The Eurosceptic campaign – already divided between two camps – seems to have got itself into another tangle over the right to use a ‘red card’ to block EU legislation. Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott has dismissed the proposal, which will allow Britain to kick start a process to block EU laws if 55 per cent of other European countries agree, as a ‘gimmick’. Speaking this morning, he said:
‘These gimmicks have been ignored by the EU before and will be ignored again as they will not be in the EU treaty’.
But it seems the idea of a ‘red card’ has not always been viewed in the same way by Matthew Elliott. A Business for Britain paper, written almost a year ago today, called for ten changes to be implemented in renegotiating our relationship with the EU. And embarrassingly, one of the measures suggested was a so-called ‘red card’. The document, entitled ‘The change we need’, said:
‘A red card would allow national parliaments to force the EU to abandon a policy, either through acting independently or by grouping together to form a blocking majority’.
Eurosceptics might argue that the red card still does not go far enough in allowing the UK parliament to ‘act independently’. They may also say that any proposal blocked by 55 per cent of countries wouldn’t need a red card anyway. But in the sense that the ‘red card’, set to be announced today, would enable Britain to initiate a ‘blocking majority’ it comes close to matching one of the key changes called for in the document which was outlining an agenda for reform. At the very least, it makes it more difficult for Eurosceptics to paint one of the key proposals in the new settlement with the EU as a gimmick.
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