Conflict of Interest

On the first meeting of Parliament for Prime Minister's Question Time since mid-July, after reading the names of the 37 British servicemen killed in Afghanistan while MPs had been on their holidays (many cavorting around the world, for no purpose, and at tax-payers expense) this hugely important question was put to the Prime Minister, reproduced here, together with the reply exactly as reported in Hansard:

Ann Winterton: All Members will wish to associate themselves with the Prime Minister’s expression of sympathy for the families and friends of those who have fallen in Afghanistan since the House last met for Prime Minister’s questions.

When the Lisbon treaty comes into force, the Council of the European Union will become a formal institution of the European Union, and the United Kingdom will be a member of that institution. Will the Prime Minister confirm that he is bound by its rules, and is thus obliged to further the objectives of the European Union in preference to those of the United Kingdom?

The Prime Minister: I thank the hon. Lady for her tribute to those brave men who died in Afghanistan, and I hope that the message will go out today that all political parties—every Member of this House—want to send their sympathy and condolences to every family concerned.

We joined the European Union in the 1970s, and we hold by our obligations to the European Union, but that does not prevent us from representing the national sovereignty of this country.

Every leader of a former sovereign and democratic country represented on the Council of the European Union should be asked this question, at every opportunity, if the Lisbon Treaty ever becomes fully ratified. Every citizen of the EU must be made aware that their nationally elected leader is bound by the rules of the Council of the European Union and thus obliged to further the objectives of the European Union in preference to those of the nation state which they were elected to lead. In the case of the UK, the Prime Minister first returning from a Council of Europe meeting following ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, should be arrested on the airport runway immediately upon his return and thereafter taken straight to the Tower of London for trial for high treason.