Last night on Question time I witnessed one of my (former) heroes Alex 'I make cheese' James take to the stage to defend his views in front of a mildly Conservative audience. He was, in a word, an idiot. I was hoping for him to punch his fist into Oliver Letwin's stupid face, but did he? No he just mumbled something about going to a grammar school and asked if there were any muslims in the audience. Wheres Damon Albarn when you need him?

Anyway one of the final topics was about the EU and the Lisbon Treaty that is going through the early motions in Parliament this week. The point that was the best - which came from a lib dem - was that the real referendum that the public want (but doesnt realise) is a debate about what Europe is about and whether we want to stay in it or not rather than what the Lisbon treaty actually means (in essence, not much). I have been writing my proposal over the last few weeks and for me this seems such a crucial point. The way that Europe has been handled in the UK since 1973 is quite poor. This is unsurprising considering that we had Thatcher in power for most of that time, however what is surprising is how Brown has handled it: turning up late for the summit and leaving Milliband to deal with it all. He is either very stupid, or is this what the EU has become? A political community that gets delegated down to ministers. Who knows. What is Clear is that the Lib Dem chap on Question time was bang on - the majority of the UK doesnt really understand what the EU is. And sadly hardly any of the undergraduates in the tutorials understand it either (except The Suns Up-Yours-Delores quote).

Overall I do think Cameron is a pleb and deep down really is an Ultra Tory in EU policy but I can agree with him that the UK needs a referendum or debate. It needs educating on some of the basic principles of the EU: Human rights, free movement, subsidiarity...otherwise it will only stand for Polish immigrants and nice little houses in Spain and France for BNP voters who think 'ahhh this is what Britain used to be like'.