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UPDATE: On Ice
As expected, British foreign minister Jack Straw has announced that the government has postponed plans to hold a poll on the EU constitution.
Speaking at the House of Commons this afternoon, he told MPs that there was "no point" in pursuing the treaty after its rejection by Dutch and French voters.
Straw indicated, however, that a referendum could be held in future "if the circumstances were to change," a point seized upon by France's Le Monde daily, which noted that Britain was unwilling to bury the treaty definitively before this month's heads of government conference.
British opposition Conservative Party Spokesman Liam Fox went further than Straw, describing Germany's Gerhard Schröder and France's Jacques Chirac as "political dinosaurs" for insisting that the treaty's ratification continue.
Even the Tories most Euro-friendly MP, Ken Clarke, admitted that pressing on with a referendum on the dead treaty was "dotty."
