EU Referendum


EU Referendum: softened up for reform?


19/05/2015



000a FT-019 Danish.jpg

The year 1992 was an interesting one, the year that Alan Sked set up the anti-federalist league, which subsequently became Ukip. But, as the Finanical Times reminds us, it was the year when Denmark had rejected the Maastricht treaty and a second EU referendum was looming.

I not only remember that, Booker and I wrote about it in The Great Deception (TGD). There was no chance of changing the treaty and scant time to negotiate a side-deal, and we were all anticipating a total impasse which could bring the edifice down.

But that was to reckon without the perseverance of the "colleagues" who stitched up a package which became known as the "Danish solution", agreed at a late-night meeting of the European Council at Edinburgh Castle, under the chairmanship of John Major.

The FT raises this because it believes the solution is emerging as an important crib sheet and guide to dealing with Mr Cameron's "renegotiations".

Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, Denmark's foreign minister at the time says, "it would be a good idea to dust off those files and look at how we solved the situation then". It worked, he says and when Jean-Claude Juncker speaks of a "fair deal", we are told that it is the Danish solution he has in mind.

This solution was a "multi-part package", which included specific opt-outs through a binding accord, signed by all member states and deposited in the UN registry for international agreements. It was a treaty, says the FT, just not an EU treaty. It gave the Danish government enough to campaign on, yet did not contradict Maastricht or require revision.

The pact was further strengthened by political declarations, acknowledged by other EU leaders, which clarified the application of future integration in areas such as defence, the euro or home affairs, requiring a referendum before any changes could be made.

The FT posits that the UK will not be able to secure a treaty change, but says domestic legislation could be used to reinforce a deal and counter eurosceptic concerns over the lack of treaty change.

Personally, I don't think the pundits have yet properly (or at all) understood the potential of the "simplified procedure", giving Mr Cameron the additional boost of a treaty to add to the package.

But that could prove to be just a bonus. The FT argues that, with hindsight the Danish accord acted like a promissory note from EU leaders, a form of post-dated treaty change.

Philip Hammond, Mr Cameron's newly re-appointed foreign secretary, notes the deal "delivered in the end", with the Danish opt-outs incorporated into later treaties. He sees the terms "as a demonstration of just how creative and flexible the EU in practice is able to be".

In fact, as we recorded in TGD, when the second Danish referendum, on 18 May, just two days before the third reading of the Maastricht Bill in Westminster. The result was a "yes", delivering 57 percent to 43 percent against.

But the event was marked by the worst riots Copenhagen had seen since the war. Protesters smashed shop windows, burnt cars and barricaded part of the city. Eleven demonstrators and 26 police were injured.

How well the voters understood the arguments was questionable. In one post-referendum poll, only 17 percent knew of the Edinburgh "concessions". Others complained that their constitution prohibited holding two votes on the same issue. "We gave our decision last year", said cabinetmaker Steen Majlund. "I thought this was a democracy".

Nevertheless, the FT narrative probably has some force. What Mr Cameron will be offering will doubtless be a complex "multi-part package”, which will have considerable power to shape the debate and persuade the uncommitted.

Anyone who thinks this could not be decisive is delusional. All you need to do is look at the current editorial in the Times. "Seize the Moment", it says, arguing for Mr Cameron to bring forward the EU referendum.

Typically of the incompetent journalists of the legacy media, they haven't done their homework, but the sentiments expressed in the piece are an ominous harbinger.

"Achieving real reform in Europe is clearly more important than meeting an arbitrary deadline", it says, but it goes on to say that Mr Cameron's position is far stronger than a month ago, and that treaty change is not needed to achieve many of his goals.

Reform should be a natural and permanent process for the EU as for its members, it adds, then picking up on Denmark, also noting that a side-deal was reached to keep it in Europe on its own terms.

Britain is a more important member of the union, says the Times, and deserves at least as much consideration. "Mr Cameron should seize this chance to win important powers back from Brussels, and then get on with running Britain", the paper concludes.

In this, I see the newspaper preparing the ground for an acceptance of the Cameron "package" that will eventually be on offer, whence it will be recommending the public to vote to remain in the EU. It will be joined by the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, and virtually the whole of the legacy media.

We are, I am convinced, being softened up to accept that reform is attainable, so that we will vote for what we are given. It is going to take a powerful campaign to overcome that and a realisation that we are up against forces of enormous power and determination.

What I see from our "side", though, does not fill me with enormous confidence, especially as most of us seem to have become invisible.

Perhaps, though, that is our greatest strength. They didn't see us coming in the general election and they are still so blindly cocksure that they might not see us coming in the referendum. Every monster has its blind spot, and we know where it is.