Sponsored by
Mark Stuart: Tories have to like it and lump it over Europe, but it's not all bad for Cameron
IT'S not often that I feel any great sympathy for David Cameron, but as he rows back on his promise of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, I can't help thinking that the mess he's in isn't his fault.
After all, it was Tony Blair who first promised a referendum back in 2004, in a cynical manoeuvre to neutralise Europe as an issue at the 2005 general election.
Following the decision of the Dutch and French electorates in mid-2005 to kill the old constitutional treaty, our European allies concocted a revised treaty at Lisbon, and at this point, Blair went back on his promise of a referendum.
In my view, Blair should never have made his referendum pledge in the first place because referenda are a thoroughly
bad idea.
For a start, think back to the Maastricht Treaty, signed in 1991 and then rejected by the Danish people in a solemn referendum.
What difference did that make? None.
European leaders simply tweaked the Treaty, and asked the Danes to vote a second time until they got the outcome they wanted.
The Irish people have gone through exactly the same experience with Lisbon. Referenda are the only so-called democratic device I know where politicians insist on turning a straight "no" into a "yes".
Nor are referenda really part of our tradition of representative democracy. Shouldn't we leave it, as the great Tory, Edmund Burke, argued, to our elected MPs to exercise their independent judgment on our behalf? (Perhaps not, going on recent evidence).
Moving to a direct democracy along the lines of Switzerland, where referenda are usually held several times per year, would involve a radical overhaul in the way we do politics in this country.
At the moment, referenda are a rare, if not unknown part of our political system: seven significant ones have been held, all in the final quarter of the 20th century.
The first (and so far only) United Kingdom-wide referendum was, of course, on our membership of the European Community (then known as the EEC).
Although the outcome was decisive – producing a clear two-to-one majority – ardent Eurosceptics still argue to this day that they were cruelly deceived: that we only agreed to join a Common Market, and that the political elite kept quiet about plans for a federal Europe. So that particular referendum didn't really settle the argument.
Another fault of referenda is that they only produce a successful outcome at or near the beginning of a new Government. Tony Blair's votes on Scottish and Welsh devolution were held in the afterglow of his 1997 victory. Even a scheme as poorly conceived as the Welsh
Assembly narrowly succeeded amid the public adulation
for Blair.
Contrast that with early 1979, and the dying days of James Callaghan's Government, where both the Scottish and Welsh devolution referenda failed, the latter by a margin of four to one.
As is so often the case, those referenda were never really about the issue before the people, but were a chance for the voters to express their growing discontent with the Government of the day.
I'd have more time for Conservative calls for referenda on Europe if there had ever been any consistency from leading Tory politicians over whether referenda are worthwhile.
In March 1975, Margaret Thatcher's maiden speech as Leader of the Opposition argued against a referendum on Europe; then, as Prime Minister, she signed away massive powers with the Single European Act in 1985 – without a referendum, only to change her tune six years later when her successor, John Major, signed the Maastricht Treaty.
Poor David Cameron's options were always very limited. He could have organised a classic Euro-style fudge, emulating Harold Wilson in 1974.
Faced with a divided party on Europe, the wily fox pretended to renegotiate the terms of entry that Edward Heath had signed up to a year earlier.
Our European partners participated in what Helmut Schmidt, the then German Chancellor, later called "a face-saving, cosmetic exercise".
The problem this time around is that neither the present Chancellor, Angela Merkel, nor the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, want to unpick a treaty that has proved so troublesome to ratify already.
Cameron could have acted boldly yesterday by promising an "in-out" referendum on our membership of the European Union in an attempt to lance the boil once and for all.
This move would certainly have pleased the Tory grassroots (who are wildly Eurosceptic) as well as neutralising the electoral threat from the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).
But as we've seen, referenda rarely settle the issue at hand. And do we really think that, faced with more pressing issues on the economy, Cameron is going to waste the first year of his premiership re-igniting a tired old argument?
That left Cameron with one realistic option: to like it and lump it. It's not all bad for the Conservative leader, though: accepting Lisbon could be the "Clause IV" moment that Cameron has been waiting for, proving to non-Tory voters that, at long last, the Conservative Party is no longer obsessed with the issue of Europe.
At least that would be one positive thing to come out of this sorry mess.
Mark Stuart is a political researcher from York who has written the biographies of John Smith and Douglas Hurd.
Email to a friend
Print this page- Leeds lose Ward to Palace: Is there anyone they can afford now?
- Sheffield Wednesday leaving it late to hijack Leeds United over Ward
- As Snodgrass dithers over Leeds, Warnock throws a lifeline
- Ball is in Leeds United’s court over contract - Snodgrass
- Police turning blind eye to Asian voter fraud, says MP
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: East
