The Europe dilemma

It may be said to have started when Mr Cameron came up with the wheeze of allowing petitions with more than 100,000 signatures to be voted on by Parliament; they didn't have to have a vote and if they did it wouldn't be binding on the Government but you could guess some people scented some sort of possible victory.

If Mr Cameron hadn't realised, I think most people could have told him what the first two petitions would be: restoring the death penalty and leaving Europe. Whilst a majority of the people are in favour of both of these, a majority of parliamentarians are against them. They are two areas in which Parliament is out of synch with the people. Parliament decided not to vote on the hanging petition but to have a vote on Europe and that took place last night, the motion being that there should be a referendum on leaving.

For myself, I became certain around 20 years ago that Britain would be better off both financially and democratically if we left the EU. Financially, in part because of the amount we pay into it. Don't be fooled by people who say we should be talking about the net amount we pay in, net of what we get back. Currently the Government would like to apply what we get back towards reducing the deficit but the EU won't allow that. When we talk about income tax we don't say the net figure is zero because we get it back in schools, hospitals etc. The amount we give them is around £12.5 billion a year. The other financial cost is the stifling regulation introduced by the EU over the years, which reduces employment and tax revenues. Most industrialists say we would be better off leaving even the single market.

Democratically, we only have to see that more than 75% of our laws come from Europe, the majority of which we have no veto over.

So I might have been in favour of the motion last night, but my problem would have been that I don't much like referendums. The best thing to be is the guy who writes the question: if it had been 'Should we stay in the EU with all the democratic and financial costs that entails, or leave for a new life of freedom and let the blighters stew in their own juice?' it would have been favourable to my own side. What it would probably be is including a third option of renegotiation, which would catch the slightly undecided.

So a referendum might be lost.

When I blogged on the petitions on 8th August (also on 2nd October) I said 

Neither of these motions has the faintest chance of success and nor have any of the others. The political class is revolted by the idea of the country being run by popular outcry. But I think Cameron may have made a mistake in raising the hopes of the British people only to dash them

The result is that the vote was lost, but more than half Cameron's backbenchers disobeyed his petulant instruction to vote against. Now he has the worst of both worlds. He will try to resolve the situation by promising to renegotiate the terms of our membership, but neither the Conservative Party nor the people will trust him to do so.

His only viable way out is to put to the EU before the next treaty change the things he wants to opt out of, and make that list public. Then when they want to amend the Treaty and need our vote, he can simply refer them to that list.

Has he got the courage and integrity for this? Personally, I don't think so. Let's hope I am wrong.

PS I know there is a movement towards the Government issuing a White Paper on renegotiation, but this is quite wrong. We send the government into these negotiations (which usually come out for more integration) without the detailed approval of Parliament, and this is no different. Also Cameron would say it tied his hands (Nye Bevan's term 'sending them naked into the conference chamber' has already been bandied about). Cameron just needs to get the Tory party onside and call the Liberals' bluff.