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Tuesday 22 May 2012

The Rebels and Government Agree: There Will Be An EU Referendum.

Monday, 24th October 2011

In principle, I agree with Fraser's admirable post previewing Monday's debate (summarised excellently by ConservativeHome here) on an EU-referendum but I suspect that wily old Blairite John Rentoul is right to argue that there was no way the government could wash its hands of the affair since, whatever it chose to do, The headlines would be about a divided Tory party, come what may. Which is reasonable enough since the Tory party is divided. Granted, the primary division is between the Get Out Now team and the Renegotiate Everything team but the point remains: this has been a blunder.

The government has mishandled this affair and been embarrassed by its own backbenchers. Nearly half the non-payroll Tory vote declined to back the Prime Minister yesterday. In part this is a sensible reflection upon the seriousness of Cameron's pledge to "renegotiate" Britain's relationship with Brussels. Then again, the Prime Minister may appreciate the limits of such an approach and how difficult it will be to renegotiate anything in ways that satisfy the party's right-wing. I thought it notable that Malcolm Rifkind made one of the more powerful speeches pleading with his colleagues to be more temperate, more reasonable, more realistic in their tactics and their strategy alike.

Nevertheless, this debate had one sigificant outcome: it makes an eventual referendum on some aspect of Britain's relationship with and role in Europe more, not less, likely. Half the Tory backbenches voted in favour of a non-binding, wholly theoretical, contradictory and, in that sense, self-defeating motion. A significant number of Laboru MPs also defied their leaders' wishes. The Lib Dems, however many of them remain, will one day remember they too favour a referendum. So too, overwhelmingly, is the press.

All of which is fine and fair enough. There's nothing wrong with having a referendum but, lord, please let it be on a specific question, not some vague general sense of an issue. Still, politically it is now hard to imagine how any government of ay stripe will be able to avoid calling a referendum on europe at some point in the future. This was the rebels' real victory tonight. As Bagehot points out William Hague and David Cameron actually agree with a large part of what the rebels had to say:

[Mr Cameron] and Mr Hague between them said there should have been referendums on previous treaties including Maastricht, Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon, with both of them directly attacking the previous Labour government for failing to hold a referendum on Lisbon. That is a much more radical statement that it may first seem. I think (just about) that a straight in-out referendum could be won in Britain. But any British vote on an individual treaty would be lost. If Britain had held a vote on Lisbon and lost it, that would have been that. It is not conceivable that Britain could have been pressured to vote a second time (as Ireland was over Lisbon) until it gave the right answer. What then? Well, if the other countries in the EU had wanted to press ahead with Lisbon, as certainly the majority did, there would have been the most astonishing, profound crisis in British relations, which could easily have led to Britain falling out of the club.

The rebels tonight will find it hard to credit, as the whips browbeat and threaten them. But this is a seriously, unprecedentedly Eurosceptic British government.

I think that's true. Not yet Josephine, but soon is not the kind of thing to enthuse the Tory backbenches but that's basically what the government position is. You can see why the backbenchers may find this frustrating and why some doubt the government will ever honour its promises. Nevertheless, there it is. This is not, even allowing for Nick Clegg, a notably euro-enthusiastic government even if it's not yet persuaded by the merits of the Better Off Out campaign.

So those calling for a referendum have the wind behind them. The question is not so much if but when and about what, specifically.

One final point: there were a number of excellent speeches - Hague, Rifkind and Graham Stuart on the government side, Kate Hoey and others on the rebel ship - and the debate was surprisingly entertaining. Too many of the 2010 intake were reading their speeches but, on the whole, the debate showed Westminster in a pretty good light. There's life in the old place yet.

Filed under: Cameron (227 more articles) , ConLib (132 more articles) , Europe (749 more articles) , Westminster (186 more articles)

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ed h

October 25th, 2011 12:24am Report this comment

Eurosceptic government - Horseshit ! Cameron and Hague have simply been caught out lying for pure political gain about calling for a referendum in the past. Both of them should be out of office.

No fancy three-choices vote bs, no 50% or all bets are off. A simple proposition: Stay in and renegotiate or Leave.

For May 1st next year.

Herbert Thornton

October 25th, 2011 1:10am Report this comment

"Not yet Josephine, but soon is not the kind of thing to enthuse the Tory backbenches but that's basically what the government position is. You can see why the backbenchers may find this frustrating and why some doubt the government will ever honour its promises."

On what basis can anybody believe that "that's what the government position is"? It is of course what Cameron and Hague may say but anybody who believes that they really mean it is naive: their records are such that any rational person has to conclude that they are lying.

Rhoda Klapp

October 25th, 2011 9:51am Report this comment

Ok, where is the list of powers to be returned? Is it a secret? Is it to be held back as a negotiating ploy? Or is it in fact true that it does not exist, and never can exist for fear of frightenening the horses? It is empty to talk of powers to be repatriated, without saying what they are. It is empty to claim to be eurosceptic with no vestige of a policy on what our relationship with the EU ought to be. All these positions are survival tactics. Get through another week, month, yearr, parliament without splitting the party. Why would anybody persist with the notions expressed in the post unless they were dissembling, trying to put one over on the public, because of their own agenda?

John Hall

October 25th, 2011 10:53am Report this comment

You do not broach the delicate subject of trust and its forfeiture. The Whips' juvenile heckling of Peter Bone's closing speech for the motion reveals all you need to know about the seriousness of intent emanating from the Government on this issue.

FF

October 25th, 2011 11:24am Report this comment

The aim of this exercise was to raise a flag, I think, rather than map out out specific proposal for our relationship with the EU.

Referendums are blunt instruments. You can only answer "yes" or "no" - not "maybe", "up to a point", "have you considered the alternatives?", which might be a more appropriate answer.

Also, you won't get a good answer unless you ask a good question. A referendum question in my view needs to satisfy these three criteria:

1. Clear Yes/No answer. The proposed referendum had three possible answers that weren't necessarily exclusive, so it fails this test.

2. Both the Yes and No options must be viable. Leaving the EU and the status quo are both viable. Trying to renegotiate terms with the EU is viable. Actually renegotiating a satisfactory outcome depends on a negotiating partner willing to play ball. In fact the EU would probably refuse to do so in this case.

3. The implications of Yes and No are well understood by the electorate. What does leaving the EU mean? A status like Russia where Britain would be outside the EU customs union and subject to tariffs? A status like Norway, which is signed up to more than half of EU directives? What's an acceptable renegotiation? What's the default option if renegotiation is unacceptable - leave or stay? The electorate would not have a clear idea of what they are signing up for.

The proposed referendum question fails on two and half out of three basic tests.

Desmond Keohane

October 25th, 2011 7:17pm Report this comment

The point about this whole exercise was to make it clear that the ELECTORATE want a REFERENDUM on our connection with European Union to establish who is,and whom we wish to be,our governing power - the Queen and Parliament or the European Union. At present the EU is in the process of high-jacking our Sovereignty and Independence, and last night's vote against the Government's foolish and ridiculous 3 line whip and- the polls make it chrystal clear that we will NOT be ruled by Brussels. If Cameron does not take that on board he is a dead duck !

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