Next week? That could be years away!

From the BBC:

William Hague has warned Tory Eurosceptics hoping to get powers back from the EU that the opportunity for doing so could be "many years" away.

Many Tory MPs believe that the UK has an opportunity to repatriate some powers if eurozone states seek closer fiscal integration and a treaty change. But the foreign secretary told the BBC: "We are not at that point."

Funnily enough, the EU is currently trying to bully the eurozone states into 'closer fiscal integration' (via things like the ESM, and secondary to that, the EFSF, both of which are completely not allowed under the existing Treaty as it stands) and, because this requires an amendment to the actual EU treaty, the amendment itself does require the agreement of the UK parliament (which they are currently looking at).

On the one hand, it isn't up to the UK to interfere in treaties between other countries, but on the other, now would be an absolutely ideal time to ask the EU to 'repatriate some powers' to us.

So I think what Hague actually means is "The current amendment to the Treaty seems fairly minor and technical to most people, who all assume that the ESM, EFSF etc is a done deal anyway, so we can get away with not calling an in-out Referendum holding any sort of referendum whatsoever, because we only promised you one of those if there was a 'major transfer of powers'" which, to be fair, is probably true if you squint at it sideways in bad visibility.

But what the "many Tory MPs" said is absolutely true on face value, no squinting involved. They must really hate Hague by now.