Bear it in mind. Nobody in the EU, except perhaps the dispiritingly wooden Mrs Merkel, really wanted all the palaver of a new treaty, which would without doubt have forced at least one referendum (in Ireland).
Mr Cameron certainly didn’t want such a thing. He will (he has already done so several times) strain every sinew to avoid such a referendum on any EU topic, since merely holding it will tear his party in two. This is the only good reason to hold one. Even if 60% of the British people voted to leave the EU, it wouldn’t happen. Our present political elite would never act on it. That will require a party pledged to leave in its election manifesto, winning a clear majority.
Michael Howard, the establishment liberal who made a career out of posing as a ‘right-winger’, popped up on the BBC on Thursday arguing that the planned new treaty wouldn’t require a British referendum because it wouldn’t directly affect Britain – a curious coincidence given that Mr Cameron himself was then expecting that he would shortly be agreeing to just such a treaty.
Lord Howard did this because at that very moment, Mr Cameron’s Tory foes were circling like crocodiles, waiting and hoping for the opportunity to attack. Luckily for Mr Cameron, his ‘veto’ put the referendum out of everyone’s minds. It also enabled him - and his critics - forget about his pledges of ‘repatriating’ powers from the EU – pledges that he knew perfectly well could never be redeemed.
The EU never gives up any power. Why anyone believes such stuff, I have no idea. Wishful thinking is too kind a description of it. But without the Sarkozy coup, the case that no referendum was required would have been very hard to make. Mr Howard was presumably saying this precisely because the Tory party’s directing elite were afraid that Mr Cameron would fail to make that case.
Mr Howard’s tattered ‘right-wing’ credentials might, I suppose, have swung a few gullible backbenchers (given their servile, braying praise of Mr Cameron, even as he pledged his continuing loyalty to the EU in the Commons on Monday afternoon) . But the gigantic change proposed, placing Euro members under the fiscal control of Brussels, will certainly put Britain under strong indirect pressure to conform (does our Treasury already consult informally with the EU about budgets, I wonder?). Much of our policy is now openly based on not rocking the Euro boat, for fear that we will be blamed – and in some way punished - if it sinks.
Without the Sarkozy coup, Mr Cameron would have been under grave pressure to call a referendum. Such a referendum would have condemned him to months of trying to deal with The EU problem, which flares up in the Tory Party like piles but (unlike piles) has the power to destroy that party altogether, if not cunningly handled. Neither Mr Cameron, nor his Europhile friends, nor the posing ‘Eurosceptics’ actually want a real test of their supposed resolve to stand up to the Brussels monster. If Brussels wants to tax the City of London, it will, as long as we are fool enough to be in the EU.
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