Watching, as I have, the Commons Debate on the Referendum Bill I am struck by the paucity and hyprocisy where the content of this debate was concerned.

First, a small digression: on ConservativeHome , Philip Hammond wrote: …..the Prime Minister managed to remove us from that bailout mechanism, cut the EU budget for the first time ever and vetoed an EU treaty that wasn’t in our national interest. My comment to this was: You write: the Prime Minister managed to remove us from that bailout mechanism, cut the EU budget for the first time ever and vetoed an EU treaty that wasn’t in our national interest. I tackled all three assertions with David Cameron, when I met him, presenting him with a detailed dossier containing refutation of all three points and accusing him of being economical with the actualité. All three points David Cameron refused to address (see http://witteringsfromwitney.com/meeting-my-member-of-parliament-2-2/ Let us deal with the easiest to answer; namely your assertion David Cameron vetoed a treaty. As you should know, for a treaty to have been on the table there would have had to have been a Convention and an Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC). If you assertion is true, then perhaps you can name the venue and dates of the Convention and IGC. If you are unable so to do (which you cannot as neither took place) perhaps, like David Cameron, you will desist from lying to the electorate.

Knock me down with a feather; he went and repeated this during the debate! (@12:54) As those who bother to read the link in my comment on ConservativeHome will see, he is just repeating Cameron’s lie. Consequently, Hammond stands (and he was standing at the time) accused of miseading the House of Commons. Not that he, nor Cameron, have or will acknowledge the point; and due to the poor standard of journalism we have in this country; neither will the the media.

Hammond spoke about one of the defects of our membership of the European Union, one of which was the feeling that the EU was guilty of doing things to us but not for us and spoke continually about ‘our country’ – but are not our politicians also guilty of doing things to us; and as for ‘our country’, just what is this ‘our’ when the political class give the impression that it is their country, one to mould to their wishes and to the detriment of those whose country it really is.

The hyprocrasy contained in the debate was staggering: consider John Redwood, who some on Twitter thought gave a brilliant speech. He spoke about the sovereignty of the British people; and in the same breath maintained that Pariament was sovereign – yet seemed to forget that both cannot be sovereign; ’tis one or the other. He maintained that the electorate have access to MPs and thus can influence them – really? If we are to have true democracy it is not influence of our MPs that we want; it is control of them that we want. He continued that the EU is ‘undemocratic’ in that it prevents the will of the people being expressed – and the EU is different to parliamentary democracy as practised in the UK? As the people have no means to stop any EU law, neither can they stop any UK law – and Redwood talks about the ‘sovereignty of the people’?

Many, many, MPs spoke about the need for this forthcoming referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU as the need for any change to this country needing to have the consent of the British people; others made the point that the British people should have the opportunity of expressing their opinion about any change in the future direction that this country might take (eg; points raised by Kevin Foster – Torbay; and Nusrat Ghani – Wealden). This immediately begs the question: what is so different about this ‘subject du debate’ than any other matter? If those assertions are correct, then one must ask why we are not asked for our opinion on matters decided almost daily by MPs.

An element of irony highighted in this debate was the parade of MPs praising Cameron for his attempt to renegotiate the non-negotiable – which begs the question why ‘hard-working families (a phrase so beloved by our MPs) elect and then fund a group of people so obviously unable to understand matters which their exalted position demands?

Once again: just asking…………………………..