Lies, damned lies, and career politicians....

Don't you find it difficult to understand sometimes how the UK, which is overwhelmingly eurosceptic, has somehow over the years managed to elect so many europhile MEPs?

Obviously a large part of the problem is that the Conservative Party pretends to be eurosceptic; but at some stage on the flight or Eurostar journey to Brussels or Strasbourg Tory MEPs undergo a dramatic change in not only attitude but policy. Within the European Parliament they are on the whole keen Europeans, happy to support and promote harmonising legislation that takes the UK on another unwanted step towards political integration.

It is with interest that I read that a Eastern Region MEP, the Liberal Democrat Andrew Duff, has recently been made President of the Union of European Federalists (UEF). The UEF is a nongovernmental and supranational organisation “dedicated to the promotion of a…federal Europe”. In fairness to Mr Duff he is openly an avid europhile; although his party is starting to realise their pro-European stance is a big vote loser with the British public (as the Euro elections of 2004 so starkly showed) Mr Duff continues to try and swim against the tide of sense and reason and take our country in a federalist direction.

And so Mr Duff used his recent election as President to outline the key objectives of the UEF. Unsurprisingly the ambition of this organisation is to ensure that the Treaty of Lisbon is ratified in 2009. Why do I write this? Just in case you needed another reason to oppose this revamped European Constitution…