Tory backbencher wants vote on 1957 Euro Treaty
Climate-denying Conservative MP Douglas Carswell has tabled a bill demanding a referendum on the 1957 Treaty or Rome - the founding treaty of the European Union
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.
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