to understand the over-riding importance of the EU "project"). That is why anyone who truly cares for individual freedom ought to be as worried by their attitude as most right-thinking people are by Mugabe's antics. In the end, whether or not the means are as disgusting as Mugabe's, the end is likely to be the same.

The EU mandarins are, simply, much cleverer than Mugabe. On the other hand, they probably couldn't claim mitigation for their wrongdoing on the grounds of insanity.