The Sunday Times on the EU

By Brian Barder

The Sunday Times of Mr Rupert Murdoch (who is not a European, has never been a European, and is viscerally hostile to the European project), published on 31 May 09 a short article on page 2 which must break a few records for wilful misrepresentation, degenerating into almost impenetrable obscurity. The article, attributed to Isabel Oakeshott, “Deputy Political Editor”, is headed “David Cameron is bet £100,000 he will renege on EU pledge”.

The misrepresentation consists of persistently referring to the Lisbon treaty as “the constitution”. Mr Murdoch should be made to write out 100 times, “The Lisbon treaty is not a constitution and no-one promised a referendum on it.” The defunct draft constitution on which a referendum was promised was just that: it contained a full-blown, grandiose constitution for the EU, expressly designed to replace all the earlier EU treaties which, taken together, make up the existing constitution. The Lisbon treaty, in contrast, comprises amendments to the existing treaties, few of them anything like as far-reaching as the amendments made in some earlier treaties, which will remain in force as amended if and when the Lisbon treaty is ratified by all the 27 member states and comes into force. When the Sunday Times of Mr Murdoch calls the Lisbon treaty “the constitution”, it betrays not ignorance – they know exactly what they are doing – but a willingness to tell a bare-faced lie in order to score an invalid political point. We have never had a UK referendum on an amending treaty and no-one has ever promised one.

The obscurity pops up in the following extraordinary paragraph:

“Cameron has made an EU referendum the central plank of his European campaign, but he has repeatedly refused to commit to holding such a vote if the Lisbon treaty – which gives sweeping new powers to Brussels, including removing several vetoes – has already been passed by Gordon Brown”.

We can guess what this was probably meant to say: David Cameron refuses to promise a referendum on the Lisbon treaty if, when Cameron becomes prime minister, the treaty has already come into force following ratification by all 27 EU member states. So what’s all this about the treaty being “passed by Gordon Brown“, as if it’s some kind of exam? If it means “no Tory referendum if Gordon Brown’s government has already secured parliamentary approval for British ratification of the Lisbon treaty”, perhaps someone might explain to the Sunday Times political staff that British ratification was completed some time ago and that the instrument of ratification has already been deposited with the Italian government, custodian of the Treaty of Rome. If the hapless Ms Oakeshott – a distinguished surname in political philosophy, by the way: are they by any chance related? – actually wrote this stuff, she is not too well qualified for the post of Deputy Political Editor of a once-great national newspaper. If some teenage intern on temporary sub-editing work experience with the Sunday Times inserted it in Ms Oakeshott’s copy, she ought to be – probably is – spitting blood. And those other more experienced staff, who supposedly read and checked the final version of the article before approving it for publication, need to be sent on an EU training course in Brussels for budding European journalists.

Brian