Ed Miliband is wrong: it’s time for a referendum on Europe. While we’re at it, I’ve never been consulted about the abandonment of the gold standard, so let’s throw that one in there, too. Ed Balls is a controversial figure: let’s have a referendum on whether or he should be chancellor of the exchequer. In fact, to hell with personalities, let’s just have a referendum in 2016 about the size of the stimulus.
Nobody really wants a referendum on the European Union. The Eurosceptics don’t want a referendum; they want to leave, and that is unlikely to happen. The Europhiles don’t want a referendum; they want UKIP to pipe down, and that is not going to happen either. Ed Miliband doesn’t want a referendum, either, so, quite sensibly and rightly, he’s not calling for one.
There are many arguments for an in-out referendum, and all of them are silly. There is the ‘final settlement’: that a referendum on the European Union would end the debate. This is a similar delusion to the one that underpins the Govian history syllabus, which imposes ‘final settlements’ because you’ve got to have two dates on the exam paper. But the nature of life is that a settlement is something you have until someone else disagrees, which usually takes no longer than five minutes. Elizabeth I thought that she had reached a ‘final settlement’ in the relationship between the government and the individual, in 1559. There are many odd views about the relationship between the state and the self today, the vast majority of them in the Tory party, but you would have to travel pretty far and talk to some very strange people to find anyone who still thought that the Tudors had it right.
Then there is the tactical argument. Dan Hodges writes that if Labour called for a referendum before 2015, it would accelerate the Conservative meltdown and put Ed Miliband on the brink of Downing Street, while Owen Jones thinks that a European referendum would allow the next election to be fought on austerity, not the EU. Which ignores the fact that, if the next election is one about ‘growth versus austerity’, then Labour will lose. If the Conservatives spend the next two years talking about Europe, that will be two years they won’t have spent talking about welfare, tax and spend, or immigration. We’ve sufficiently imbibed the right’s propaganda that we think that 1979 was a foregone conclusion, but if Harold Wilson had gone to the polls after the 1975 referendum, Labour would probably have won a proper majority, and if James Callaghan had done so two years later, ‘Thatcherism’ would never have happened. The 1975 referendum might not have healed Labour’s Euro-wounds, but it did patch them up long enough for the party to look briefly battle-ready. Why do we want a battle-ready Conservative party?
But the biggest argument against it all is that it simply isn’t how governments should behave. It is perfectly possible to imagine a leftwing government that decided that EU membership was a bad thing. But isn’t possible to do is imagine a plausible and successful leftwing government that might leave the EU, but wasn’t sure one way or the other. The only type of government that does that is one that has ceased to really be about government at all, but instead kicks the can down the road in the hope that something might turn up. You know, like this one. Ed Miliband aspires to something better. He should stick to his guns.
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Stephen Bush writes a weekly column for Progress, the Tuesday review, and tweets @stephenkb
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Respectfully, the gold standard, existence of Ed Balls and whether or not to have a stimulus, have nothing to do with sovereignty. If we want a different monetary system, don’t want Ed Balls to be Chancellor or take an alternative economic path, we can elect a Government to do that. But we can’t elect a European Commission. We have a smaller percentage of MEPs than we ever had before, and our elected national Government has far fewer vetos than what we signed up for, so our votes have limited value and we are at the behest of other countries’ decisions.
The reason why we need a referendum is because in 1975 the people voted for entry into the EEC on the specific promise that the project would not be a political union, and would not see any significant loss of ‘essential sovereignty’ (as the White Paper of 1971 said). That is not what we got. Even Roy Hattersley has said that Ministers at the time ‘avoided telling the truth’ to the public about what was going to happen to sovereignty. The EEC is now the EU, we have a VP of the Commission wanting to scrap all vetos and a President of the European Parliament who wants secret voting so that voters can’t see how MEPs want to spend taxpayers money – it is not ideological to say that the people should decide who makes their decisions, it is a basis of democracy. It is, however, ideological, to say that the people should not decide, and that is not an ideology that appears to sit well with the public, according to opinion polls at least.
The gold standard, Ed Balls, etc are just examples of things that you could have a referendum about but shouldn’t – The example I’d have given myself is that of Elected Police Commissioners – that were imposed without any referral to the public – and clearly have little mandate to exist given the pitiful turnout in the elections for them.
Whilst I’m opposed to the Police Commissioners, it was a policy that was in the Tory manifesto at the last election, so it was referred to the public in 2010.
No, we do not need some gimmick of a Referendum
Bill, to be published whenever you like, but to be introduced only if David
Cameron won the 2015 General Election, which he is not going to do. It has
nothing to do with the decamping to UKIP of half the Shire Tory vote at local
elections, a very small percentage of the eligible or even General Electorate
at large, that we need legislation with five, or possibly six, simple clauses.
First, the restoration of the supremacy of
British over EU law, and its use to repatriate agricultural policy and to
reclaim our historic fishing rights in accordance with international law: 200
miles, or to the median line. Secondly, the requirement that, in order to have
any effect in the United Kingdom, all EU law pass through both Houses of
Parliament as if it had originated in one or other of them.
Thirdly, the requirement that British Ministers
adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of
Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard.
Fourthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of any ruling of the
European Court of Justice or of the European Court of Human Rights unless
confirmed by a resolution of the House of Commons, the High Court of
Parliament.
Fifthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom
of anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those
MEPs certified as politically acceptable by one or more seat-taking members of
the House of Commons. Thus, we would no longer subject to the legislative will
of Stalinists and Trotskyists, neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, members of Eastern
Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura, people who believe the Provisional
Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, or Dutch
ultra-Calvinists who will not have women candidates.
And sixthly, if we must, the provision for a
referendum on the question, “Do you wish the United Kingdom to remain a member
of the European Union?” The first five would come into effect at the same time
as this provision, and would not be conditional on that referendum’s outcome.
But there is really no need for any of that, and a referendum would certainly
result in a Eurofederalist victory after a month of the BBC on the subject.
The appropriate person to move this is the Leader
of the Labour Party, with a Labour three-line whip in favour of it and the
public warning that the Whip would be withdrawn from any remaining Blairite
ultra who failed to comply. That ought not to be a problem: of the three
members whom Labour MPs have just elected to the party’s National Executive
Committee, two are Dennis Skinner and Dame Margaret Beckett; the third, Steve
Rotheram, is far from a federalist; and nor was the only other nominated
candidate, Yasmin Qureshi. One third of Labour MPs voted to be chaired by John
Cryer. Every Labour MP without exception has voted for a real-terms reduction
in the British contribution to the EU Budget, joined by fewer Conservative
rebels than there are Liberal Democrat MPs.
The Liberal Democrats set great store by
decentralisation, transparency and democracy, and they represent many areas
badly affected by the Common Fisheries Policy. The Liberals were staunch free
traders who were as opposed the Soviet Bloc as they were to Far Right regimes
in Latin America and Southern Africa, while the SDP’s reasons for secession
from Labour included both calls for protectionism and the rise of
antidemocratic extremism. (Both the Liberal Party and, on a much smaller scale,
the SDP still exist, and both are now highly critical of the EU.)
The SDLP takes the Labour Whip, the Alliance
Party is allied to the Lib Dems, the Greens are staunchly anti-EU, so is the
DUP, and the one other Unionist is close to Labour. The SNP and Plaid Cymru can
hardly believe in independence for Scotland, greater autonomy for Wales, yet
vote against the return to Westminster of the powers that they wish to transfer
thence to Edinburgh or Cardiff; the SNP also has the fishing issue to consider.
Even any remaining Conservatives who wanted to certify the European People’s
Party as politically acceptable might be brought on board.
Leaving those fabled creatures, backbench Tory
Eurosceptics. It is high time that their bluff was called. This is how to do
it. It would also kill off UKIP overnight. But that would be a fringe of a
fringe benefit.
I like the EU though.
Why?
European immigration totally without limit may well be desirable for some…though they probably have a job, a house and aren’t waiting for an operation. But the majority asking for a referendum have clearly perceived that leaving the EU is the only way we can control the borders of this desperately overcrowded little island.
It’s that, rather than EU hatred per se.
It baffles me why people get so worked up about the EU. Seems to me that the only people who want a referendum are people who want out, (and as Stephen Bush says – they’d rather just get out without the referendum). It seems obvious to me that opinion polling now will clearly point to a majority for “out”- because the “in” lobby don’t really make much of a fuss about it. Come a referendum though, there’d be a clear majority in favour of staying in. I’d stake my life on it.
I am attracted to David Lindsay’s arguments.
I am a staunch pro-European – I would even be open to persuasion on the issue of a federal Europe without borders, if it was properly set up.
I do however have serious concerns about the current EU, some of which are fundamental. Without going into long lists, the current set up has monetarism embedded into its DNA, mishandles completely (and with painfully disastrous implications – see the current situation in Greece for example) third-country immigration, it mishandles also disastrously the core-periphery economic issues (see the current crisis in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Ireland) and I can go on and on. In parallel I see the EU parliament becoming an irrelevancy, with MEPs posturing but having no say whatsoever on anything that matters, or the armies of lobbyists, without whom no one seems capable of influencing anything EU related, or the long-standing corrupt practices that its auditors do not address and so and on.
I don’t think that any suggestion that the EU as it stands is worth keeping, stands up to any serious analysis. Some people may believe that it is possible to reform it and others may feel that it has to be closed down and rebuilt from scratch. I am not sure.
It is in this context that I agree with David Lindsay’s first point. It is highly likely that an “in-out” referendum at this stage, would end up in an endorsement of staying in (despite the concerns of probably the majority of the population) and that would be used to consolidate the current situation in the EU, setting back for years any prospects of genuine reform.
On the other hand, Labour going into the next elections with a manifesto commitment along the lines of the 5 clauses listed by Mr Lindsay (or something very similar) with the rider that if they prove unacceptable to the EU, that would lead to an “in-out” referendum, is more likely to facilitate either reform or “close down and rebuild” solutions.
The reason Miliband and the writer don’t want a referendum is that there is a high probability they would lose – a political calculation, simple as that!
This is at the heart of all debates about having referenda or not – wished people would be honest.