Contempt and lies from Caroline Flint

In an astonishing admission on Monday, Caroline Flint told MPs that she has read only parts of the Lisbon Treaty.

The gasps of shock from MPs, media and commentators are all a little fake though; no one is really that surprised. It's an unreadable treaty that should be rejected on those grounds alone. Surely any MP of any calibre would realise that if a document is too complicated to read, it's too complicated to vote for (or against) and should simply be rejected until it can be simplified?

It does beg the question though - if she hasn't read it, who in Government actually has?

Presumably some civil servants in the dog house will have been forced to trawl through it to brief her and other ministers, but its the responsibility of MPs to know what they are voting for and promoting to the public. 

To top off the insult, Flint claimed the following day that since her admission she had finished reading the Lisbon Treaty. In less than 24 hours, on a working day, she managed to read and digest most of the Lisbon Treaty? Liar.

Oddly she is willing (in her fictional account) to read the Lisbon Treaty to avoid embarrassing questions, but she wasn't willing to read it before she voted in favour of it in the Commons and told the country how good it was for us.

Libertas issued a statement on this debacle here.