This is the last day of the campaign and, according to all the polls and reports, the result is still too close to call. Nobody is venturing on a detailed prediction but it seems likely that the UKIP vote will play an important part in individual constituencies and, therefore, in the overall outcome.
It seems reasonable to recall what it is that UKIP stands for first and foremost and why: the issue that the three main parties carefully avoid, and that is in the most literal sense, who governs Britain.
The fact that not one of the three main parties' campaigns managed to catch fire in this campaign would indicate that a large part of the electorate has managed to understand that, strictly speaking, it makes no difference who is to be in Number 10 after tomorrow's vote.
This seems an appropriate moment to look at Lord Pearson's
last speech in the last Parliament on the triple subject of "code of conduct, the scrutiny reserve on EU legislation and the scrutiny of opt-in decisions on EU legislation".
There have been certain assertions that the Lisbon Treaty gives national parliaments greater powers with regards to EU legislation, which, as it happens, still cannot be rejected by those parliaments.
I can deal even more briefly with the new rules on our scrutiny of European legislation and of opt-in decisions under Title V. Put briefly, none of these manoeuvres will make any difference to the powers already acquired by Brussels under the Lisbon treaty, nor to the steady advance of the project of European integration at the expense of our national parliamentary sovereignty. They are pure window dressing, designed to fool the people into thinking that the project has somehow become more benign and democratic.
On the scrutiny reserve, I remind your Lordships that the Government admit to overriding it no fewer than 435 times in the past five years. As most EU legislation is now agreed by majority voting, the Government, who have some 9 per cent of those votes, are powerless to respect this new code even if they wanted to. The best that can be achieved under the scrutiny reserve is that, after either House merely debates the legislation in question, the reserve is automatically lifted. We do not vote
on it because we have no power over it - some safeguard, that.
Nor do I take any comfort from the eight-week delay in agreeing new measures because Ministers can simply override it, and they will. The whole concept of national Parliaments being able to stop EU legislation under the Lisbon treaty is, in any case, fraudulent, because in the end Brussels can go ahead with whatever it wants to do. I give one brief, current example. The Government say that they will not opt in to the proposed new European public prosecutor, but of course the octopus has a tentacle ready to deal with such futile posturing. It will extract British citizens for trial in another European jurisdiction by using the infamous European arrest warrant. There will always be a way around any national interest.
Whatever the UKIP vote will be tomorrow, the battle will go on for this election campaign has made it quite clear that the battle lines have been drawn up and whatever the outcome of the election will be they will not be altered.
The battle lines are now clearly drawn between the political class and the people-between those who are determined to appease the project of European integration, to its inevitable and frightening conclusion, and those of us who have decided to join the resistance. I very much regret that the Government and your Lordships' House have decided to throw in their lot with the former.
The fight is about that vitally important issue.
