One of the arguments put about in Brussels for ignoring the results of the French and Dutch referenda is that the people – the ignorant swine – were too ill-informed to come to a reasonable decision on that document (no matter that this constitution was originally supposed to bring Brussels closer to the people).

In Sweden, politicians arguing against allowing Swedish voters to decide on the constitution for themselves have used essentially the same argument (even if they are more diplomatic about it).

Then a Swedish TV journalist had a rather good idea.

The Viking Eurosceptic blog takes up the story:

“… Swedish television aired a programme in which leading journalist Janne Josefsson went into the Riksdag and asked various MPs three quite simple questions about the Constitution. (1) How do you reach qualified majority according to the Constitution? (2) What is exclusive competence? (3) What is a citizens initiative?

“It was easy to get the MPs to argue against a referendum, and some MPs even claimed to be well-informed about the constitution, but unfortunately they had serious difficulties in answering the questions. One liberal MP became very irritated and demanded that he’d only be asked questions about views – not about facts! He also wanted to be told which page in the constitution the questions came from, so that he could look it up before answering…

“That was before lunch.Strangely however, after lunch almost every MP knew the answers! Research revealed that the parties had sent out warnings on the parliamentary e-mail that Josefsson was in the building, and they had given them the correct answers.”

Ha ha ha