As a follow up to the EU Summit Meeting in Brussels in June 2007, a further meeting of EU leaders took place in Lisbon on 18th and 19th October 2007. The progress made on what has now come to be called the Lisbon Treaty - although of course this is the Constitution in all but name and a few minor details rejected by the French and Dutch in 2005 - was then endorsed by all those present. A further meeting will be held in December 2007 at which a final version of the Treaty will be agreed. To become effective, it will then have to be ratified by all Member States. As EU leaders are extremely wary of allowing any more democratic tests of its acceptability than they can possibly avoid - after what happened in France and Holland - in as many cases as possible, endorsement will be done through national legislatures rather than via referendums. In Britain, the government has steadfastly refused to accede to calls for a referendum, to fulfil the promises made during the 2005 general election that, if the Constitution were to be enacted, popular endorsement would be required. The reasons given for this stance are first that the Lisbon Treaty is an entirely different proposition from the Constitution and second that, even if there are similarities, all the key safeguards which Britain needs have been preserved. Almost no-one - including the Labour dominated Select Committee charged with analysing the impact which the Lisbon Treaty is likely to have - believes that either of these assertions is true.
It is not just in Britain that riding roughshod over any pretence that the Lisbon Treaty has any democratic legitimacy is deeply resented by the electorate. While the majority in favour of there being a referendum on the Constitution proposals is very substantial in the UK, it is even higher elsewhere. Recent polls of public opinion showed that the proportion of the population who believed that the Treaty proposals should be put to popular endorsement was 76% in Germany, 63% in France, 72% in Italians and 69% in the UK. Nor is support for referendums only to be found among those who would vote No given a chance to do so. A large swathe of public opinion throughout the EU which supports the principles behind the Treaty also believes that, without democratic consent to it being achieved, its validity will be gravely weakened. Of course, the reason why - despite all this pressure - EU leaders are so reluctant to allow the people to have a say is that they fear what the result might be. It is hardly surprising that, in turn, large sections of the electorates everywhere in the EU are disgusted by this totally unacceptable approach, which both defies and ignores democratic opinion.
Will the resolute opposition by EU leaders to having referendums - or at least holding any which might be lost - be successful? It may be, but it is not yet certain that this will be the outcome. There has to be a referendum in Ireland, for constitutional reasons. It was widely assumed that the Irish, who have been massive beneficiaries from EU largesse, would vote Yes, but a recent poll put those in favour and those against exactly equal on 45% of the total. There are legal challenges under way in Germany as to whether the Bundestag is within its rights in transferring powers to Brussels on the scale the Lisbon Treaty envisages. It is not clear that there is going to be a government in power in Belgium to take any decision. Leaving aside what might happen in the UK, therefore, it is still not a certainty that the unanimity which the Treaty requires will be achieved.
Nor is it certain that there will be no referendum in the UK, despite the government's current determination to avoid one being held. If there is a vote in Parliament on whether the Treaty should be put to the people, it is likely that nearly all Conservative MPs would vote for it. The Lib Dems would probably split. The result would then turn on how many Labour MPs felt strongly enough about the issue to vote against the whips. There is clearly a substantial minority who would do so but whether there will be a sufficient number to carry a resolution in favour of a referendum remains to be seen. The House of Lords, however, may be a different matter. Less compliant and more independent minded than MPs, the Lords seem more likely than the Commons to vote for an amendment to the government's bill, requiring a referendum to be held before the Treaty provisions are enacted. When the bill came back to the House of Commons, the government would then be faced with the unenviable task of getting this amendment voted down. Whether they would then think it worth doing this, especially if faced with almost united condemnation from the press and in the face of resolute hostile public opinion, has to be an open question.
Not least because there is still a chance that a referendum on the Treaty will be held in the UK, we need to make sure that everyone is aware of the implications of it going through, bringing into being almost all of the provisions of the Constitution proposed two years ago. The primary one is that there would be a very substantial further transfer of powers away from national parliaments towards the EU institutions, and particularly the Commission. Already more than 70% of our laws are drafted in Brussels rather than Westminster. In fewer and fewer areas would Britain be able to determine the policies to be pursued. The inevitable result would be a further weakening of the powers of the House of Commons in favour of the unelected officials who are largely responsible for running the EU. It is not therefore just that the British nation state would no longer be able to run its own affairs. In addition, we would lose a large measure of democratic control over our future, as unaccountable bureaucrats, bankers and judges were substituted for politicians who have to be elected and who therefore have to respond to public opinion, as is patently not the case with EU functionaries.
Much more is at risk, however, than the loss of democratic control over those who govern us, however important this may be. Proceeding with the Lisbon Treaty will lock us yet more firmly into the EU, making it ever more difficult for us to extricate ourselves from the mesh of policies espoused by the EU which are not in our interest. We pay a very large membership fee to the EU each year, which is now set to arise to a much larger figure by 2013. Even now, our gross payments to the EU budget are currently about £12bn a year, with a net cost to the UK, after taking into account all repayments, of close to £5bn. Significant additional annual costs, totalling apparently some £1.8m, go on off-budget headings, making the true cost to Britain of our membership much higher than is usually reported. Even among those most enthusiastic about our membership of the EU, there are few who support the Common Agricultural Policy and even fewer in favour of the EU's policies on fishing. There are gave concerns about the EU's protectionist stance, particularly in relation to the huge damage that this does to the Third World. The enormous cost of regulation, a large part of it originating with the EU, now involves cost disbenefits to the economy as a whole which official figures show are some 2% of GDP greater than the value of benefits which those who gain from the regulations receive. Furthermore, a particularly objectionable section of the Lisbon Treaty allows the Commission to put forward further integrationist proposals which, if agreed by Qualified Majority Voting, can then be implemented without them having to be ratified by all Member States. If the Lisbon Treaty is enacted, therefore, we can in future expect even more disadvantageous policies to be foisted upon us than those under which we labour at the moment.
It is against this background that the case for having a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and the Constitution which it in fact encompasses becomes so strong. The British people need to have an opportunity to express a view on the Treaty as part of a more general assessment as to whether the UK wants to become more and more closely involved in constructing the unified European state, as is clearly the intention of the majority of the political class on the continent. It is clear from all the opinion polling which has been done recently in the UK that the vision of a United States of Europe is not one which a majority of the British people share. This is not at all the same as there being a majority which wants to cut loose from our European heritage altogether, as is sometimes suggested. The vast majority of British people support free trade with other countries in Europe. They much enjoy travelling to countries on the continent and hundreds of thousands own homes there. They support co-operation with the governments of other Member States on all the common problems where it makes sense to take action together. They are far from being xenophobes. At the same time, they wish to retain their national identity, and their democratic capacity to call their elected representatives to account. To achieve these goals they want less involvement with the integrationist approach which Brussels stands for, and not more.
This is why, even at this late stage, it must surely be worth the government's while rethinking its strategy on refusing a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Letting one be held, with the very probable No vote result, would provide the government with the leverage it needs to resist further integrationist moves, which it is hard to believe that most members of the government - any more than most other people in Britain - want to see implemented. Having a referendum would fulfil the promise given at the last general election to allow the people a say. It would certainly be a popular move with most people. It would deprive the Conservatives of their current advantage in supporting a policy on having a democratic vote on the Lisbon Treaty, which the current government opposes. It is true that agreeing to a referendum in the UK would make our government unpopular with many of the leaders in other EU countries but there are worse things in the world than that. Wantonly and unnecessarily surrendering our national sovereignty to Brussels is one of them.