The Million Dollar Question

BBC News: Shadow business secretary Ken Clarke says the Tories will not reopen negotiations on the Lisbon Treaty if the Irish back it in a new referendum.

All sorts of questions will now be asked, all of them attempts by Conservative loyalists to try and find a loophole in Ken Clarke's words, desperately trying to justify their being patriots and yet supporting just another party that is willing to bend over backwards for Brussels.

This comes on the same day as Conservative Home gasps in shock-horror as Ken Clarke also states the obvious - the party is "not as eurosceptic as it was".

Should they be surprised? Of course not. David Cameron, via any means, has never stated what exactly the Conservatives would do should Lisbon be ratified by all member-states. Now, unless Ken Clarke has, as Bill Cash MP hopes, "reinvented unilaterally Conservative Party policy on the whole of the Lisbon Treaty and European policy", and tomorrow we'll get a firm denial from either Cameron or Hague, we appear to have finally got our answer.

But never mind. Clarke reminds us that the Conservatives, as ever, are still committed to begging for the "return of some responsibilities, particularly in employment law, to individual nation states", distractions to stop anyone asking the million dollar question: does Britain want to remain an independent nation-state, or not?