Miliband -v- Hague

The Radio 4 Today programme main feature for this morning was a head to head between David Miliband and William Hague on the subject of the EU treaty referendum (or lack of one). I am normally a big fan of William Hague's performances in these set piece confontations but he came off second best today. You would expect a Tory spokesman to be very well rehearsed on the subject of Euro bashing, they've had so much practice, but Miliband was effective in making the case that this is a revising treaty and not the full constitution that was originally proposed but was rejected by the French and Dutch before the rest of us could have a vote. Shame on them and a very nice Frenchman apologised to me that they hadn't meant to vote against it. They used their referendum to have a go at Chirac and the rejection of the EU constitution was a bit of collateral damage!