16/03/2014
In some important aspects, Ed Miliband's recent speech on his EU referendum intentions is sorting the [eurosceptic] men from the boys.
On the one hand, you have
The Boiling Frog doing a serious analysis, which suggests that the Electoral Commission may not look favourably on the idea of having an "in-out" referendum to decide a treaty ratification. On the other hand, we have the low drone of the self-obsessed
Tory Boy who brings nothing to the table but his own ignorance.
Bring us up to speed on the current state of play, though, is
Booker, in an attempt to simplify the issues to a point where even the more intelligent UKIP members can understand them.
Essentially, Booker is running the line that Miliband's "calculated promise" of a referendum has wrong-footed the other two parties, throwing a rather larger pebble into the fetid pool of British politics than is generally realised.
He will indeed give us an "in-out" referendum, he says â but only if there is another treaty requiring a further substantial surrender of national powers to Brussels. The cunning of this is that by making our continued membership of the EU conditional on our accepting such a treaty, he has put both the other major parties firmly on the spot.
Mr Cameronâs Conservatives and Mr Cleggâs Lib Dems are just as firmly committed to remaining in the EU as Mr Miliband. So by tying the two issues together, he would make it virtually impossible for all three parties officially to do anything but campaign for a vote for staying in.
He softens the pill slightly by saying that the possibility of such a major new treaty is "very unlikely", despite the fact that influential voices in Brussels are lobbying hard for one that takes the EU a further step towards becoming what Viviane Reding, the European Commission vice-president, calls "a United States of Europe".
But Mr Miliband thus gets it both ways. If there is such a treaty, he binds the other two parties into supporting him, whatever it contains. If there isn't, because other voices in Europe fear that it could face all sorts of difficulties with ratification, he is off the hook.
He has, says Booker, at least pledged a referendum that he wouldn't then have to hold. In this sense, he has countered Mr Cameron's fatuous promise of a referendum in 2017, which can never happen, after negotiating for the return of powers of self-government that can never be granted.
Still more self-deluding are those Eurosceptic voices calling for an "in-out" referendum even sooner, because they would lose it. The latest
YouGov poll for the first time in years shows a small majority in favour of staying in. This is hardly surprising because, despite the general unpopularity of the EU, the Eurosceptics have not yet come up with any remotely plausible strategy for how and why we should leave.
The Europhiles, including Mr Cameron, have for more than a year had it all their own way, by claiming that, although, of course, they would like to see "reform" of the EU, if Britain were to leave it, we would be shut out from the single market, at a cost of three million jobs.
What no one in any position of authority has pointed out is that this is rubbish. It would be perfectly possible to stay within the single market simply by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, to join the two most prosperous countries in Europe, Norway and Switzerland, in the European Free Trade Area.
In fact, this is the only way Mr Cameron could hope to get what he says he wants: continued access to the single market, plus the return from Brussels of some of our powers of self-government. But he has already ruled this out, because invoking Article 50 would mean us having to leave the EU.
So vapidly ill-informed has our "debate" on the EU become that none of this is ever spelled out, so it is never going to happen. We are doomed to stumble on through the fog â as, what Roy Jenkins called, the "foot-dragging and constantly complaining member" of a club, the rules of which the British people, led by their politicians, have never really tried to understand.
