Last but not least

On their countdown to 'Brown's big apology' , expected tomorrow, the Conservatives have finally arrived at the PM's failure to hold the promised referendum on the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty, as the last of their list of things he has to apologise for.

A good excuse to remind people that:

When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister he said: ‘the manifesto is what we put to the public. We’ve got to honour that manifesto. That is an issue of trust for me with the electorate’. Labour’s 2005 election manifesto promised a referendum on the EU Constitution. But Gordon Brown forced through the Lisbon Treaty – the renamed EU Constitution – on a three line whip without any democratic mandate from the voters to sign it.

Commenting on the relationship between the Lisbon Treaty and the EU Constitution the Spanish foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, said: ‘I believe that 98 per cent of the content … of the Constitutional Treaty, is to be found in the future EU Treaty. The wrapping has been changed, but not the content’ (El Pais, 23 July 2007). German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: ‘the substance of the Constitution is preserved. That is a fact’ (Daily Telegraph, 29 June 2007).

Pull the other one!

The Government is literally all over the place on the revised Constitutional Treaty. It's difficult to keep up with the multitude of different positions they've had - of which the latest Brown-Blair "rows" are just the latest example.

As Lord Owen wrote in the Evening Standard yesterday "We need to hear again the convoluted illogicality of how our diplomats explain why constitutional changes were thought not to need a referendum in 2003, then how a referendum was promised in 2004, even if the French or Dutch voted no, only for the pledge to be withdrawn and replaced with the promise of a referendum in the 2005 general election - only in 2007 for Blair to say no referendum once again. Perhaps Gordon Brown will have enough sense to realise that the British people cannot be treated with contempt like this."

If that is the case, no-one seems to have told the Prime Minister's spokesman. At the press briefing yesterday afternoon he claimed that there was no need to hold a referendum this time because the name had been changed and the flag and anthem were being deleted.

According to the Downing Street website:

"Asked what it was in 2005 that required a referendum, and what were the elements of the constitution, the PMOS replied they were elements such as flags, national anthems, etc."

Which is funny, because we're sure there were some more important elements in the Constitution than the flag and the anthem... The EU President and the EU Foreign Minister perhaps?

As someone from the Commission helpfully told Le Figaro yesterday:

"It’s no great loss! The European flag already exists anyway..."

She lied and lied and lied (we're not exaggerating)

It's often said that one of Tony Blair's best assets is his skill at acting. The feigned sincerity, the lump in the throat and -of course- the comedy mockney accent - y'know.

Margaret Beckett's performance in front of the EU scrutiny committee yesterday suggests that his legacy will survive after all when he steps down.

The session began with the Labour Committee Chairman - Michael Connarty - saying that the current negotiations on the EU Constitution were taking place against a "background of non-transparency". This, claimed Beckett, was Berlin's fault. It is the way they wanted to conduct negotiations. Nothing she could do about it.

She then denied that the questionnaire that Merkel had sent to every EU government had any importance ( the letter which set out how they would make "presentational changes... without changing the legal substance" of the Constitution). She said it had “not played any real part in the discussions” on the new treaty.

When asked to give a bit more detail on these discussions she argued -puzzlingly -that there hadn't been any. "Nothing that you could really call negotiations has taken place."

She told MPs that the idea that the Constitution was being resurrected had been made up by the media. She declared that "There is nothing on the table" and that other countries were "in denial" about the Constitution's rejection.

When Bill Cash dared to suggest that she might not have a firm grip on the negotiations, she replied tersely “It’s not that I don’t know what’s going on, it’s just that nothing is going on”.

She carried on: “I’m afraid Mr Cash, you say to me ‘We know there are party-to-party negotiations”. There are not. There have not been. There has been a process whereby member states are occasionally invited to give some views. There have not been negotiations.”

Cash: “So there is something going on” Beckett: [shouting] “There is nothing going on”.

She even refused to be drawn into whether she would support individual proposals from the old Constitution. “Until it is clear that a proposal is being but forward and in what form I will reserve my comments until something is practically proposed. And at the moment nothing is proposed.”

But then the cracks started to appear. First she confused her own interests with the interests of the country as a whole - “I believe it is very much in the interests of those who wish to see British national interests protected and preserved that we do not carry out our negotiations in public” [pause] “Especially when they haven’t started”.

Michael Connarty asked what the sherpas (envoys sent by each country's PM to agree a framework on the new treaty) were discussing.

“Not very much”, she replied as she glanced to her advisers knowingly. She stumbled on: “I accept. I do accept... I know that the committee... I’ve read all manner of things, a number of fascinating articles about the negotiations that are no doubt going on. How the sherpas are beavering away, there will be a text here with brackets." [opening her arms in a dramatic Italian-style gesture while shaking her head] "No."

Then the plot thickened. The reason she couldn't answer any of the committee's questions was that it would make it easier for her to negotiate that way.

“The less I say about what we might in principle accept, and what we might not, the more I preserve the maximum amount of negotiating space to resist anything that I think is not in Britain’s national interest." She added: "we're not going to negotiate in public" (why did you show up then?)

"I appreciate that is unsatisfactory for the committee and I apologise to you for that. But since we are so much in uncharted waters of knowing what may be proposed. The more I say 'we can live with this, we can’t live with that', the more I’m giving away from my negotiating strategy. Which I’m always deeply reluctant to do.”

