"What A Pathetic Legislature We Are"

Chris Bryant Labour MP tweets the following:

A sentiment that applies on so many levels.

It's also worth noting that Mr Bryant has voted "very strongly" for more EU integration.

Yes In A Way It's Our Fault?

One of my favourite Paul Merton lines on the quiz show Have I Got News For You was during the famous episode when host Angus Deayton was getting a thoroughly deserved kicking over tabloid exploits concerning his private life the previous Sunday.

Deayton started complaining about the treatment he was getting from the two captains which prompted Merton to quip sarcastically:

"yes in a way it's our fault isn't it?"

And it's with this in mind I read Chris Bryant's article in the Independent on Sunday, desperately trying to blame eurosceptics for the Euro shambles:

Can't you just hear the eurosceptics cackling? They've been salivating away like Pavlov's dogs at every twist of the eurozone's recent travails. They've even formed a new group in Parliament where they are busy practising framing the words "I told you so" like debutantes learning to pout, while they hope against hope that they are witnessing the twitching corpse of the European Union.

And:

Eurosceptics howled down the idea of enforced EU audits, of course. If France and Germany had abided by the Stability and Growth Pact and if the European Commission or the Council of Ministers had been given powers to intervene when the pact was being flouted, then Europe might have avoided the shared misery and uncertainty of today. But oh no, proud national autonomy meant that we campaigned for the weakest possible set of rules.

Yes, because in a way it's our fault isn't it?

Constitutional Issues?

Ah bless, Labour MP Chris Bryant is worried about "constitutional issues", in a speech this afternoon about the phone hacking scandal, he says (my emphasis):

It pains me to say this but I think the honest truth is a lot of lies have been told to a lot of people. When police officers tell lies, or at least half-truths to ministers of the Crown and then Parliament ends up being misled, I think that is a major constitutional issue for us to face.

So no prizes for guessing on how he votes regarding the EU (click to enlarge):

And Mr Bryant has never been guilty of half truths himself, oh no:

Quite extraordinarily, the Tories have even flirted with the idea of trying to opt-out of the European arrest warrant scheme, which has been used to fast-track the extraditions of over 350 fugitives from British justice since it took effect in 2004. The average extradition time has fallen from 18 months to 50 days. These are not any old criminals, either. These are people wanted for terrorism, murder and child sex abuse

The same warrant that did this, and nor did he tell half truths here during a debate on the European Union bill (my emphasis):

Chris Bryant: Referendums in different countries operate in different ways. I think that I have heard the Minister say on a couple of occasions both here and elsewhere that there was never a referendum that supported the Lisbon treaty. That is completely untrue, as the Spaniards were the first to hold a referendum and it had an 83% or 84% yes vote, so he is wrong about that.

Spain's referendum was on the EU constitution not the Lisbon Treaty.