In 1973 the Conservatives were committed to Europe but Labour was deeply split, with half the party Eurosceptic - the exact reverse of the 2013 situation. Harold Wilson couldn't get his party to agree on a policy one way or the other, in or out. So he resorted to an expedient which all sides could swallow; he undertook to renegotiate the terms of UK's accession and then hold a referendum. David Cameron is faced with a similar situation - he cannot command a majority in parliament one way or the other - so he has resorted to exactly the same desperate expedient. He's promised a renegotiation (which cannot achieve much) followed by a referendum - kicks the can down the road, papers over the cracks in the party, avoids no-confidence, shucks off responsibility. It worked for Wilson and got him out of a hole, but will the same strategy work again for Cameron?
I'm too young to have been alive then, but were the media and general public as hugely Eurosceptic as they are now? It's poor leadership from Cameron in any case. If he was a leader he'd have sacked Gove and Hammond for their blatant manoeuvrings for the leadership (post the next election) at the weekend.
The proper way to decide issues in the British system is and has always been to vote in the Houses of Parliament, and the people have their say in general elections. When those on one side of an issue are in a minority but will not let it drop, or when a leader cannot get his own party or his own government to back him politically, the fall-back position is this expedient of promising a referendum. In 1973-75 more than two-thirds of the electorate were in favour of Europe, obviously, but the political problem lay inside the Labour party at that time. Public opinion has fluctuated one way and the other down the years, on Europe as on most issues. There has always been a background of interference from a small number of hyper-rich newspaper proprietors, whose self-interested reasons for opposing Europe are not at all obscure. In the British system, a government does not require the endorsement of a referendum to pass or repeal any law, ratify any treaty, or change any aspect of the constitution - unlike some countries e.g. Ireland, Switzerland. Nobody has proposed changing that fundamental principle. So whenever a referendum is mooted here, it is always a political contrivance of some kind. And the electorate tend to vote in referenda not on the issue at hand but rather as a popularity contest for the government of the day.
Indeed, Maggie and Blair had substantial majorities = strong governments. Wilson, Callaghan and Major had small majorities = fairly weak governments. Cameron has no majority at all = very weak government. That's what the people voted for, that's what they've got!
What I find interesting about the idea of a referendum is that the people will vote, but on what basis? In order to opt for something, you need to know what you are talking about and that means education. As regards Europe, I wonder how many people (apart from Pete1950) know the answer to the following questions (I hasten to say that I don't)?: What is the budget of the EU? How much does Britain contribute? How much do we get back? For what? What exactly is the CAP? How does it work? How is the money split up between the different countries? What are the figures? How much British legislation is decided in Brussels? Why and what could be done about it? Why would we want to do something about it? What is the European Court of Human Rights? What does it decide? Is it a part of the EU? How exactly does EU policy work? What is the role of the Commission and the Parliament? How many EMPs are there? How many does Britain have? And no doubt there are umpteen other questions. We hear about Cameron renegotiating but what is he renegotiating? What are the bones of contention? To think that there will be a vote on in or out when people can't even answer the questions above (unless I am just woefully ill-informed - true - and everyone else is an expert) is ridiculous. It's about time the BBC started informing people on these issues, vote or no vote.
youre right..she was a right c*nt. when i read the title i thought Cameron had taken to puffing on a pipe.
No. What they were in favour of, and voted for, was the Common Market which was very different from what we have today. You are right about the can being kicked down the road though. I think cast iron Dave will regret this and UKIP will benefit as a result.
Who knows, the accounts have never been signed off. The fundamental question is - are we a member of a trading block or are we a member of a political union with ever increasing legal, economic, monetary and fiscal ties ?
A large majority is ignorant of what the EU is and what it means to GB, sadly their votes will be won by the tabloids.
I completely agree, if you have a referendum for any issue there would be no point in political parties having manifestos. You wouldn't know what the party stood for. Nail your colours to the mast and have the conviction to stick to your promises. On this subject though, it's a tricky one. The UKIP support has given this issue more urgency than expected so it doesn't leave Cameron with many options.
Well I do. You seem to have admitted pretty clearly that you don't, John. Glidd asked some reasonably cogent and relevant questions, and you have chosen not to answer any of them - fine, that's your privilege.
It is true that the EU is a lot different now than it was 40 years ago. So is the UK, and all the other countries. So is the UN, NATO, the Commonwealth, and just about every other entity in the world. Change happens: so what? Are you arguing that every decision taken 40 years ago should therefore be subject to a new referendum? Or that every entity created 40 years ago which has changed since should therefore be dismantled? Why the obsession with just the EU, and why disregard everything else?
The normal practice is that the government of the day decides what its policy is on each issue, and uses its majority in Parliament to pass and repeal Acts, ratify and denounce treaties, change practices, amend the constitution, or whatever is needed to implement its policies. Referenda do not come into it. It is only when the government is terminally split on an issue, and cannot command a majority for any version of a policy, that it is reduced to proposing a referendum as a final desperate expedient. The concept depends on the hope that all sides of the argument can unite on agreeing to have a referendum in the future, even if they cannot agree on the substantive issue itself. Trouble is, if the party is so deeply split the factions refuse to agree even on the policy about holding a referendum, it reaches the end of the road. What other options are there? Well, there's always resignation and calling a General Election - but bizarrely, Cameron seems to have deprived himself of even that option which all previous PMs always had. Interesting times, I'm afraid!
I get the impression, Pete, that you are against referenda because you feel that every five years in a general election is as much say as the UK population needs on how it is governed. I don't agree with that. Voter turnouts are so low that the governing party actually represents a very small amount of the population. Of course, you might argue that more fool the population for not voting. Fair enough. But it's not entirely the population's fault. People are disaffected with politicians. They don't trust them and there seems to be little real choice. You'd have to convince me that the current Parliament, with its first past the post election system, is the best way to represent the views of the country. This is not my view. Living in a country where there are referenda on everything, I think it's a much better system. But people do get educated on the issues to be voted on, through TV programmes, debates and officially supplied documentation which sets out both views. It is this education that I think the UK needs prior to a referendum.
I never said I'm against referenda. The issue is: Should your country have a constitution which provides for the holding of referenda or not? It would be perfectly reasonable and desirable for it to be established constitutionally that the powers of parliament and government are limited, and that all proposals for changes above and beyond those limits can only take place with the approval of the electorate in a referendum. In that system, matters below a defined threshold are decided by parliament and government, while matters above the threshold require a referendum. I would be in favour of introducing such a system into the UK. However the constitution we actually have in UK today is on entirely different lines. Parliament's powers are unlimited, and there is no requirement for a referendum to be held on any issue. So a referendum is instead a kind of short-term political fix; it is a mechanism for papering over the cracks in divided parties. All the time measures are passed making important and momentous changes in all sorts of issues (e.g. creating the UK Supreme Court; reducing the powers of the House of Lords), with never a suggestion of a referendum. Then occasionally an issue comes along which for party political reasons is too hot to handle, and the mechanism for defusing it and kicking it down the road is ... a referendum. So what might be a genuine enhancement to democracy is degraded into a cheap political expedient. That is the bit I am against.
Not me. I would prefer a proportional representation electoral system, but unfortunately the British people have never been offered PR. We were recently offered the complete opposite, a Single Transferable Vote system - I voted against. Nor have we ever been offered any say in: * whether we want our Head of State to be elected or hereditary * whether we want the upper house to be hereditary, appointed, elected, or abolished * whether we want the Church of England to be the established state religion * whether we want a Supreme Court etc etc. If anyone wants to propose holding referenda, all those issues (and several more) surely rank far above whether to denounce the Treaty of Lisbon.