But she was happy to talk about the parts of the negotiations the Government are happy with. She said the Government could "live with" changes to the voting system and that she would “have sympathy” with proposals to introduce the subsidiarity mechanism from the old Constitution.

She even said it would be “unwise” to add things such as Copenhagen criteria (restricting future enlargement) , as well as clauses on energy and climate change.

The MPs were feeling frustrated. James Clappison said that he was going to ask for her view on the proposed EU President, "but I think I can make an educated guess about what the answer’s going to be”. The Foreign Secretary agreed - he has guessed right that the lady wasn’t for talking.

The whole performance was nicely summed up by her response to Richard Younger-Ross' assertion that there was nothing MPs could do to influence the Government in the negotiations and that the new treaty would be presented as a fait accompli.

She just shrugged her shoulders and looked away ... we wonder if she really has a place in the new 'humble', 'listening and learning' era of politics which Brown has promised...

Meanwhile, while the Foreign Secretary was insisting that the negotiations were "frozen", elsewhere Nicolas Sarkozy was announcing that, "Tony Blair and I have just agreed on what might be the framework for a simplified treaty. " Which doesn't sound very frosty...

The whole thing was like a piece of performance art: 60 long minutes of straightforward, in-your-face refusal to answer any questions. It made the famous Michael Howard Newsnight interview look like an excercise in open government. The only consolation, perhaps, is that soon all ministers will be touring the studios, having similarly difficult interviews, as they attempt to explain why the Government has broken its promise of a referendum. Now that will be fun to watch.

fancy footwork

Jonathan Freedland has an interesting piece in the New Statesman on Brown's foreign policy.

On Europe, we have had several glimpses of the shape of things to come. Brown's impatience at finance ministers' meetings, and his derailment of British membership of the euro, suggest a sceptic. He loathes the Common Agricultural Policy, a piece of protectionism that cannot be defended in an era of global free trade. With the French and the Germans now talking of resuscitating the corpse of an EU constitution, reclothing it as a treaty, a collision seems likely. Brown would not want to rouse the ire of the Eurosceptic press by driving such a treaty through parliament; but nor could he risk submitting it to a referendum that he could lose. Expect some trademark footwork to get this booted into the long

All very well - but does Brown really have the guts to crash the talks? In one sense it wouldn't be too hard. The Czechs and Poles are having constant high level President-to-President dinners, and seem to be more serious about the voting weights issue than a lot of people realise. However, without some kind of big country ally, both will probably fold in return for concessions. Blair will leave them to twist in the wind, but there is certainly an opportunity for Brown to hold up the talks... if it's not too late when he takes over.

Still, it seems more likely that Brown wil go with Plan "A" - sign up to a mini-constitution then downplay it. He isn't a eurosceptic - though he is less keen to make political sacrifices for Europe than Blair was.

Where Brown would like to set a lead, rather than just react, is on the aid and trade agenda he has made his own (his only beef with the Make Poverty History campaign is that he thinks it should be pushing governments, including his, harder), and also on climate change. He wants to outmanoeuvre the Tories on this territory not by matching David Cameron wind turbine for wind turbine, but by coming up with the kind of large-scale breakthrough that would make Cameron look like a lightweight. He speaks of plans for the reforestation of the Congo, of recasting the beleaguered World Bank as a new Environment Bank, of establishing a carbon market in London. This is the level he wants to operate on; he'll leave the organic broccoli to Cameron.

Also interesting - but how is he going to get a "real breakthrough" on trade without some kind of fight in Europe? He will be up against Sarko - who seems to have an even more aggressive stance on the CAP than Chirac.

The two things are certainly linked - the FCO will be telling Brown that he won't get anywhere on trade etc... unless he plays nice on the mini-constitution. We think that approach has been tested to destruction - but has Gordon learned that lesson?

Brownite outriders gunning for Mandelson

Is Mandelson going to keep his job under a Brown administration?

While watching the tributes to Ian Richardson on Channel 4 news on Friday I was amused to see Nick Brown - former Labour Chief Whip and close ally of his namesake Gordon - use the occasion to score some points over an old rival.

He was asked if he ever encountered any characters like Richardson's Francis Urquhart while he was a party whip. He replied that the only person who compared to Urquhart in Machiavellian terms was Peter Mandelson, but that they were different for two key reasons.

1) Mandelson was too unpopular to be a good whip and no-one listened to him. Brown smirked as he described how poor old Peter was disliked so much by his other colleagues that the Chief Whip refused to give him a seat in the whip's office - forcing him to stand and make notes "on top of a filing cabinet".

2) Urquhart was a true-blue Tory and as such "believed in something... not a charge that could be made against Peter Mandelson".

Which made it all the more interesting to read Peter Oborne's article on Saturday about David Cameron's attempts to woo Mandelson, knowing that he won't get to keep his current job past 2009 if Gordon is still in power.

PS - the News of the World reckons that Gordon Brown is thinking about postponing the next General Election until May 2009. Apparently he is keen on combining it with the European elections in order that he can campaign on a platform of trying to make Cameron and the Tories look "soft on Europe". Does this mean that Brown will veto any attempts to bring back the EU Constitution?