The most important issue at the past three general elections ought to have been Britain's relations with Europe - first the single currency and later the proposed new European constitution. Instead these questions have been consistently dodged by the government promising referendums on them at some unspecified future dates.
Today it is in the interests of both Labour and the Conservatives to continue to keep Europe out of British politics in this way.
Today the mainstream of Labour instinctively is pro-European, even if it is less easy to name the concrete policies through which that instinct might express itself. What is important, though, is that Labour fears that British voters are essentially right wing - the whole New Labour project was predicated on this belief. Therefore they believe that any return of Europe to the centre of British political debate is bound to harm them.
At the same time, while the Tories remain viscerally anti-European, the more thoughtful amongst them have decided that this view has contributed to the voters' perception that the Conservative Party is old-fashioned and out of touch with the modern world.
So we have a situation where one of the major parties is pro-European, the other is anti-European and both are scared of mentioning it to the voters.
And I cannot have been the only Liberal Democrat councillor who has found himself telling someone opposed to the single currency that he should vote for us because we have promised to hold a referendum on the subject. I am not the most pro-European Lib Dem you will ever meet, so this was a way for me to dodge the question too.
Could it be that this unwillingness to talk about such an important issue is one of the cause of the current public disenchantment with parliamentary politics? That the voters don't trust the politicians because the politicians don't trust the voters?
Contrast today's situation with the 1975 referendum campaign. Then the senior pro-European politicians from all the parties took on the forces of reaction and won both the debate and the vote. And don't forget that those forces include a powerful trade union movement that was better organised than anything pro-Europeans would face today, though it would be interesting to know how the press behaved in 1975. Was it as hostile to Europe as it would be today?
From all this I conclude that it would be good for British politics for Gordon Brown to call a referendum on the new EU reform treaty.
Instinctively, I am against referendums. The British system involves representative democracy - what George Watson calls The English Ideology - and I have a lot of sympathy for Mrs Thatcher's view (I cannot find the quotation at present) that referendums have been the instrument of tyrants down the ages.
But having damaged British politics by taking Europe out of political debate, our leaders should now start to repair that damage by returning European questions to the centre of that debate through a referendum.
Jeremy Hargreaves fears that a referendum on the reform treaty would not really be about that treaty at all and turn into a general vote about the government. This is an argument I have used in the past, but I am not sure it is correct. This didn't happen in 1975 and it didn't happen in the devolution referendums either.
I wonder if this fear of calling a referendum is just another example of the fear of the people that has got our politicians into such a mess over Europe in the first place.
Today it is in the interests of both Labour and the Conservatives to continue to keep Europe out of British politics in this way.
Today the mainstream of Labour instinctively is pro-European, even if it is less easy to name the concrete policies through which that instinct might express itself. What is important, though, is that Labour fears that British voters are essentially right wing - the whole New Labour project was predicated on this belief. Therefore they believe that any return of Europe to the centre of British political debate is bound to harm them.
At the same time, while the Tories remain viscerally anti-European, the more thoughtful amongst them have decided that this view has contributed to the voters' perception that the Conservative Party is old-fashioned and out of touch with the modern world.
So we have a situation where one of the major parties is pro-European, the other is anti-European and both are scared of mentioning it to the voters.
And I cannot have been the only Liberal Democrat councillor who has found himself telling someone opposed to the single currency that he should vote for us because we have promised to hold a referendum on the subject. I am not the most pro-European Lib Dem you will ever meet, so this was a way for me to dodge the question too.
Could it be that this unwillingness to talk about such an important issue is one of the cause of the current public disenchantment with parliamentary politics? That the voters don't trust the politicians because the politicians don't trust the voters?
Contrast today's situation with the 1975 referendum campaign. Then the senior pro-European politicians from all the parties took on the forces of reaction and won both the debate and the vote. And don't forget that those forces include a powerful trade union movement that was better organised than anything pro-Europeans would face today, though it would be interesting to know how the press behaved in 1975. Was it as hostile to Europe as it would be today?
From all this I conclude that it would be good for British politics for Gordon Brown to call a referendum on the new EU reform treaty.
Instinctively, I am against referendums. The British system involves representative democracy - what George Watson calls The English Ideology - and I have a lot of sympathy for Mrs Thatcher's view (I cannot find the quotation at present) that referendums have been the instrument of tyrants down the ages.
But having damaged British politics by taking Europe out of political debate, our leaders should now start to repair that damage by returning European questions to the centre of that debate through a referendum.
