One way or another, there’s going to be an EU referendum, and we must not just let it happen.
Pressure is mounting on David Cameron to move before 2017 and on Ed Miliband to shift from a perfectly clear position to one which is more “acceptable” to the sceptical groundswell. I’ve seen Tim Montgomerie suggesting that the spitzenkandidat system is a transfer of power to Brussels and might therefore trigger the referendum lock. Unfortunately for him, the legally enshrined vote is an in/in decision, and there’s no formal move – treaty change or other – to accept or reject.
British politics has cocked things European up for decades. Parties have taken positions and then said as little about them as possible. European elections have been fought on national policies using a terrible, impersonal voting system. Even when there have been actual treaties the argument has been more about what is being done to us by “Europe”, how “Brussels” requires referendums to be run again until they come up with the right answers. Famously, people like euro-enthusiast Ken Clarke don’t read treaties.
I know I’m generalising and exaggerating, and I know these observations don’t all apply to Liberal Democrat Voice readers, but the fact remains: we have simply failed to establish Europe as a normal level of politics. Europe is “other”, out of our control and to be sworn at. As UKIP has grown we have experienced the novelty of European elections fought on European issues, though not those the parliament that will pay their MEPs can do anything about. They are insulted but not often enough engaged with. We’ve largely forgotten how to.
Nick Clegg challenged Nigel Farage to debates, which could have been a good idea if the debating space hadn’t been left empty for so long, and if the arguments used hadn’t revolved round the tired and undemonstrated claims to those three million Euro-dependent jobs. And that jaw-dropping moment when the EU ten years from now was presented as “much the same as today”.
And now we have Juncker. The European parliament may have bounced the heads of state and government into doing something nobody really wanted to do (in which case we see that other countries have suffered their own complacent acquiescence in a process their peoples understand no better than their leaders). It doesn’t look brilliant does it?
UKIP want to get out, and the main parties (for the moment) all want reform and continued membership. The Tories are split down the middle, Labour are as timid on Europe as on many other things and the Liberal Democrats are just weak. People don’t quite believe in Cameron’s 2015-17 plans and laugh at Labour and Liberal Democrat declarations of commitment to reform and their failure to actually do anything about it.
So… I haven’t convinced myself of this yet, but it’s beginning to feel inescapable… Let’s try for a three party declaration of support for renegotiation, on a common programme and with a referendum perhaps in 2017 but not simply on the basis of achieving everything by that date or getting out. There’s a familiar private member’s bill coming up I believe.
* Ed was a Young Liberal in the late 1960s, a supporter on and off over the years and finally rejoined the party in 2010.
