BRITAIN:THE BRITISH government is to proceed with its parliamentary ratification of the Lisbon Treaty this week while warning against any threatened "two-tier Europe" in response to Ireland's No vote.
Comments yesterday by foreign secretary David Miliband also encouraged the suspicion that the Labour government might prefer to see the treaty fall altogether when he re-iterated the legal position requiring ratification by all 27 EU member states - while suggesting it was for Taoiseach Brian Cowen to decide whether he wanted to administer "the last rites" to the treaty.
However, Mr Miliband made no concession to Conservative demands for the ratification process to be halted ahead of Wednesday's scheduled third and final reading of the government's ratification bill in the House of Lords.
One-time Labour foreign secretary Lord (David) Owen called for a cross-party move to at least put the process "on ice". Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, he argued: "To simply plough ahead on a straight vote to accept or reject the EU (Amendment) Bill is to demonstrate nothing less than a contempt for the democracy on which the European Union is supposed to be founded."
Howeve, Conservative shadow foreign secretary William Hague appeared to accept that any "last stand" in the Lords was doomed to defeat because Liberal Democrat peers would back the government, despite party leader Nick Clegg's suggestion that it was now "highly unlikely" the Lisbon Treaty would ever be implemented.
Mr Hague said: "The only point in other countries continuing to ratify the treaty is to put pressure on the Irish, to bully the Irish - a kind of preparatory move to saying to the Irish: 'You're going to have to vote again on this'."
Instead, he said, Britain should treat the Irish result as "a wake up call" to "stop this centralising agenda and abandon this treaty."
Mr Clegg told the BBC Politics Show: "We should not just somehow airbrush out of history the Irish vote. I really hope that the European elites won't behave with the arrogance that a lot of people think they should."
Having helped the government to a 62-vote majority in rejecting a British referendum in the Lords earlier this month, Mr Hague told the same programme he saw little prospect of the Lib Dems now helping the Conservatives to deny the government its Bill on Wednesday.
Mr Miliband insisted, in any event, it was right for the British government to "respect the Irish decision" while also respecting its own parliamentary process. "Our decision must be for us, according to the parliamentary rules that we hold dear," he told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show.
While proceeding to ratify, Mr Miliband avowed there was no question of "bulldozing or bamboozling" Ireland or of ignoring its referendum result.
"We have got to wait for the Irish Government to decide what they're going to do next," he said, while adding: "The rules are absolutely clear, if all 27 countries do not pass the Lisbon Treaty it cannot pass into law." Asked if he thought the treaty was dead, the foreign secretary said it was for the Taoiseach to decide his next move: "We've got to listen to his analysis of what went wrong."