With the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty almost certainly producing a 'Yes', there's now some sort of consensus building in the commentariat about the impossible position David Cameron now finds himself in. If, as is likely, the treaty is ratified before Cameron gets to Downing Street, then his hands will be tied. He can't hold a British referendum on the treaty after the fact, because it would undoubtedly be seen by other member states as a Eurosceptic wrecking move and would leave the UK isolated and without influence. No matter what anti-EU bravado pumps through Tory veins, weakening our position in Europe will not be seen as a victory. More than that, the controversy accompanying a rear-guard referendum would inevitably distract from the domestic and economic policy areas a Cameron government will want to focus on.

Or so the thinking goes. But here's the thing: the EU, for all its good points (and there are many), is profoundly, abhorrently undemocratic. The widely acknowledged democratic deficit in the EU has now, thanks to the way member states have denied their people their say on Lisbon, become something approaching a democratic crisis. MEPs are unknown (when did you last read about yours?), unreachable (unless of course you're a lobbyist who can afford to travel to Brussels or Strasbourg on a whim), and unaccountable (the MEPs expenses scandal will dwarf the Westminster one). Now, this distant parliament has strayed even further from its supposed electorate. A European president will now stride across the world stage in the name of millions of citizens who never had the chance to vote for him or her. It may make sense from an organisational viewpoint, but from a democratic one it stinks.

And here is where David Cameron can fight his rearguard action. Lisbon can't be put back in the box, but the European democratic deficit is still very much in play as an issue. The reforms of the Lisbon Treaty may have been necessary to streamline the EU, tackle inefficiencies and iron out some of the other inevitable wrinkles that gather in such a massive system, but the most important reform was left out: to make the EU more democratically accountable to its citizens. A Tory government - or a Liberal Democrat one for that matter, if they would only stop being such European lickspittles - could make the argument not that Lisbon went too far, but that it has not gone far enough. Cameron should call for democratic reforms of the EU as a matter of urgency, with the threat of a British referendum on Europe being called should the EU continue to ignore the democratic rights of their citizens.

This should allow Cameron to placate the Eurosceptics in his party, keep the UK at the heart of Europe, and yet take a firm stand against the European federalists. It's very hard to argue for a democratic deficit; the problem for Cameron, of course, is that if he calls for greater democracy, he will have to mean it.

At one of the sessions at The Convention On Modern Liberty, Helena Kennedy proposed coming up with a list of pledges that could be used at the general election to show where prospective MPs stood on civil liberties and political reform.

That initial idea is now bearing fruit with a campaign called POWER2010, chaired by Kennedy and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. The campaign is seeking ideas from the general public for reforms to the UK political system, with the five most popular becoming the POWER2010 pledge.

You have until 5th November to submit your ideas - Citizen K will certainly be doing so - so get typing, fellow citizens.

And so, conference, I can say to you today: in the next parliament, there will be no compulsory ID cards for British citizens.

Gordon Brown, Labour Party Conference 2009

As Alan Travis is already pointing out, Gordon Brown's pledge on ID cards this afternoon was, to all intents and purposes, an outright lie.

There may be no law introduced to make ID cards compulsory, but that's because it's already happening by stealth. Anyone who applies for (or renews) a passport or a driving licence will from 2011 automatically have their details submitted to the National Identity Scheme:

Brown is right to say the ID card will not be compulsory for everybody during the next parliament, but it will in effect be so for the 80% of the population who hold a passport to leave the country.

James Hall, the chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service, has told me that is incorrect. He says you can leave the country without a passport; you just won't be able to get back in again when you come home.

Alan Travis, Gordon Brown's back door to compulsory ID cards

The 'no compulsory ID cards' line received considerable applause from the floor of the conference, presumably because delegates were foolish enough to take the Prime Minister's words at face value. In fact, according to the BBC some in the hall thought that Brown had just announced that the whole ID scheme would be scrapped. I wonder what they'll do when they discover he was saying exactly the opposite.

As will not have escaped your notice, Citizen K's patchy spring break has become something of an extended summer vacation. Part of it was the pull of the sunshine, part of it was some personal gubbins, but the main reason was I really needed a break from the sheer bloody awfulness of our current political class and the relentless deterioration of parliament.

And besides, if Parliament is going to take the summer off, why shouldn't I?

A distasteful development. The BNP has won a seat in the Yorkshire and Humber European election, apparently due to the collapse in the Labour vote.

Happy now, Gordon?

UPDATE 2:10am

Nick Griffin has become an MEP. The BNP now has 2 MEPs, the same number as the Green Party. Some have blamed the system of proportional representation, but that's surely a cop out. New Labour has to take responsibility for alienating its core vote and looking the other way while support for the far-right festered, and Gordon Brown in particular has to answer for his reckless 'British jobs for British workers' gambit earlier this year.

The BNP now have a national platform, a European platform. It's a huge gain in propaganda terms. But look how much the Labour vote fell. Nick Griffin is there because of the failure of other parties.

Nick Robinson on BBC Election coverage

The Prime Minister must go. But doubtless where everyone else will see a clear need for him to quit, he will see a reason to stay. I can almost hear him now: "The appalling success of the BNP in the European elections shows that it has never been more important that we get on with the job of tackling the serious problems that the British people want us to solve. I'm getting on with the job I'm here to do."

