Considering the Commons debate
Most of the Conservative contributions to the debate on the Lisbon Treaty in the House of Commons have been surrealistic. A set of reforms that all 27 governments of EU countries consider to be necessary, are debated as if it was a collective suicide pact by those same governments, all bent on giving away all their powers to the European Commission.
Changes that actually respond to criticisms of the EU are opposed by Europhobes on the ground that any change somehow weakens member states. Changes that increase accountability are ignored if they increase the powers of the European Parliament. Changes which make the EU more efficient are criticised on the ground that a more efficient EU is a threat.
The sheer scale of mythmaking by the anti-EU brigade is breathtaking. They have already told us that the treaty will see Britain lose its seat on the UN Security Council, that armed French police will roam our streets, and that the Queen will disappear from our passports.
In the European Parliament, Tory and UKIP MEPs have called for the Parliament to demand referenda on the treaty - quite hypocritically, because they would be the first to object if the EU actually had the power to tell sovereign member states how they should go about their internal procedures for ratifying international treaties!
But despite all this froth and nonsense, their dreams of igniting public opinion to rise up against the treaty or to demand that ratification be settled by a referendum instead of by the usual parliamentary route, has signally failed. Neither I nor my Westminster colleagues have had a massive postbag on this. Few families found it to be the topic of conversation over their Christmas dinners and I doubt too many Valentines Day meals were ruined by arguments about it. The various petitions have failed to garner anything like the number of signatures they expected (and far fewer than those at the time of the Maastricht Treaty), despite the massive newspaper campaigns for them.
It is, of course, too soon to claim victory for the ratification of the Reform Treaty. But the House of Common's decision to organise its debates around daily themes exploring all the policies that warrant a Europe-wide approach, and showing how the new treaty enhances our chances of dealing with such issues effectively, is paying dividends. It lends itself to a more rational and even pedagogic debate - at least when the obsessive Eurosceptics let more dispassionate speakers get a word in edgeways! Who knows, it might even carry through after ratification and encourage a more constructive debate on Europe in Britain for many years to come.