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We can't have an election until it's too late

The proof is before our eyes. 

Our system needs, and our electorate demands, an early election. 

Yet we must be denied one for the sake of a treaty that three other countries have already rejected in referendums. 

How cheap our Parliament has become. 

How diminished our nation.

Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for South East England 

European Commissioners are obsessed with the need to keep David Cameron at bay until the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, says Daniel Hannan.

Lord Mandelson is destroying Labour for the sake of the EU. He is determined to prop up Gordon Brown until after the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, whatever the cost to his party. See how they operate, these Euro-zealots. They are like Richard Dawkins's selfish genes, not caring what happens to their host organisms once they have served their purpose.

This might strike you as a curious way to talk about the Business Secretary. After all, we keep reading that Mandy is a Labour man to his backbone, that the one fixed point on his whirling moral compass is dedication to the party. But his first allegiance, these days, is to Brussels. There is no other way to explain his behaviour over the past month.

No one can doubt that Mandelson kept Gordon Brown in office. When James Purnell walked out of the Cabinet on the day of the European elections, everything looked lost. Then Mandy hit the telephones, hectoring, threatening, schmoozing, cajoling. Say what you like about him, he hasn't lost his touch: he turned the Cabinet around. Brown was wedged in place, like one of those pickled Soviet leaders.

Why did he do it? You don't have to be a spin doctor to see what Gordon Brown is doing to his party's popularity. He has taken Labour to a share of the popular vote it has not registered since before universal male suffrage, when it was a tiny band of trade-union-sponsored candidates. Anyone – anyone – would make a more electable leader, even Michael Foot, if the old boy could be persuaded to come out of retirement.

True, the new PM would have to call a general election and the chances are that he would lose it. But at least Labour would avoid extirpation. By hanging on, the party is repeating the mistake of John Major's Tories in the mid-1990s, trying the patience of an angry electorate, purchasing each day now at the cost of a week in eventual Opposition.

The best course for Labour MPs would be to despatch their leader with the cold efficiency of so many abattoir workers, replace him with someone presentable, hope for a honeymoon and flatter the electorate with an early poll. Mandy, of all people, knows this perfectly well. So what the devil is he playing at? Viewed from the Westminster lobby, it seems an impenetrable mystery. From the perspective of Brussels, though, the answer is obvious. European Commissioners are obsessed with the need to keep David Cameron at bay until the Lisbon Treaty is ratified.

You see, the Conservative leader has promised a referendum on Lisbon – and, unlike the other two party leaders, he means it. He has even instructed his lawyers to draw up the Bill in advance, so that he could introduce it on his first day in office. Eurocrats are understandably determined to keep the Tory leader out until after the second Irish referendum in October. (There is a universal, if somewhat insulting, assumption in Brussels that the Irish will roll over this time.) Mandelson is their agent, their man in Westminster.

He may be a Minister of the Crown these days, but his heart is plainly in his last job. He likes to boast of his proximity to EU leaders, and recently floated the idea that Britain might join the euro. If keeping Lisbon on track means condemning his grandfather's party, he will do the necessary.

If my theory strikes you as fanciful, recall Mandelson's interview in The Daily Telegraph last week, in which he spoke of the likelihood of a new challenge to Gordon Brown in the autumn. Why, having seen the rebels off a few weeks ago, should he positively invite them to have another go after the recess? Because it won't matter by then. The Euro-constitution will be in force.

Euro-fanatical LibDems have made the same calculation. They want an early election, they say, but not quite yet: October would do nicely, thank you. Shirley Williams justified this piece of sophistry by arguing that a snap poll would inevitably be about parliamentary expenses. Well yes, Shirley, that would be rather its point. The House of Commons has been through the hubris and the nemesis, but the catharsis has been artificially stayed. No serious overhaul is possible until Parliament has a fresh mandate.

The trouble is, this doesn't fit with Brussels' plans. You see how the EU, as well as being undemocratic in its own structures, serves to vitiate democracy within its member states. British voters must be denied their general election so that Eurocrats can have their treaty.

It's an awesome phenomenon, this readiness of national politicians to place the EU's interests before their own. Think of John Major breaking his party over Maastricht. Think of Gordon Brown, who had been determined to present himself as an honest leader after years of Blairite spin, having to start by pretending that Lisbon was different from the European Constitution, the smoke billowing from his pants as he kept woodenly repeating the claim. Think of Nick Clegg, who had so wanted to make a good first impression, taking three opposed positions on the referendum in order to ensure that Lisbon went through.

Think of Bertie Ahern resigning as Ireland's Taoiseach so that the sleaze allegations levelled against him shouldn't prejudice the "Yes" campaign. Think of Belgium, which had been without a government since its election, cobbling together a ministry for a couple of weeks in order to ratify the treaty whereupon, job done, it went back to dissolving.

Herein lies what C S Lewis would have called the EU's hideous strength, its ability to make otherwise good people behave badly. The lack of democracy intrinsic in Brussels – the way it is run by unelected functionaries, the way it swats aside referendum results – has spilt over into its constituent nations. In order to make an undemocratic system work, they too must become less democratic.

The proof is before our eyes. Our system needs, and our electorate demands, an early election. Yet we must be denied one for the sake of a treaty that three other countries have already rejected in referendums. How cheap our Parliament has become. How diminished our nation.

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Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for South East England