Jeremy Hargreaves fears that a referendum on the reform treaty would not really be about that treaty at all and turn into a general vote about the government. This is an argument I have used in the past, but I am not sure it is correct. This didn't happen in 1975 and it didn't happen in the devolution referendums either.
I wonder if this fear of calling a referendum is just another example of the fear of the people that has got our politicians into such a mess over Europe in the first place.
5 comments:
I agree 100 percent Jonathan. And yes you are NOT "the only Liberal Democrat councillor who has found himself telling someone opposed to the single currency that he should vote for us because we have promised to hold a referendum on the subject" I've been there too!
And there's an unwillingness to talk about immigration as well. The Daily Telegraph has a series of reasoned reports on the subject today - but it's an issue that we shy away from for various reasons - do a search for the word on Lib Dem Blogs and you don't find many entries - most of the results seem to be from the Freethink Blog.
The issue of immigration isn't going to go away and isn't going to be easily managed - climate change will make sure of that. We need to stay connected to the public by being willing to discuss it. Talk about the benefits that immigration can bring but also be active on the problems that come as well...(and that's speaking as someone whose family is two-thirds born abroad....)
Jonathan
In answer to your question about the position of the press in 1975, on polling day the (already Murdoch-owned) Sun published a leader pointing out how the EEC had not diminished national characteristics at all, and telling people to vote yes. This gives some idea of how things have changed! It's also widely argued that people's attitude towards politicians was very different then - much greater deference and respect.
In the argument above think you are conflating two things. I don't see any chance at all that a referendum supposedly about the Treaty would actually be about the Treaty (reform to the composition of the commission, QMV voting weights, renaming the CFSP High Representative, etc) It might possibly be generally about Europe, and whether people wanted to be in or out of the EU. This is closer, but still not the answer to the question.
Some are arguing for a straight vote on whether the UK should remain part of the EU or not. I think there is a case for this, though I still wouldn't support it. Part of the reason for this is that I don't think any serious UK politician would support Britain actually leaving the EU, which reflects how much of a sensible option that would really be.
Such a vote could be useful to Brown, however, as it would put the Tories right on the spot, and force Cameron to show whether he is really a moderniser or not. He would not want to support a no vote in it - that really would be the end of his attempt to portray himself as modernised and moderate - but not doing so would also seriously upset the swivel-eyed tendency in his own party and to the right of it.
Regarding your distaste for referendums, the facts in Central and Eastern Europe show that most of the 30 new national constitutions were enacted by national referendums. More and/or better democracy does not mean more elections, but a more direct, substantial and differentiated involvement of citizens in political decision-making. That is why the number of national referendums in the 1990s was more than triple the number of referendums in the 1980s: of the 405 national referendums worldwide between 1990 and 2000, 248 were held in Europe and more than 10% of these concerned questions around the European integration process. Switzerland is a major exponent of rule by referendum and contrary to Thatcher’s views on this respect, no tyranny is in sight.
Of course, referendum is not a panacea but an instrument for democratic expression when legislative action does not satisfy the majority of constituents or even more when legislative action is subjected to an impasse that must be broken for the good of the country or region involved. The argument that most issues are too complicated for ordinary people and that therefore referendums should not be provided for, would mean not only the end of democracy, but also the disintegration of Europe as a consensual unit of their peoples.
However, referendums should never be used to decide major divisive questions that strongly polarize public opinion to the point of creating an aggressive rivalry among sectors or groups of the country’s or region’s population. For example, suppose a country has two main linguistic groups, with one language being spoken by 60 per cent of the population and the other by 40 per cent, and constant political tensions over the language issue. If a referendum were held to resolve the question of which should become the country's sole language, this would solve nothing, because the minority group would be unlikely to accept the majority vote in favour of the other language as a fair way of resolving the dispute.
Regarding the background, history and recent developments of the European Union and its quest for a Constitution, I recommend those interested in these issues to visit the informative pages found in http://participatorydemocracy.net, where many views on the question of referendums & plebiscites might be found in their “DOCUMENTS” section. One of their WEB pages on the E.U. issue (here: http://democraciaparticipativa.net/mambo/content/view/40/43/) is particularly interesting.
:::Gerardo E. MartÃnez-Solanas
I think the Thatcher quote was in fact THatcher quoting Attlee "Referenda are the device of despots and dictators".
Thank you, David. I should read my own column sometimes - see 11 July.
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