PJ's Politics has asked me to blog on my views on this subject.
Put basically, I totally agree to a referendum and have no doubt that one will come about before long. I am equally sure that the government knows the conflicting, but strong views of the British people and wouldn't dare cause any uncalled for hostility, so I would be surprised if a referendum doesn't come about within the next ten years or so, subject to events.
It should be pointed out also, that this is a non party political matter and that there are a mixture of pro and anti among both Conservative and Labour MP's
6 comments:
Your right here - the question of whether the United Kingdom should continue as a sovereign state is of interest to all of us.
Even the EU Federalists need the referendum for legitimacy. Other wise we'll end up like Belgium - in a state that nobody wanted.
Thanks :-)
So, do you agree to a referendum on Scottish independence, then?
I am a bit wary of that at the moment Andrew. The Scottish Nationalists are the only political party calling for it as far as I know and they are very much a minority government.
I think George Monbiot has hit the nail on the head in this article. We need to ask more than one question - there are around 480 issues around this treaty - and people will agree with some and disagree with others. We could probably narrow these issues down to a dozen or so questions but really speaking isn't this what representative democracy is supposed to do for us?
A lot of those pushing for a referendum just oppose the EU altogether and want it to fail. Well it plainly isn't going to fail and while it exists, it affects us - we cannot put our head in the sand. Even if being in the EU is bad for the UK (which I doubt considering how we were on our knees begging to join from 1960 to 1973 - when we were finally let in our economy was in a tailspin of decline), being outside will be worse. The EEC haters lost the referendum in 1975 - and the Tories have lost the last 3 elections as Eurosceptics - it is time they got over it (and don't say you voted for trade only - the EEC has been a political project since it began in 1957 with 'ever closer union' written into Rome treaty). There is a queue of countries wanting to join this exclusive club and we should think very carefully why that is before we go leaving and throwing our future prosperity away.
"we were on our knees begging to join from 1960 to 1973 - when we were finally let in our economy was in a tailspin of decline), being outside will be worse."
That was because of our poor economic policy - not our lack of membership to the EEC. Look at Switzerland, they seem to be doing perfectly well without membership. And we can still retain membership of the free trade bloc withour full membership.
"Tories have lost the last 3 elections as Eurosceptics"
Again, you can not credit the loss at those three elections to the Conservative stance on Europe. They lost for many more important reasons that are quite obvious. It is hardly as if Labour have been shouting out about Europe in any of those elections is it?
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