02/10/2008 (Agence Europe) - Andrew Duff (ALDE, UK) criticised the declarations made by the foreign affairs spokesman for the British Conservatives, Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, who announced on 1 October that, if the Tories returned to power in the United Kingdom, they would immediately organise a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and call for a “no” vote (EUROPE 9752). “Mr Hague is determined to defeat the Lisbon Treaty yet offers no positive alternative European strategy for the UK. What he does not say, in his nationalistic fulminations against Lisbon, is that Tory policy, if successful, will condemn us all to have to live with the Treaty of Nice, which he himself condemned at the time of its signature in 2000 when he was Tory leader”, Mr Duff states in a press release. A future Conservative government headed by David Cameron “would take Britain to the margins of European reality”, he said. “To play with Britain's European membership at this time of global insecurity is worse than irresponsible”, Mr Duff added. (H.B./transl.jl)