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Eternal vigilance required This could all be a tease (there have been hundreds of similar reports about a referendum on scrapping the pound for the euro).
The EU constitution in itself may not be worse than what the British version is mutating into. If adopted our choices become a pan-European libertarian movement or a secession.
The latter may not be as easy as the Confederate attempt in 1861 from the USA (less public support in the UK, more heavily outnumbered by the rest of the EU etc). Hopefully such a secession could be more Slovenian than Croatian.
The advantage of a referendum is that it cannot be worse than letting the Prime Minister decide alone.
The disadvantage is that it will only happen once the result is known in advance to suit the government, so that when they win, it can slip through the single currency without a vote (that is what the French government did with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992).
Either way spread the word: by next weekend we could have a live campaign on our hands.
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Right now Blairy and Mandy will be down at Chequers cooking up a way to mislead the public over the “constitution referendum”. Turn it into a referendum on whether we should stay in the EU? Mmmmmm …. tricky … a lot of people would vote not …
“Back me or sack me?” Are you mad?
“Do we want to commit economic suicide by leaving the EU?” Hmm. Could fly… Or a really complicated question with sub-clauses and multiple choices to obfuscate the issue …
Here is something the Tories can do: they can insist that the question cannot be formulated by any interested party. That would mean, no one in the UK.
I suggest it be given a respected Aussie or American or Singaporean law firm and let them formulate a single sentence yes or no question. The ballots would be printed in that country and shipped to heavily guarded depots throughout the UK the night before the referendum. This keeps Blair and his thugs right out of it, which is how a referendum should be.
I suggest Australia as they have already had many well-run referendums in their country and there has never been a whisper of fudging or trick questions.
The issue of the question is perhaps I feel a little bit of a red herring. What is important it how the question is presented to the electorate.
If there is to be a referendum, them the No campaign must show that they have a clear set of proposals which the Government should take to our European partners in order to move forwards.
If that is not the case, then it will be easy for the yes camp to present the constitution as the only train in the station and we either get on or leave the EU.
I disagree. The phrasing of the question is critical and should not be left to the conmen in No 10.
Yes, of course the opposing party will need a solid plan in place, but that is already being addressed.
The question is not going to be left in the hands of No. 10 instead it will be in the hands of the electoral commission which we trust to handle our elections. We must have faith in our own democratic institutions if we are to have faith in our own democracy and not rely on the intervention of others.
“We must have faith in our own democratic institutions if we are to have faith in our own democracy and not rely on the intervention of others.”
Not very persuasive for those of us who have no faith in either our institutions or our democracy (in its present incarnation at any rate).
Well said, David!
There is no doubt in my mind that Blair will try to influence the Electoral Commission. I think if I cannot trust the premier not to tell lies to the electorate and use every means to conspire with others to deceive them, and the government is so shambolic that senior civil servants have to put their careers on the line to blow the whistle and then get suspended, there is no part of the current establishment I trust.
Like the law, the referendum should not only be fair but should be seen to be fair. With the current climate in Britain, people will not trust the results of any referendum administered by any branch of the establishment.
I think we have to outsource it and I think Australia – because of their long, successful record of holding referenda that are seen to be fair, but also the United States or Singapore, would be three excellent candidates to choose from to help us.
This is too important to the future of Britain to be left to an institution which may well be, for all we know, yet one more part of the establishment stuffed with Tony’s cronies and people looking for advancement to the House of Lords.
I presume that the ballot papers will be numbered and that the voter’s number will be marked against his/her name on the electoral register – as with general elections. Can any of us be absolutely sure that our votes will be kept secret forever?
David – that wasn’t my point (although I take yours). I fear that the question will be formulated to obfuscate the issue. We know that huge swathes of the electorate are incapable of following a written argument, or are too lazy to bother.
The question should therefore be extremely simple and not take up too many brain cells. Blair’s bandits will make it as complex as they dare, so that great swathes of people will give up or simply become confused. It should be simple: Do you wish Britain to sign up to an irrevocable constitution which will make the EU into a one-nation superstate?
Obviously, this isn’t going to happen, because Blair’s denying that this is what the text says – and says, “Trust me, I understand the intent and you don’t because [by implication] you are stupid and can’t understand complex issues [it’s not complex] and I have a hot shot legal mind [he doesn’t]. Also I have red lines.” Why are “red lines” necessary if there is no danger, Blair? Why are you negotiating bits of Britain’s freedom away? How dare you?
The campaign will be easy: is Mandelson campaigning for the “Yes” or the “No”?
As for tricky wording, that would tend to favour the commited. And very firmly commited urophiles(Link) are a tiny minority.
The best chance for Mr Blair would be to add a referendum to the European and regional elections this June: the natural forum for the urophiles(Link).
Whilst this is welcome news, we should be cautious about welcoming the government’s proposals.
An additional worry is the new emphasis upon postal, text and e-voting, all areas that are open to fraud, possibly on a large-scale basis. We shall see.
Moreover, will the electorate prove susceptible to a NuLab voting campaign in favour? Not implausible
Philip – remember the BBC Man of The Year telephone voting scam by Labour to get Toneboy in? Why don’t people remember this?
Will the public prove vulnerable to NuLab? – with its endless lies – Yes. Many people educated in state schools and already indoctrinated will continue to be vulnerable to NuLab because they depend on it for the sureties of life.
This is why the referendum has to be outsourced. I still say Australia would be choice number one because of their experience and their reputation. I would put Singapore into the number two spot because their own elections are rigourous and I have great respect for Confuscian ethics. The suggestion that they rig the wording in some way would appall them. America, number three because they are not in the Commonwealth and their own law has expanded in directions appropriate to their own country.
