EU Constitution, Round 1

Once again we are lucky to have the House of Lords, they will almost certainly be putting in amendments to force the parties in the commons to actually follow their manifesto pledges, and next time this comes back to the commons the Lib-Dems might be voting for it which with a rebellion amongst Labour ranks could even have a referendum on Lisbon forced upon the political elite, as they promised but as only a few really want. If there is no rebellion it will certainly be fun to watch this Bill bounce between Commons and Lords with their Lordships trying to keep the elected chamber to their electoral promises. It will certainly show up the contempt that the general public are held should it eventually reach the stage where Gordon Brown is forced to use the Parliament Act in order to break one of his manifesto pledges.

The rebellion over the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty was certainly impressive, very large numbers considering how few parliamentarians they have and that this was against a three line whip. Either this a cynical ploy based on the fact that the Lib-Dems main problem is that they are ignored and simply by getting more airtime on the broadcast media their poll ratings will go up, no matter whether the story is good or bad. Or there are some Lib-Dems that actually believe in representative democracy and therefore acting the way that they told the electorate they would the last time we got a chance to choose our the people to represent us. Not matter what the reason their actions where a good, if futile, attempt to bring a little democratic accountability to the deeply un-democratic (even anti-democratic) EU and the processes building it.