I would never intend to depart from the path of virtue, Mr Speaker.
Mrs Thatcher said that the 1975 referendum had been introduced as
“a tactical device to get over a split in their own party.”—[Official Report, 11 March 1975; Vol. 888, c. 306.]
Those are the words she used to describe the policy put forward by the then Labour Government, and I believe that they are completely appropriate to describe the policy now being put forward by the split part of this split Government—the Conservative part of the coalition.