Anybody who has canvassed for Labour over the last few years will have had similar experiences. The voter used to ‘be’ Labour (sometimes, particularly in recent months, they still vote Labour) but they just feel that we’re not talking about the same things that they are. We often sound bureaucratic or shifty, when they sound passionate and engaged. When they talk about immigration, we talk about points systems and border controls, or we assume that they are racist and refuse to engage. When they talk about Europe, we talk about trade relations, or we assume that they are inveterate UKIPers and walk away. This only benefits the right, who are often more than happy to talk about these things.
If us Labour councillors are doing our job properly, we will often be the public’s main contact with the Labour party. So, we have to be willing to engage with these issues with as much passion as those from whom we are asking for support. If we don’t, the sense will only grow that Labour just doesn’t talk about the same things as everyone else.
The EU is one of the issues that (for better or worse) exercises many people, but about which Labour has remarkably little to say. We’re aware that Europe divides many of us, and even those of us who would argue for the UK to remain in the tent recognise that the EU is far from perfect. But many of us are scared of openly stating our support for EU membership. We remain silent, leaving the debate to those who would pull the UK out of the EU and fuelling the sense that Labour doesn’t talk in a normal way about normal things. Those of us who would reform the EU from within cannot be happy that this case is left almost entirely to the Lib Dems.
So now is the time to be big and bold – to show that we do care about the issues that animate the regulars at the Dog and Duck. That means being open about Europe – are we in or are we out? That is the big debate that the public want us to have, yet the political debate is stuck in the minutiae of the size of the EU budget or the specifics of individual policies. We have to let the proper debate break out, and we can’t leave it to the politicians – the country has to be invited to the party as well. That means a referendum with just one question – should the UK remain a member of the EU?
It’s a question to which party members and councillors may well give different answers. That’s fine. In fact, if we conduct the debate in a proper way, the public might even give us credit for our grown-up conversation. We survived our divisions on AV and, 1,500 council seat gains later, we look in a decent state. It would place the prime minister in a difficult bind, torn between his deeply Eurosceptic backbenchers and his own realisation that Britain’s future prosperity requires him to vote yes when most of his party are voting no. It’s no surprise that David Cameron doesn’t want a referendum – he would prefer to remain in the EU on the sly.
We can do better than that. We can take the debate to the people – yes to a referendum and (if you feel like me) yes in the referendum. That’s why I’m supporting the People’s Pledge, which is campaigning for an in-out referendum on EU membership. A number of Labour MPs, including Jon Cruddas, have signed up, although only one Lib Dem has been brave enough so far. Given the strength of Europhilia in that party, this lack of support suggests that Lib Dem MPs don’t have much confidence in their fellow citizens’ likelihood of agreeing with them.
A referendum would be good for the country, settling the issue through a popular debate and vote and forcing politicians to pull down the smoke screens and openly to reveal which side they are backing. But a referendum would also be good for Labour, showing that our concerns are the country’s concerns and that we trust the British people to hold an open debate and to decide the issue for themselves. Sign the People’s Pledge and show you care!
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Mark Rusling is a Labour and Cooperative councillor in the London borough of Waltham Forest and writes the Changing to Survive column
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There’s a huge risk here that any arguments in favour of Europe would take a back seat to concerns around immigration issues, however much we try to convince ourselves otherwise. The swing vote that would determine this referendum convince themselves they see no benefit from EU membership (mainly because that’s what their newspapers of choice are telling them) because we don’t point them out – the present government certainly doesn’t.
I’m quite happy to engage with voters on Europe and immigration on the doorstep or at stalls – the leadership of the party quite clearly is not.
The issue is not that we are scared to debate the EU, or caught up in bureaucrats’ myopia.
The issue is quite simply this: that if you have a referendum, the answer will be ‘No’-to-EU-membership’, and the government will have committed itself.
The choice is not ‘Yes-do-we-stay?’ or ‘No-do-we-leave?’, it is ‘Do-we-leave-the-EU?’or ‘Do-we-ignore-the-issue?’
Much the same could be said for the death penalty, but I don’t see many MPs rushing to have a referendum on that.
It might score temporary pecking-points by embarrassing Cameron, but it would saddle the next Labour government with a promise they simply cannot afford to put to the nation.
The truth is that no one *knows* what would happen if we left the EU. It’s not a matter of whether the EU is good or bad for us – in a world where *everybody* is guessing, the matter is simply too risky to risk. It most certainly is not a matter to be judged on the grounds of a Daily Mail article which reports that the EU plans to call the English Channel ‘the Anglo-French Pond’ or wants to rename British chocolate ‘vegelate’ … which are the kind of grounds on which many people will make their decision.
My personal feeling is that we have a representative democracy in this country, not a direct democracy – i.e. we elect MPs to take decisions for us.
So – that’s why we elected them – let *them* shoulder their responsibility and decide.
A referendum is a very lazy and deceitful way to run government policy.
“It would place the prime minister in a difficult bind, torn between his deeply Eurosceptic backbenchers and his own realisation that Britain’s future prosperity requires him to vote yes when most of his party are voting no. It’s no surprise that David Cameron doesn’t want a referendum – he would prefer to remain in the EU on the sly.”
