Prospective Conservative candidates know how to copy & paste

The hijacking of the Conservative party by their Eurosceptic wing has led a number of the remaining moderate pro-European Tory MEPs, including Christopher Beazley, John Purvis and Caroline Jackson, to decide to stand down at next years European elections.

By the looks of this survey on the Conservative Home website, the quality of their replacements is not high. When asked whether a prospective Conservative government should hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty even after it had been ratified by all countries and entered into force, most either agreed or decided to simply cut and paste the official guidance from Conservative Central Office.

However, a significant minority are brave enough to acknowledge that this decision would be folly.

The Tories are completely deluded if they think that pledging a post-ratification referendum would solve their divisions on Europe. The reality is that such a referendum would effectively be a vote on our membership of the EU, as no other member state would want re-open negotiations on a treaty that was in force and which had been recently agreed and ratified by all countries, and which most of them consider to have anyway been entirely tailored to Britain's desires.

As one of the Conservative commenters points out, with answers like this "it is obvious why we haven't been in power for (sic) almost 20 years"!