Blair's secret EU side deal

The EU Referendum blog yesterday had a post quoting from a Daily Telegraph article by Bruno Waterfield, linked here. Quoting from the newspaper the blog reports the article as stating: Chillingly, Waterfield adds, "Portugal wants a quick treaty finish and will hold Mr Brown to the 15-page text (16 pages, actually), backed up by as yet unpublished legal documents signed by Mr Blair and regarded as binding for his successor." I was busy yesterday and did not read the post until this morning, when I went via the link to the paper to read the Waterfield item, linked here, I only found the following: Portugal wants a quick treaty finish and will hold Mr Brown to the 15-page text, backed up by as yet unpublished legal documents signed by Mr Blair and regarded as binding for his successor. It is a great shame that the phrase 'backed up by as yet unpublished legal documents signed by Mr Blair and regarded as binding for his successor' seems to have disappeared from the online newspaper particularly as a secret side commitment is exactly what I had forecast would take place, most noticeably on 30th May, linked here, from which the following is a quote: "Anybody who has chaired a multinational committee as I did for several years will be fully aware of the difficulties and time required to achieve unanimity. A committee with executive powers can agree by unanimity to change its own internal voting arrangements so that in certain cases and over certain issues unanimity will be deemed to have been achieved if those assenting exceed a certain lower percentage figure, preferably something neatly framed running to several percentage figures precisely calculated to empower a particular block of voters. Where it is not possible to change the terms under which the committee was established, defeated minority voting members could bind themselves to in future change their votes once defeated to ensure that the original principle of unanimty has theoretically been met. Machinations such as that mentioned above are entirely feasible when there are no obligations to publicize details of the inner workings or agreements of such a committee or where there is no regulatory body overseeing the committee, all of which applies to the European Council." As I warned on this blog on 2nd June, read here, an early dissolution of parliament could have saved the situation when it had been mostly disclosed in an ignored editorial in the FT on 1st June on which I posted the same day, in a blog titled 'Strictly limited scope for an IGC' read here. What now? If 27 nation state heads wish to authorise officials to negotiate a treaty within certain strictly limited guidelines then those officials have no choice but to do exactly that. But one of the 27 is no longer national leader (nor shamefully even a member of the parliamentary chamber he has so disgracefully sold out). Although I argued long and hard on this blog for Brown to represent Britain at the 21 - 23rd June European Council, so that the negotiator could answer to Parliament - the fact that he did not, could as the Portugese seem about to realise - provide Britain with the way out. Brown has to now reject the Treaty using his parliamentary majority. That way he may be able to meet his presumed main objective of becoming an elected PM. If he either accepts the referendum calls or passes the Treaty he is in my opinion politically doomed. Thus could the country (coincidentally) be salvaged!