Jon Bright (London, OK): Good post from Mark Mardell on the recent report of the European Scrutiny Committee, which assesses the legal and political implications of around 1,100 EU documents a year! What they say on the other 1,099 won't matter nearly as much as what they've said about the EU reform treaty, and they've produced something intensely sceptical: for them the treaty is nearly identical to the constitution, and the value of our opt-outs is questionable. Mardell keenly picks out what's odd:
Their report on the European Reform Treaty questions, perhaps even undermines, just about all the government’s main claims for that controversial text. Heaven knows what the whips are coming to. In my days in Westminster there would have been trips to St Lucia here, a murmured word about a knighthood there, and perhaps the odd broken arm. At any rate, it’s rare for a Labour-dominated committee (nine out of 16 members) to produce a report quite so unhelpful to the government.
Did the government whips really forget about the importance of this report? Or did the big clunking fist loosen up enough to give someone else in the party a chance to say what they actually thought? Mardell has a third theory, which Anthony also mentioned to me as we stomped back from the march yesterday. Brown may have bungled the election in general, but he's still a cunning strategist, and his thinking over the weekend won't just have been about whether to call an election or not, but what the next few moves should be as well (again I am reminded that Murdoch was at Chequers). Could his fightback plan involve kicking up a ruckus at the European Council next week? Or even vetoing the thing entirely? His press conference yesterday left a bit of room for just such a manoeuvre.
