The European Union referendum starting gun has been fired. Sometime between now and the end of 2017 we will vote on whether or not Britain should remain in the EU. It is likely it could be held next year in order to avoid it taking place while the UK holds the EU presidency and there are elections in Germany and France.
Labour will support the EU referendum bill when it comes before the House of Commons and we will make a strong case for our continued membership. Labour believes Britain will do better if we remain in the EU. We want to see reform in Europe – on benefits, transitional controls and the way the EU works. We will support 16 and 17 year-olds having a vote in the referendum and will take a position on any other amendments as they arise. I support EU nationals living in the UK also being given a vote.
Meanwhile, David Cameron cannot be trusted on Europe. He cannot tell us what he is negotiating for, he has no strategy for achieving change, he has chosen an arbitrary timeline for reform and he cannot even say whether he would vote to stay in or leave.
From the prime ministers antics at the eastern neighbourhood summit last week, we can be sure that every time the prime minister meets with an EU leader, attends an EU summit or even chooses to ‘chillax’ on the Mediterranean, it will be reported through the prism of the referendum and Britain’s relationship with the EU. Europe is going to dominate our political debate for the foreseeable future, for good and for ill.
Of course Labour will have a big role to play in the EU referendum, but it cannot be us spearheading the campaign. We need to learn a few lessons from the Scottish referendum last year. No two votes are ever the same, so it is impossible to say what has or has not worked in the past will have the same effect on this occasion. But, what I can say is I strongly believe we need to put politics to one side and fight this battle as citizens.
Therefore I propose the head of the ‘stay in’ campaign should be a public figure, not a politician. Perhaps Richard Branson who has been vocal about the need to stay in the EU, or maybe even David Beckham who has lived in three other member states thanks to our right to work anywhere in the EU hassle-free.
There are times when it has felt like the No campaign lost in Scotland – our party has been badly damaged in recent years. But I believe by fighting the EU referendum on a human level and not on a political, macro-economic level we can preserve our membership and our party. If we want to build support for the UK’s place in Europe, then we have to do it by selling the benefits of staying in and not focussing on the dangers of leaving. Unlike the independence referendum, our focus should be on ‘why’ and not ‘why not’, something we got wrong last time.
Nigel Farage will be the voice most associated with the campaign for Britain to leave the EU. Farage does not represent the vast majority of Britons. Where we need to be different is by seeking out people who are well-known but who you might not expect are pro-Europeans. It is these voices who can convince the public, not David Cameron.
I passionately believe John Hume, Nobel Peace Prize winner, was right when he said the EU is the most successful peace process that the world has ever known. How with current uncertainty will the debate be won to remain with our closest neighbours and most important trading partners?
We can see already the plethora of campaigns from British Influence to Yes to Europe that people are acting and organising. Social media is the new politics and needs to be embraced. Already rebuttals to untruths and facts versus fiction are flooding the virtual space in order that the debate can be informed.
It is great that already at grassroots level people are mobilising. The Labour party will have its own pro-European campaign to mobilise members and supporters and I am confident we can preserve our membership of the EU, as well as our party.
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Catherine Stihler is a member of the European parliament for Scotland. She tweets @C_Stihler_MEP
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“We will support 16 and 17 year-olds having a vote in the referendum”.
So you want to give a vote to children neither old enough or responsible enough to buy booze.
Meaning you have so little faith in what you’re saying that you feel the need to rig the vote.
In a fortnight you’ve gone from “nobody should have a vote on the EU” to “everyone and their children should have a vote”.
Risible.
100% right. Learn from the Scottish referendum. Make sure if we win the ‘informed’ referendum, we don’t lose the argument afterwards. We must capitalise on the growing understanding as a result of the referendum and not let the media get dominated by euromyths again. After the referendum, schools should teach the EU like they teach all civics – without some silly ‘balance’ argument saying that it may not be a good thing overall (obviously it needs reform, but so do local government and the Inland Revenue, but we don’t ‘balance’ teaching them with arguments calling for their abolition). We can’t take a referendum win for granted. Reasonable people have heard far too much disinformation about the EU – it now needs to be counter-acted. The ‘No to Europe’ campaign began ahead in the 1975 campaign, but the ‘Yes’ had the arguments. As Catherine Stihler says, a place to win this campaign could be on social media, with 30 million individual battles, and not simply a ‘one size fits all’ mass campaign.