Allister renews demand for referendum
27 June 2007
Speaking in a debate in the European Parliament on the outcome of last weekend's Brussels Summit, Jim Allister MEP attacked efforts by the British Government to present the new proposed Treaty as radically different from the rejected Constitution. As leaders and lawyers across Europe have agreed, it patently is not. Only the UK Government pretends otherwise.
In the course of his remarks Mr Allister said:-
"Mr President you have described the new treaty as retaining the substance of the Constitution, Commissioner Wallstrom said "It's essentially the same proposal as the old Constitution", Chancellor Merkel agrees and governments across Europe have described it as 99% the same. You and they are right. Yet there is one leader, correction erstwhile leader, Tony Blair, who pretends it is something wholly different. Why? So that he can con the British people out of the referendum which he promised us.
The shameless dissembling of the British Government, however, will not deceive the British people, because we know that when a treaty looks like a Constitution, talks like a Constitution and would walk us like a Constitution into a stronger stranglehold of control from Brussels, then it is a Constitution, however you deceptively describe it. Thus we still demand our referendum!"
