The Preservation Society

Today David Davies Tory MP gave a very important speech which I reproduce here in full:

It gives me great pleasure and it's an honour Ladies and Gentlemen to be invited to give a speech on the merits of jam to you as the President of the Jam Preservation Society. It's a society that I've long been proud to be associated with and will continue to do so.

In truth however I don't actually like jam. It's ghastly stuff. I know little about cooking and when I'm hit with a blast of warm air which smells of caramel, mouthwatering, burnt-sugar fruitiness that reminds me of toffee apples, I want to be sick. Who on earth thought of making jam with so much sugar? What a terrible idea.

Even worse is the use of seasonal and organic produce which is locally grown. What's that about? It means that you won't find strawberry jam simmering away in the kitchen in December but have to put up with eating fig jam with rum in August and September. For God's sake.

In summary, I hate jam, I disagree fundamentally that sugar is used in the process but I'm here to emphasis that I'm proud to be a member of the Jam Society which forces people to eat the stuff.

Naturally Mr Davis didn't actually say that, but he might as well have done:

On what powers we should take back and halting the acquis communautaire: "We should seek the repatriation of a whole range of powers to create a new relationship between Britain and the EU.  We should take back all of our justice and home affairs powers.

We should take back immigration powers. We should take back control of social and employment legislation. We should give our government the final say on health and safety legislation.  And we should protect Britain from financial regulation designed to punish the UK’s success.  We should take back all of these things and more, and take them back permanently... But this of itself is not enough.

It is no good simply negotiating away the things we do not like about Europe only to face a future in which EU institutions, backed up by ever more prevalent qualified majority voting, continues to erode our national interest. We need a permanent, universal opt-out that allows us to escape the damaging effects of costly and unnecessary EU laws.

If we do not like a new law, Parliament should be able to reject it. Some will say this is impossible. I categorically disagree."

Lying

In one sense Tory MP David Davis in Telegraph is right, Cameron promising an EU referendum of any kind is going to be treated with disdain by the British people:

Mr Davis told the Andrew Marr programme on BBC1: “Nobody believes it and why should they? The British public have been promised a referendum by the three major parties, and every single one has not delivered.

But this should not be mistaken for 'a major conflict with Cameron' - far from it; it's party positioning over a period of time to prepare for a possible referendum on an impeding EU treaty (and also a manifesto 'promise' in 2015) with a view to rigging it to remain in the EU. The clue is here:

“We’ve got to somehow dramatically change our relationship with Europe – not a little bit of a power here, and a little bit of a power there; we’ve got to bring back lots of powers, we’ve got to change the constitutional relationship.” 

And acutely here:

Any referendum, he said, would put “to the people two perfectly decent options: one is this is the real negotiating strategy, this is what you’re really going to have for the next decade or so; and this is the other option, which is to leave.”

This is no more than official Tory party strategy; to remain in the EU on the basis of a false promise of renegotiation. David Davis says quite openingly "follow our line of renegotiation or there's the 'dreaded leaving option'.

Cameron is a liar 'tis true, but he's not the only one...