Bernard Ingham: Our message to Europe must be: just stop trying to boss us about

All this has been seen and even presented as telling Europe where to put its daft ideas. The Sun entertainingly presented it as “It’s up Eurs”. And the Express was quite specific: “Britain in the EU: This must be the end.”

Unfortunately, it is not as simple as that. The British Parliament has not refused a European Union order to enfranchise our growing army of convicts. Instead, it has declined to implement a decision handed down by the European Court of Human Rights.

The Strasbourg-based ECHR is not a creature of the EU. It stems from the post-war European Convention on Human Rights and exists under the aegis of the Council of Europe, which has 47 member-states to the EU’s 27. It is not to be confused with the EU’s own Court – the European Court of Justice which sits in Luxembourg.

In fact, the EU is not even a party to the European Convention on Human Rights.

So, disappointing though it may be to you, we are not necessarily heading for a break with Brussels.

We ought, however, to be clear about where our Parliament has left us. It is a position at once as rich in possibilities for shaking up Europe as it is for a humiliating negotiated settlement that could only produce votes for some prisoners, even though they refuse to abide by the laws of this land.

No self-respecting ECHR is going to let us get away with our 140-year-old disenfranchising of prisoners. It will insist that we obey its judgments and could pile on the fines until we purge our contempt by caving in. Or, if it came to a shoot out, we could be denied access to the court and conceivably chucked out of the Council of Europe.

Given the widely perceived politically correct nonsense that emanates from Strasbourg, none of this, I imagine, makes your blood run cold. Indeed, it may be just what some would like to see.

But there are wider implications. It is one thing for our legislators to tell another Parliament to get stuffed; it is entirely another matter for legislators who expect their laws to be observed to persist in refusing to observe the decisions of a properly constituted court to which they have been a party for more than 50 years.

It would put us at odds with wider Europe and the EU, however removed it is from the ECHR, would be bound to sit up and take notice.

Our relations with other member states would be affected, if not poisoned, and by then every major party in the British Parliament would be split. The coalition would at the very least be under severe strain.

This is where issues of principle can get you.

In these circumstances, we need to be clear about our desired relationship with Europe. Parliament is entirely justified in seeking to recover its right to govern Britain. The burning question is the terms on which any recovery is achieved.

Most people are perfectly content – indeed keen – to co-operate with other European nations. We may think some of them are dodging the column in Afghanistan, but the fact is that we are allies. And our economic circumstances require us to export more rather than less goods and services to them.

What we cannot stand is the EU’s detailed interference in our way of life and its over- weening ambition to create a new nation called Europa, with Westminster reduced to a mere regional council.

Rather than withdrawal, we need a new relationship that allows us to govern ourselves in our own peculiar way within agreed limits stemming from our alliance.

Every Europhile – and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office – will say that this option is not on offer or available. It certainly would not be if they were negotiating. But it is achievable, given real determination.

What we need is an end to the provocative nonsense about taking our EU bat home and a resolve to turn the ECHR’s debilitating wetness to our advantage.

Our message to Europe should be quite simple: take heed – keep on bossing us about and trying, for example, to make us give votes to prisoners and you are heading for big trouble.

We’ve had enough. Stop provoking us. Start returning power to where it belongs – in national Parliaments.