A quote from Daniel Hannan, MEP, at his blog, 31 January 2008

For a few weeks, I have been blogging about the protest by a handful of MEPs [members of the European Parliament] against the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty in anticipation of formal ratification and despite the cancellation of the promised referendums. […] But even this was intolerable to the authorities. In plain violation of their own rules of procedure, they demanded — and, this morning, were disgracefully granted — the right arbitrarily to set aside the rules as they sought fit.

I made a point of order to protest. An electoral majority, I said, could not over-rule a constitution. Majority or no, the Parliament still had to follow its own rule book. To do otherwise would be to replace the rule of law with arbitrary government. I repeated the point I made in this blog last week: that the 1933 Enabling Act had had a technical majority in the Reichstag, but that it opened the door to unconstitutional rule. […]

As I sat down, the EPP {European People’s Party: the group of Christian-Democrats and British Conservatives] leader, Joseph Daul, sprang to his feet and announced that he wanted me thrown out of the group.[…] I spoke to him afterwards. I hoped, I said, that he wasn’t taking any of this personally. But I understood why he wanted to exclude me. There was, I suggested, an ideological difference between us. “Not a difference, an incompatibility”, he snapped, adding: “I don’t care if you call for a referendum in the United Kingdom. But I won’t have you doing it from the floor of the European Parliament as a member of my Group.”