But constitutional lawyers are constitutional lawyers, and I would trust those folks from any of the three countries I named to, after studying all the constitutional issues, come up with a clean, lucid and not too intellectually taxing question to put to the British electorate.
What I wouldn’t trust is anyone nominated by Tony Blair or a NuLab pod.
Whilst I agree that is the substance of the constitution, although let us remember it was also the substance of the Single European Act, I think that it should be something along the lines of:
Do you wish Britain to ratify the European Consitution?
something clear and straightforward. I agree with your point about being seen to be fair, but I suspect Blair will not fiddle with the question but instead about the real nature of the question before us and what the consitution really means.
“The latter may not be as easy as the Confederate attempt in 1861 from the USA (less public support in the UK, more heavily outnumbered by the rest of the EU etc). ”
On the other hand, where’s the European Lincoln going to come from? France?
Will the EU go to war to keep Britain in the fold the way the northern states fought? Over the last few years, it seems the EU states were ready to seize upon any and every excuse not to go to war.
Still, better to not have to find out.
James Mansell – Well, if you’ve read the papers or seen the TV news this morning, you will now know that Blair does indeed intend to personally manipulate the referendum. Here’s what The Telegraph says in a leader:
“Mr Blair has already ignored the Neill Commission, which recommended that the government machine be kept out of any referendum campaign. Equally, he will doubtless frame the question as tendentiously as he can. True, the Electoral Commission has said that it would be unhappy if the referendum were blatantly slanted, but it has been mouse-like in the past when Labour has overridden its rulings. Mr Blair will also try to conflate the question with that of Britain’s continued membership of the EU, implicitly if not on the ballot paper itself.”
Having observed Blair operating on the fringes for seven years, how could you have believed otherwise?
He is not doing this because he has had a sudden realisation that the British people may wish to preserve their patrimony at all costs (as they have done for a thousand years) but – I am sure of it – because he has been warned that, if the people are not given a vote on their own future, his signature on the document may not be legal and may be reversible by future governments. This would be intolerable as by then, he expects to be sitting at the top table in Europe, Imelda by his side, no longer forced to toil in the field of human rights for pre-transexual men who wish to use the ladies’ loo to earn a Legal Aid-funded crust.
The Tories are going to have to be brilliant. I am hopeful that high intelligence will beat low cunning, but I’m not counting on it.
Worried Blair will influence the Electoral Commisssion? Have you forgotten who set it up in order to bring the political process itself under central bureaucratic control? Or the circumstances of its creation in anticipation of a diferent, superseded euro-referendum?
Guy – I didn’t know Blair set it up, but it’s irrelevant The doughty Commission has already said it would be “unhappy if the question were blatantly slanted” – so furtive, sleazy slanting would be OK. Never mind. Blair’s going to bypass them anyway.
Isn’t the whole thing a bit moot given that the only outcome of a “No” vote will be another referendum?
Disturbed as I am to type this, I agree with Verity;
I disagree. The phrasing of the question is critical and should not be left to the conmen in No 10.
My suspicion is No. 10 will, like Major did for Maastricht, try to tie the whole question up in a way that people can’t possibly say no to. That would be a dangerous gamble as it could still lose and make a bad situation worse.
There are a few cases of the E.U. saying (to a national government) “you can not spend money on X” or “you can not impose this regulation”. But mostly the E.U. is about imposing more statism.
It is not a choice of either the British government (as it is) OR the E.U. – it is the British government AND the E.U. Another layer of government.
As for the conflict of 1861-1865, what undermined the case of the States that wised to leave the union was slavery.
Yes there was some slavery in some Northern States – and yes people like Lincoln were far more concerned with getting money from trade taxes (and from internal excise taxes and creating a National Banking Act and….) than they were about slavery BUT slavery still undermined the moral case of the States that wished to leave the Union (it undermined their case in the eyes of the outside world, and was used as to drum up hostility to them in the United States itself). And these States were guilty (they refused to free the slaves).
As for the E.U. using armed force to prevent Britain leaving – well if they could not defeat Greenland (which left some years ago) are they really going to try and invade Britain?
A panEuopean libertarian movement? Exactly the sort of thing that the E.U. defeats. Say libertarians managed to get a bit of influence in a European nation that was a member of the E.U. – “Oh I am sorry, you can not get rid of that regulation, it is mandated by E.U. rules”. The existance of the E.U. does not just work against liberty in Britain it works against it in the other members also (and it must tend to work this way – that it the point of having an extra layer of govenment).
Competition between nations (either in tax rates or regulations) is exactly what the E.U. supporters are against.
I guess a lot depends on whether the British public wants to be like a Taiwan or a Japan.
Everyone, thanks for the comments.
Paul,
By pan-European, I do not mean contesting national politics. I mean the European level: that means doing what the IEA and ASI and TFA were doing in the 1970s, but on a pan-European level.
Yes it is a lot harder, but it will have to be done if we get a single constitution and its obvious conclusion, a federal layer of government.
Do you think the Mises Institute should stick to Alabama politics? Or the Cato Institute stick to Virginia?
Note that I did not say this was a good thing. For a start there are language problems.
Note also that libertarian groups can do this sort of thing a lot better than conservatives can: the emotional aspect of national borders is less of a problem.
As an Aussie I have been horrified for some time by British descent into collective madness. Emptying your pockets for Jacques Chirac, whilst sticking your arse in the air for his pleasure are as bad as it could possibly be.
Then I had a horrid notion. If Lizzie is still our monarch does that mean that we Aussies could become pseudo members of the EU. Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!
This is probably the fastest route to an Australian Republic I can imagine. Monarchists here will fall over themselves in their haste to distance themselves from the EU debacle.