Now TheEye would be interested to know about David Vance’s views as somebody who lives across the water, but Ken Clarke seems to think that the Republic will be successfully bullied in to voting YES on the EU Constitution second time around and that means that the Conservatives will back off on what seemed a pretty clear pledge (from both main parties and also the yellow ones) to let Great Britain and Northern Ireland make its own democratic decision.

“Interviewed by Jon Sopel on BBC1’s Politics Show, Ken Clarke MP has admitted that the Tories will not seek to reopen Lisbon if, as polls predict, the Treaty is ratified by Ireland. Up until now Conservative spokesmen, including William Hague and David Cameron, have replied with “we will not let matters rest there”. Mr Clarke suggests that those seven words mean “discussing the division of competences between member states and the European Union.”

Earlier in the interview Mr Clarke declined to say if Conservatives would enact the 10% cuts implicit in Labour’s budget for forthcoming years and also, inexplicably, refused to say if he believed in a smaller state. He defended the Conservative policy of protecting the NHS from cuts, saying demographic and other pressures explained the special status that Conservatives were giving to this area of public spending.”

Well Ken Clarke, whose head is so far up his own backside he can look through his front teeth, shouldn’t be on the Front Bench in the first place. He is a disloyal backstabbing scumbag whose only redeeming feature in the eyes on the public seems to be that he is a fat, beer-swilling wearer of cheap shoes.

Actually that technically makes three . Sorry.

He shouldn’t be in the Shadow Cabinet in the first place, he shouldn’t be making such off-base comments when ZaNuLabour are on the back foot and also if he is accurate then Cameron has serious questions to answer too.

Hat/Tip to the invaluable Tim Montgomerie over at ConservativeHome for the graphics and some of the text.