Perfidy if you want

Richard Corbett is chuckling like the cat that stole the cream over on his blog,

Bonde embraces treaty
The leader of UKIP's political group in the European Parliament, Independence & Democracy, has moved an interesting amendment endorsing the Lisbon Treaty.Jens-Peter Bonde, perhaps the most influential Eurosceptic in the Parliament, has tabled an amendment to my report on the Lisbon Treaty in the Constitutional Affairs Committee saying "endorses the Treaty and hopes that all Member States of the Union will be in a position to achieve its ratification by 1 January 2009, by involving their peoples, through referendums, in this fundamental stage in the European intergration process."

Whether it's an amusing error or Bonde finally embracing the treaty, it is one I doubt UKIP will be supporting!

Well I cannot say I wasn't surprised by this claim so I went and looked at the Committee amendments from Mr Bonde to check, And there is is Amendment 220,

Amendment by Jens-Peter Bonde
Amendment 220
Paragraph 8
8. Endorses the Treaty and hopes that all Member States of the Union will be in a position to achieve its ratification by 1 January 2009, by involving their peoples, through referendums, in this fundamental stage in the European integration process;

And this is where the perfidy comes in. You see Amendment 219 states,

Amendment by Jens-Peter Bonde
Amendment 219
Paragraph 8
8. Rejects the Treaty and hopes that all Member States of the Union will do the same, given that it circumvents the democratically expressed rejection of the constitution in France and the Netherlands and that it should anyway have been put to referendum in all the Member States;

And this is where Mr Corbett is disingenuous at best. You see the amendment is the section highlighted in bold and italicised. So Mr Bonde's Amendment of the original text does not in fact endorse the Treaty. Indeed across Mr Bonde's amendments to the report as a whole there are seven separate demands for a referendum.
Here is Paragraph 8 as written by Corbett and Mendez de Vigo

8. Endorses the Treaty and hopes that all Member States of the Union will be in a position to achieve its ratification by 1 January 2009;

Thus it becomes clear that suggestion that Bonde endorses the treaty is false, and Corbett well knows it. That he should be dishonest about it is no surprise. Sadly he doesn't allow comments on his blog - no doubt fearful of the reaction - he could always have moderated comments, but that I guess wouldn't do as it would allow the great unwashed to impinge upon his precious time, so i have had to fillet him here.

All that being said, I would agree that the amendment in question, that is 220, is badly drafted but the clarity of 219 should stand for Mr Bonde's position without any doubts to cross his mind.