Home > The Magazine > The Week

Saturday 19 July 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Clemency Burton-Hill

Clemency suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

Leading article

De quoi avez-vous peur, Gordon?

Wednesday, 17th October 2007

Tony Blair promised a referendum on the EU constitution to defeat 'Eurosceptic myths'. Is Gordon Brown afraid of such a contest?

Let us step aside for a moment from the political posturing and horse-trading at the Lisbon EU summit and go back to the beginning. On 20 April 2004, Tony Blair announced to the House of Commons that there would, after all, be a referendum on the EU Constitutional Treaty. It is important to restate the precise reasons the then Prime Minister cited for his dramatic U-turn.

Mr Blair was emphatic that his decision did not in any sense signify a recognition that the proposals represented a fundamental constitutional change. ‘The Treaty,’ he stressed, ‘does not and will not alter the fundamental nature of the relationship between member states and the European Union.’ Set aside for a moment the accuracy or inaccuracy of that claim. Officially, the Labour government decided to endorse a referendum not because it had finally acknowledged the huge constitutional shifts implicit in the text, but because Mr Blair wanted to defeat, once and for all, the supposed myths propagated by Eurosceptics.

1 | 2 | 3 Next page

The mugger's accomplice

The Spectator on the return of inflation

Diary

Joan Collins

Joan Collins reflects on a week of parties

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

The cross-party consensus on welfare reform echoes the Gingrich–Clinton revolution

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson on the coming political week

Global Warning

Theodore Dalrymple

Theodore Dalrymple delivers a global warning

Glasgow East is Brown’s dirty little secret: a hideous, costly social experiment gone wrong

Fraser Nelson

Glasgow East symbolises — as few other places in Britain can — the fact that the problem Labour faces is not just lack of leadership but lack of mission. What is to be seen in this constituency encapsulates and dramatises Labour’s abject failures to comprehend, let alone tackle, the nature of the poverty which grips our council estates.
For all the latest on the Glasgow East by-election, visit Coffee House