The Old Hack

The following passage is reproduced from a conference page of the Conservative Party’s website. 

See the entire article

Speaking on Tuesday morning [2 October 2007], William Hague reiterated the Conservative commitment to holding a referendum on the EU Treaty, before announcing:

"We will go further: the next Conservative Government will end the 1972 European Communities Act, so that if any future government agrees any treaty that transfers further competences from Britain to the EU a national referendum before it could be ratified would be required by law."

He attacked Labour's decision to backtrack on their promise of holding a referendum on the EU, saying "Gordon Brown has no democratic mandate to surrender the rights and powers of the people of this country.....If trust in politics is to be restored, manifesto commitments must be honoured."

For those of my readers outside of the UK and perhaps a little unfamiliar with British political players, William Hague is the Harry Potter of bygone days.
He was the sixteen-year-old, long haired speaker at the 1977 Conservative Party Conference who swept in on a broomstick and wowed the blue rinse Telegraph readers with his own magical brand of pious arrogance, winning the lifelong admiration of that other Tory grandee, also known for her pious arrogance, Margaret Thatcher.
In 1997, Harry (sorry, William) was elected leader of the Conservative party, to replace the grey and dull but determined John Major.  Hague (now bald as a badger) set a trend as the first leader of the party since Austen Chamberlain (1921-1922) not to have eventually got to lead a government and become Prime Minister.  That distinction now also belongs to his two successors, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, with David Cameron in serious contention for number four.
Cameron has done much to try to change the image of the Tory party into one which is more palatable to the discerning citizen than the lunatic ranting of Michael Howard (did anybody really forget what a creature of the night he was?) or the toe curling insincerity of ‘two brains’ David Willets.  But in the end, the DNA of the Tory will always be indelibly stamped on the annual conference.
Cameron is unelectable, just as Howard and Hague were before him because, like the Emperor’s New Clothes, nobody has told them that their xenophobic tendencies are simply no longer in touch with majority public opinion, business, the church – or even sanity!
To suppose that Britain could flourish and prosper outside of the European Union is like saying that Utah could survive without the rest of the United States. It is pious arrogance to suppose that Britain is in any way superior to its European neighbours.
As a footnote for those not familiar with Britain’s politics, the Labour Party did not make a manifesto commitment to any referendum on the European Union save one on the proposed European Constitution, which was scuppered by France and others long before any such referendum could even have been planned.

The photograph is reproduced from Time, who featured it as a photo of the week for June 2-8 2001