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Leading article

Vote for honesty

Wednesday, 12th September 2007

The long quest to find a purpose for the Lib Dems is the modern equivalent to the probably apocryphal story about the child asking his mother about Lord Randolph Churchill: ‘What is that man for?’

Ministers dismiss such brazen remarks as an irrelevance, since Britain has its own bespoke ‘red lines’ which were agreed in Brussels in June this year. This may be so. But Mr Blair made identical claims for the original constitutional deal agreed on 18 June 2004. He boasted to the Commons three days later that Britain had secured all it had sought, quoting from Corriere della Sera (‘The British won the day’) and the Spanish press (‘Blair, the big winner of the Summit, achieved everything he wanted’). He had, he said, secured every ‘red line’ that he had demanded for the original treaty: for example, the protection of unanimous voting on tax, social security, foreign policy, defence and decisions affecting the British contribution to the EU budget.

So the question is: what are the additional ‘red lines’ that allegedly make the 2007 deal sufficiently different from the 2004 agreement to render the solemn promise of a referendum null and void? The Foreign Office website (www.fco.gov.uk) offers only this guidance: ‘The UK has a right to opt-in to JHA [Justice and Home Affairs], thus protecting our common law system and criminal and judicial processes. The UK has a legally-binding Protocol on the Charter [of Fundamental Rights], thus protecting our social and labour legislation. There is clarification on the role of the High Representative [of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy] including a Declaration confirming that foreign policy will remain in the hands of the Member States. There are stronger safeguards for protecting our social security system.’

And that’s it. It should be stressed that the legal status and potential impact in Britain of the Charter remain matters of vivid controversy, and that the government has always claimed that the powers of the High Representative would be strictly limited. So what, really, is new? Better to focus on the huge swaths of the original document that have survived: more than 60 national vetoes will be lost, huge structural changes to the EU enacted, and a raft of harmonising measures advanced.

It is simply dishonest — intellectually and morally — to say that the 2007 treaty is sufficiently different to its 2004 predecessor to justify the dumping of the referendum pledge. In Brighton, the Lib Dems should consider this dishonesty and their response. Sir Ming: your country needs you.

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