Sorry, minister: The Spectator is right about the EU Treaty

There are two reasons why Jim Murphy, the Europe minister, is wrong and The Spectator right about the question of a referendum on the European Union Reform Treaty (‘The Spectator is wrong to call for an EU referendum’, 22 September).

The first is that the government gave the people a solemn pledge that it would hold one before there was any question of ratifying the European Union Constitutional Treaty, and anyone who takes the trouble (and it does involve a wearisome amount of trouble) to study both documents will find that, to all intents and purposes, the content is the same. While different politicians from different countries state, for their own doubtless high-minded reasons, different views about the matter, I know of no dispassionate analyst who denies this.

Mr Murphy’s attempt to stress the significance of the piffling changes between the two documents is also, incidentally, somewhat undermined by the fact that the government signed up to, and enthusiastically endorsed, the earlier Constitutional Treaty — something he unaccountably forgets to mention.

But the second reason for a referendum is even more important, and one which would have applied whether or not the government had given the pledge it did. It is important not to get hung up over words, whether they begin with a C or even an F, as so many on both sides of the argument do, and to look at the substance.

The European Union (like its predecessor, the European Community) has always had a written constitution. This is unavoidable for any political entity of a federal nature, where there are two levels of government, and it is necessary to spell out which areas of government are the responsibility of which level. The only reason we in the UK can make do with an unwritten constitution is that ours is unitary: so far as the relationship between central and local government is concerned, Parliament at Westminster is supreme and unfettered.