[captainnemo]

The reason we should be given a referendum about the new European treaty is quite simple, there was a manifesto commitment by the Government to put the matter to a referendum.

The fact that the manifesto commitment was a means to avoid making a decision at the time is typical of New Labour, never put off till tomorrow what you can defer until the the next administration.... they use a similar technique with screw-ups like the flooding, foot-and-mouth or hospital infections: suddenly these problems are due to long-term factors (essentially, blame the Tories)

And now, after 10 years biting his nails in the shadows, Gordon gets to play at Leader at long last. Some of us noted during his Chancellorship that he had a tendency to be absent when major decisions were being made. Some of us noted that in all those ten years he never admitted any mistakes, though never missed an opportunity to tell us what a great job he was doing.

Well, no more suspense, the man has the top job at last....and is rapidly demonstrating what some of us always thought, that he is manifestly not up to the job (I thought he was a crap Chancellor too as it happens). Brown lacks the charisma of his predecessor (Blair was undeniably personable) and further, for a man who has been in top level politics for so long Brown is a remarkably petty and spiteful interlocutor.

He won't consider a referendum for the same reason that he bottled calling a general election (and every other major political choice in his life), he couldn't guarantee the result and there wasn't anyone else to take the blame if he got it wrong. This is the sort of man we have running the Government for the next couple of years: he writes about courage but he doesn't display any.

The current Cabinet demonstrate the sort of man Brown is, over-stuffed with mediocre Scottish MPs and northern constituency yes-men like Jack Straw and Alan Johnson, the sort of people who have risen without trace and will leave no record of achievement. A Foreign Secretary who looks like a sixth-former (but without the intellectual maturity), a Home Secretary who might have great tits but since when did that matter? Can she explain why the prisons are full or there are no meaningful figures for illegal immigrant numbers in this country?

Regardless of whether Labour or Conservative are in power we look to our Government to demonstrate a degree of competence in the running of our institutions and the current bunch are effing things up on an epic scale. The planned surrender of a whole slew of matters to an amorphous European government is just one more un-considered act whose consequences have not been thought through.