No call for a referendum
Sir: Your leading article overstates the case for a referendum in the UK (15 September). It would be interesting to know how many newspapers thought there should be a referendum on the decision to go to war with Iraq, or other far-reaching decisions that Parliament takes, such as on counter-terrorism or euthanasia. We live in a parliamentary democracy where our legislature is entrusted to take decisions on behalf of the people.
Eurosceptics routinely bemoan the loss of parliamentary sovereignty, but the calls for a referendum would ironically neuter Parliament at the time when it should be centre stage.
Furthermore, hysterical complaints about the submergence of the UK into a United States of Europe are far-fetched. In case people hadn’t noticed, despite claims about the effect of EU membership and previous treaties, the Queen is still on the throne, the Bank of England still sets our interest rates, the Treasury still sets taxes and the government can still decide to go to war.
Every European Treaty has involved shifting some areas to majority voting. The assessment the British government of the day has always had to make is the extent to which a treaty is in the UK’s interests.
Margaret Thatcher gave up the British veto to take forward the single market. John Major did the same over Maastricht. The areas moving to majority voting in the reform treaty include some measures which don’t apply to the UK, such as on the euro, some technical areas and others which are patently in the UK’s interests such as on energy liberalisation and the distribution of EU aid. We should remember, too, that giving up our veto on a policy area also means 26 other countries giving up their veto. Next time there are complaints about protectionism from the French government, for example, we may even be grateful for majority voting. There is a desperate need for some sober analysis of the reform treaty.
Mr Roland Rudd
Chairman, Business for New Europe,
London EC2
Sir: You fail to mention the most pressing reason for a referendum on the proposed EU treaty. Our political class claims the EU is no more than a free trade area because the British-led wideners vanquished Old Europe’s deepeners. But a bedrock principle of the EU, which differentiates it from a free trade area, is the free movement of peoples. Not being able to control who can reside in the UK is a fundamental abridgement of sovereignty. This is only tolerable as long as the EU does not extend much beyond Western Europe.
Given that our three mainstream political parties favour Turkish entry, a referendum on the European treaty would allow the British to vote No, not so much to the treaty but to the concept of an EU which bordered Syria, Iraq and Iran.
Yugo Kovach
Twickenham
Fairlie interesting
Sir: In your introduction to Peter Oborne’s article ‘The Establishment is dead,’ (15 September) you say that ‘the term “Establishment” was coined in The Spectator’, and you quote my late friend Henry Fairlie’s celebrated article of 23 September 1955, on ‘what I call “the Establishment” in this country’. But Fairlie had been anticipated in 1953 by A.J.P. Taylor (as he liked to point out), writing in the New Statesman on William Cobbett and ‘the governing classes, the Establishment’.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Bath
General disaster
Sir: In his review of General Jackson’s book Soldier (Books, 15 September), Andro Linklater ends with an unintended insight: ‘that he has left his mark on the army for years to come cannot be doubted’. He has. As head of the army he mangled the historic infantry regimental system, reduced the infantry by 4,000 and tolerated every New Labour assault. Linklater failed to point out that this self-styled rugged combat soldier, craggy-faced and resolute, firstly had next to no real combat experience, secondly no basic training as an infantry officer, and thirdly no knowledge of the Infantry of the Line, which he deconstructed. It cannot be doubted that Jackson left the army in worse shape than he found it.
Colonel David Hancock
Witney, Oxfordshire
Model Apostle
Sir: Philip Hensher is quite right to correct Peter Ackroyd’s bizarre suggestion that the apostles in Zoffany’s ‘Last Supper’ were modelled on Thames fishermen (Books, 8 September). Far from being Ackroyd’s beloved cockneys, the models were in fact all prominent members of 18th-century Anglo-Indian Calcutta society, suitably enough for a picture which was designed for the altarpiece of St John’s, Calcutta’s first Anglican church. Jesus himself was modelled by the ‘worthy Greek priest, Father Parthenio’, while according to Mildred Archer, the authority on British portraiture in India, the auctioneer William Tulloh ‘was far from pleased to find himself as Judas’. St John, ‘the Apostle Jesus loved’ was meanwhile modelled on W.C . Blaquière, the blond and startlingly effeminate police magistrate throughout the 1780s, a noted cross-dresser who used to leap at any opportunity to adopt female disguises. So comely was Blaquière’s appearance that Zoffany posed him with his long blond tresses tumbling over Jesus’s breast.
William Dalrymple
Mehrauli, New Delhi
Bad associations
Sir: Rod Liddle’s rugby piece (8 September) was bad-tempered, foul-mouthed and oikish. The poor fellow seems to have a monstrous chip on his shoulder. There’s probably just as much skill in rugby as football (how can one measure such a thing?); but as spectator sports the two are very different. Association Football, as it used to be called, is — let’s face it — almost always extraordinarily boring to watch for 95 per cent of the time. Rugby is gripping all the time. I do agree with him about the merits of basketball though.
Nigel Sitwell
Chichester, West Sussex
Tony’s tags
Sir: I don’t know about the legal circles in which Clarissa Dickson Wright used to move (8 September), but in the diplomatic service, when I used to attend receptions at British embassies during Tony Blair’s premiership, he was usually referred to as ‘Princess Blair’.
John Lidstone
Fleet, Hants
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