GO NOW YOU DELUDED UNELECTED DISASTER.

UPDATE 8/6/2009 18:00

An excellent Downfall mashup from Man Widdicombe:

There is something mesmerising, and not altogether human, about Gordon Brown's grim determination to remain Prime Minister. It seems he will pay any price, tell any lie and suffer any indignity in order to hold onto power, even as that power drains away. Matthew Parris's report from Friday's bizarre post-reshuffle press conference skewers it:

It is also an act of supreme selfishness on Mr Brown's part. Wrapping himself like some wingless albatross around his administration's throat, starving his own colleagues of oxygen in his mindless determination that other careers should not live in order that his should not die, he has brought his Government and his party to the ground, broken their legs - and yet still will not release his grip. They must crawl on, shackled together, past the humiliation of Thursday's elections and onward for another year: plans jettisoned, policies stalled, Bills postponed, shelving everything bold, all in the name of mere survival. Mr Brown's survival. Never mind Labour's, never mind the future of progressive politics, never mind the ideas and spirits of capable men and women in and around his Cabinet.

Matthew Parris ~ A shell of a man, propelled by anger and pride

But it's not just Labour who stand to lose; what about the country? Worse than an ineffective, drifting government is a Prime Minister who knows his time is running out and is desperate to get back in the game with one swing. Gordon Brown shows every sign that he will seek salvation through legislation, announcing on Friday that he would push ahead with economic rescue, public service reform and (gulp) constitutional renewal.

New Labour has a well-documented tendency to rush out badly-drafted, ill-considered law in order to solve its own public relations problems. How much worse will that get now that the Prime Minister is living in Shitsville? He has already (twice!) undermined Sir Christopher Kelly's independent report on MPs' expenses by suddenly announcing his own arbitrary measures, and now he seems hell-bent on using the British constitution as the vehicle for his personal rehabilitation.

Such a thing cannot, and I think will not, be allowed to happen. We clearly need comprehensive constitutional and electoral reform, but such an undertaking is too important to be left to politicians alone. It has to be separate from government. Although the details of his proposed Council for Democratic Renewal are sketchy, I have a terrible feeling that he will use it to try and dictate reform rather than establish an open, independent and inclusive process for debating and agreeing changes to our system.

Perhaps tonight's European election results will be so bad for Labour that Gordon will not survive; but I doubt it. If the loss of every single Labour council in England didn't shift him, why would a collapse in Labour's European voteshare shame him into going?

But there's always hope. Citizen K will be watching the results with interest.

Good lord. Purnell's resigned.

This afternoon I was sure Labour would stick with Brown until the next election (and inevitable defeat), and then rebuild.

Now it looks as though the calculation is that another year of Brown will lead to a Tory landslide and years in the wilderness. A new Labour leader won't win the next election, but he or she could prevent a total rout.

This is all very interesting. It may well turn out to be the right move if it stops the Tories winning a massive majority. In Citizen K's humble opinion, big majorities are a more significant problem than who actually gets into government.

Let's see what happens...

Oops. Meant to publish this about a week ago. Citizen K is currently enjoying a short break and will return to a computer screen near you soon.

Citizen K reads with disdain but little suprise the revelation that the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) has been supplying confidential police information to energy giant E.ON to help the company neutralise opposition to its plans for new coal-fired power stations.

This is, of course, not the first time that the government has been caught colluding with E.ON. Emails leaked last year showed how BERR was prepared to let the company dictate energy policy for the UK.

That sort of garden variety corruption was bad enough. But now BERR have co-opted the police into their cosy relationship with E.ON, we are into something else entriely. As Shami Chakrabarti says:

The government is in danger of turning police constables into little more than bouncers and private security guards for big business. Police should be used to protect potential victims but also to facilitate people's right to protest.

Shami Chakrabarti

I'm now losing count of the number of police scandals that have broken in recent weeks.

The BBC are reporting that the second post mortem carried out on Ian Tomlinson has shown that he died from internal bleeding and not a heart attack, or 'natural causes' as the police were so quick to claim.

This is shocking, not simply because of the very real possibility that Mr Tomlinson was killed by a police officer, but because there are clear indications that from the very moment he died the Met were moving to spin the facts and cover up the truth.

Questions have already been raised about the speed with which the post mortem was arranged and the choice of pathologist, who has some questionable form. With the second post mortem suggesting the first might be a whitewash, are we now looking at a deliberate attempt by some within the Met, essentially a conspiracy, to pervert the course of justice and conceal a murder / manslaughter?

It's sobering to remember that the second post mortem only came about because of the amateur video footage showing the assault. Before that, there had been no real suggestion of a challenge to the police's version of events, despite the fact that many officers must have known it to be suspect. Moreover, the IPCC initially claimed that there was no CCTV footage available to the enquiry, although that proved to be untrue (and where is that, by the way? God knows there are enough cameras...)

The impression one gets is that the police, and to some extent the IPCC, were quietly and efficiently closing ranks until the video footage made it impossible for them to pretend nothing had happened.

The crisis in UK policing goes far deeper than the actions of one brutal officer.