David Miliband - it's the Polly Conundrum

I have just been to the European Scrutiny Committee where David Miliband was talking shite to MPs.

It started badly for the boy who received a telling off from the committee chairman right at the start for only sending his 4 page letter to the Committee members an hour before kick off.

He then had to face repeated questioning from MPs over the complicated legal aspects of the Reform Treaty which he insists is not the same as the Constitutional Treaty, and this morning lied and said that that was a consensus amongst European Leaders. Which isn't the case, of course. MPs complained that the whole process was shrouded in "excessive secrecy" and complied in haste and that it marginalised the role of national parliaments, since the text was not released until parliament was in recess, and the decisions on policy will be made on Friday, after they have only been back a fortnight.

Batshit said this wasn't the case, and that this was because there had been a number of bi lateral meetings between representatives of national parliaments and the German presidency during the first 6 months of the year. He failed to mention that our Sherpa was unelected and unaccountable to the British electorate.

Amid much eye rolling and paper flicking which highlighted the amateurish nature of his performance he did try to answer some questions. Sort of. He failed to answer 'yes or no' when requested over a question about the role of the ECJ and he failed to give a straight answer 'without any flannel' when asked to by the chairman.

He had brought with him a couple of legal experts, of of which had a voice which made him sound like the love child of George from rainbow and Mr Bean. He thought he was terribly amusing. We were laughing at him, not with him.

Throughout the entire meeting, we failed to get a straight answer from the government about the blasted 'red lines'. Miliband is insisting that it's a good deal for Britain, even though if we don't sign up to JHA after 5 years we could be liable for costs, they are unsure about some wording which rather makes it sound like national parliaments are going to be obliged to further the aims of the European Union.

We also kept on going round and round in circles about the Charter of Fundamental Rights, with most of us present deciding that essentially if we sign up to this, regardless of 'red lines', it's all down to interpretation and a good lawyer could on the day make us accept all the articles in the Treaty, regardless of protocols and time limits and however much Batshit goes on about how the ECJ can only make rulings over laws which are already in our domestic legislation (but what happens if we want to roll back on some of these? Doesn't the Treaty make these the minimum? I thought we weren't supposed to blind parliaments?)we really don't know.

More importantly, people don't really care about the minutiae of it. They know it's a substantial transfer of power away from Westminster to the EU, those of us under 50 have never had the chance to have our say on the EU and those of us who did in the 1970s were lied to about what it was we were signing up to.

So shut the fuck up Gordon and David and give us a referendum. If you know we'll vote 'no' then why are you going ahead with it, knowing it's against the wishes of the people who have lent you power and who you are supposed to be the servants of.

Mr Miliband: After listening to you again today I have a question for you. Are you stupid, or a liar?