Is here.

It links to Brian Barder arguing against the very idea of any UK referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, and being struck that even many Labour List readers do not agree with him (Note: Barder long sentence advisory warning)

Over on the always interesting Labour List blog, this post (reproduced there) has attracted  a sizeable volume of comments, all of them hostile, many savagely so. 

Even when you put aside those which are merely hysterical or scurrilous, there’s still a sizeable body of opinion (represented in a blog designed for “Labour minded people” to debate issues and exchange views) which is viscerally hostile to the European enterprise of which Britain is a part, which wilfully blinds itself to the likely consequences for our country and for the rest of Europe of a British referendum on the Lisbon treaty resulting in its rejection, and which has persuaded itself that if Britain alone is out of step with the rest of the EU on the procedural reforms made necessary by EU expansion, the rest of Europe will just have to come round to the British point of view — and will meekly do so. 

How adults can indulge themselves with this kind of fantasy is a rather worrying mystery, but there it is.

Mysterious indeed.

Someone once put it to me that the issue is rather simple.

Would the UK rather be Canada, or Illinois? An independent but (relatively small) next-door neighbour to a Big Power, or part of that power but with only an intermittent regional and almost non-existent international voice?

Maybe part of the problem is that people here on all parts of the political spectrum just aren’t sure, but would like the chance to talk it through and take a vote?

Is that really so mysterious? Or ‘viscerally hostile to the European enterprise’?