The Irish can go fuck themselves...

... , is the humble opinion of the European Parliament's members, according to England Expects.

Amendment 32 of the Corbett Report on the Lisbon Treaty read,

2. 1. Undertakes to respect the outcome of the referendum in Ireland.

Pretty non controversial you would have thought. After all everybody here in the Parliament reckons themselves democrats. So how can it be that the result of the vote was this...

• 129 in favour


• 499 Against


• 33 Abstentions.

And shall we have a look at the British MEPs who voted on the amendment?

• Yes
  Batten, Farage, Knapman, Nattrass, Titford, Deva



• No
  Attwooll, Davies, Duff, Hall, Ludford, Lynne, Newton Dunn, Wallis, Watson, Atkins, Beazley, Nicholson, Purvis, Cashman, Corbett, Corbey, Ford, Honeyball, Howitt, Hughes, Hutchinson , Kinnock, McAvan, , Martin David, Moraes, Morgan, Simpson, Sinner, Stihler, Titley, Willmott



• Abstain
  Ashworth, Bowis, Bradbourn, Bushill-Matthews, Callanan, Chichester, Dover, Evans Jonathan, Harbour, Jackson, Kirkhope, McMillan-Scott, Parish, Stevenson, Sturdy, Sumberg, Tannock, Van Orden, Hannan, Helmer, Wise.

So UKIP voted to respect the result of the Irish referendum. The Tories abstained (excepting the honourable exception of Nirj Deva). Labour and the Lib/Dems voted to ignore the Irish result.

So, essentially, it doesn't matter which way that cunt Twenty and his mates vote (even assuming that the regulars at Ron's are capable of signing a cross on anything other than their bar tabs), because the EP are just going to fucking ignore it anyway.

This is truly a disgrace. Don't ever listen to people like Richard Corbett lecturing people about democracy without ramming the words down his scrawny gizzard. If a Tory pontificates about how much they want to hear the voices of the people show them this voting list.

I expect nothing less from the Labour and LibDem traitors, but The Tories (and UKIPpers) who abstained should also be ashamed—especially Roger Helmer, who is the Hon. Chairman of The Freedom Association. And where were you, Hannan?

But I have special tortures reserved for the Tory MEPs who voted specifically against the Amendment: Christopher Beazley, John Purvis and "Sir" Robert Atkins (as far as I can see).

That makes another three lamp posts booked up...

UPDATE: Nosemonkey sums up the situation.

What we effectively have here is an admission that referenda will not count even if countries do hold them. An admission that the EU will simply ignore any member state that has concerns with the Lisbon Treaty, now that the elites have come to an agreement.

What we have here, in other words, is an admission that the European Parliament does not believe in democracy.

In that aspect, it is entirely an institution of the EU.

UPDATE 2: commenter Andy says that he contacted Dan Hannan about this.

I emailed Daniel Hannan to ask for clarification on his position and he says he did not abstain from this vote. He voted for it. I think it would be worth correcting this for the record.

Your humble Devil is happy to do so. But this does mean, then, that the EP voting record is incorrect. In which case, what—precisely—is the fucking point of it?