One comes close to admiration for Iain Dale’s unstinting efforts to burnish the jobbie (as he previously did with Dubya in the past — thus allowing Malcolm to reprise a favourite image, right). Dale’s latest brown-tonguing involves Cameron’s volte-face over his “cast-iron guarantee”.
Dale started his day with a second attempt to “prove” that Cameron never, ever — perish the thought — gave or implied such an assurance:
I’ve quoted [Cameron's original piece in The Sun] before, but seeing as though a good proportion either can’t read or choose to ignore what it says in favour of what you’d like to think it said, let’s have another look at it, shall we?
“Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: if I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations. No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum.”
See that last bit? That’s the bit which people conveniently ignore – presumably deliberately, because it doesn’t fit their argument. Think about those words – “No treaty should be ratified”… let me spell it out for those who have their fingers in their ears and are shouting ‘la la la, can’t hear you’. No Treaty Should be Ratified means that a referendum should be held IN ADVANCE of a treaty being ratified.
What that amounts to is repeating Cameron’s Jesuitical equivocation over the distinction between an unsigned Treaty and a signed one — which has become Law, and so obviously is no longer a Treaty, you silly boy!
That quibble is so gob-smackingly, nut-crunchingly, self-deceivingly, left-field brilliant, Malc
olm wishes he had previously appreciated such a philosophical gem. He would have deployed it and so avoided the need to allocate memory cells to the historical importance of the Treaties of Westphalia (1648), Paris (1815), Versailles (1919) and, oh!, so many more. Malcolm ruefully doubts the ploy would have impressed the examiners at Irish Leaving Certificate or the University of Dublin, however. Obviously they really “do different” (as left) at the University of East Anglia.
So, Malcolm suggests, let’s hear more from the original, unreconstructed Dave:
The final reason we must have a vote is trust. Gordon Brown talks about “new” politics.
But there’s nothing “new” about breaking your promises to the British public. It’s classic Labour.
And it is the cancer that is eating away at trust in politics. Small wonder that so many people don’t believe a word politicians ever say if they break their promises so casually.
Touché!