The problem is I fear we are playing a very dangerous game here and this issue is far too important to play it for party advantage alone. Europe is in a very dangerous place at present and in the current crisis many, perhaps most, voters might well wish to make a sharp exit from the Union without fully understanding the consequences. If this ruse went awry and a referendum of poorly-informed, scared voters resulted in a small majority for the UK to leave the European Union what then? Assuming the ‘will of the people’ as the right-wing press would no doubt loudly characterise it, were followed (and how could it not be?), the consequences to the UK – economically, legally, socially and geo-politically would be incalculable, incalculably bad, probably for a generation and perhaps permanently.
This is beyond nonsense – it is potentially catastrophic. It is arguing that Labour should gamble with the UK economy for short term political gain. If it helped win an election the consequences would be so impossible to deal with that inevitably the Labour government would end up betraying the will of the public. This would make the Lib-Dem u-turn on tuition fees look trivial in comparison.
Neat in that it’s a Lib-Dem policy anyway.
Madness.
Comment by Anthony Sperryn
It seems to me that a referendum, IN or OUT, would be very unwise at the present time.
The British people have been fed a lot of eurosceptic rubbish by the media in the last few years and, I suspect, most people only have superficial familiarity with what goes on in the rest of the EU and with the character of its peoples. In consequence, the British all too easily disparage the other Europeans, with a prime example of David Cameron not even having the courtesy to meet Francois Hollande when he came to Britain before his election as President of France.
In recent years, the politicians running the EU have mostly been right wing and the idea that the EU is a trade area with “a level playing field” for trade in Europe is seriously flawed. British opt-outs and the wide divergencies in social, economic and other policies preclude the “level playing field” and have also bedevilled the issue of immigration. This needs to be sorted out as a priority.
Britain has had a detached attitude, over many years, to Europe. It has not had the influence necessary to shape the EU as it could have done, which may not in all respects have been a bad thing.
At the present time, on account of the Eurozone crisis and the resistance of the people to extreme austerity, Europe is moving away from its neoliberal attitudes, which, unfortunately, built up over the years, with enlargement of the EU. There may be a return to the original community ethos. The election of Francois Hollande is a major signal of this change.
In other words, Europe is changing. A referendum now would be like shooting at a moving target.
In fact, most of Europe is better governed (and has been for a long time) and is richer than Britain (except for the 1 per cent), thanks to the absence of the malign influence of the concentration of wealth in the City (if you don’t believe me, read the article of Peter Lampl in last Sunday’s Observer).
So it needs a few years for the changes to be bedded down and for people to be better informed as to what the real issues in a referendum would be about, before it would, actually, be reasonable to have one .
It is right that Labour should face up to this at some but only if there has been an informed debate about it before hand. Cameron’s playing politics on the Euro demonstrated quite clearly that trying to protect CURRENT British interests and serve the euroskeptics is not politically feasible. To leave, Britain actually has to effectively disengage first (this is Cameron’s policy in practice) before sending the we leave letter to the President of the Eurorpean Council
OK, we know what the result would be if we were to have a referendum on our membership of the EU. We just don’t have the political capital to turn the result into a ‘yes’. We are also divided on the issue as are the other main parties. So if we are finding it difficult communicating with the electorate on this issue then we ought to work out some clear messages. A large chunk of our trade is with the EU and we would risk losing some of that to other EU states if we disengaged. Our employment rights are partly defined by our being members of the EU that affords all of us minimum rights at work around working hours and redundancy consultation – these rights would come under attack should we leave. Indeed this is largely why the No campaigners want us to leave. There are ease of travel benefits of our being members so we can enjoy our holidays on the continent with less worry and fear of expense should we fall ill. Increasingly Britons are working on the continent. Do we really want to restrict the opportunities of are young and skilled from taking employment or studying within EU member states? There is however much that needs doing within the EU that would make it more democratic and responsive to the needs of all of us – our job is to work to change it. So people won’t necessarily warm to this message or messages but if we don’t start making the case how are they ever going to discover what the benefits of membership are.
Thanks for this Jeremy. I agree with nearly all of this. I particularly agree with your final sentence – we have never had this debate, and my view is that the best (possibly only) way for us to have the debate is to have the referendum. I’m optimistic that we could have that debate as a country, so I don’t agree that we do know what the result of the referendum would be after that debate. I tend to agree with you that we could guess the result if we had the vote today, without any of the necessary work to persuade people of the overall benefits of membership, and of the need to reform the EU.
Some people below have suggested that this is just about short-term political advantage. Not at all. I have been up front that Labour should campaign for a Yes. What is clear is: (1) at the moment, most people are either indifferent or hostile to UK membership, and that is not a good thing. And (2) if Labour don’t have a strong Yes campaign, we will never have active support for membership, and therefore the space to actively work for reform of the EU institutions. I also believe (although I recognise that not everyone agrees with this) that the only way to change (1) and have (2) is to go for a referendum. Ultimately, I see that as the best (only?) way for an engaged UK at the heart of a reformed EU. And, yes, I do think the vote could be won – but only with an engaged Labour Yes campaign.