Glutton for punishment that I am, I watched all of the Commons European Scrutiny Committee’s cross-examination of David Miliband on Tuesday (you can share my pain by going to the committee’s website). Most of the press coverage has focused on the angry exchanges between the Foreign Secretary and the MPs, and particularly his justified fury at the invocation by the chairman, Michael Connarty, of the Munich agreement and Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. This was a deplorable allusion, and Mr Miliband had a duty as well as a right to express the strongest possible objections.
That aside, the hearings were also a fascinating – if often impenetrable – exploration of the legal ramifications of the EU Reform Treaty which Gordon Brown and his fellow heads of government will try to sign off in Lisbon. Not since Bill Clinton said that it all depends what you mean by ‘is’ has so much been said about a single word: in this case, ‘shall’, when applied to the supposedly new rights (or duties?) of national parliaments to get involved in the governance of the EU.
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