Recently I spent two days in Bulgaria, hosted by the British Council and the British Embassy, to launch their New Politician’s Toolkit to Bulgarian political parties and media. The Toolkit arose out of the UK-South East Europe Forum, a project run over the last couple of years and in which I had been one of the participants, which is how I came be invited to launch it.

The UK-South East Europe Forum was an interesting project, bringing together, in different strands, people from the creative industries, or young people, from the region together with some from the UK. The third strand was the one that I was involved with, entitled “people and politics”, and I spent a very interesting time talking with politicians and officials from Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia, about how policy is made and how it can involve both party members and the broader public.

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When I first heard it suggested that the UK should hold a referendum on remaining in the EU or not, I was sceptical about the idea. Referendums do have their place, but I don’t generally think they are the best way of making government decisions.

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more and more I have come round to the idea that asking the public, basically, whether they want Britain to do the Europe thing or not, is a good idea.

Essentially, the case for such a vote is straightforward. There clearly are different views among the British public about whether they want the UK to be part of the EU or not - so why shouldn’t we ask them?

The European Reform Treaty is mainly made up of provisions about detailed procedure, which I think the public are entitled to think are what they elect politicians to worry about, rather than have to read the whole thing themselves.

And in fact, of course, the great majority of the public would do no such thing, and simply vote on a much more basic feeling about what they think about the EU (I’ve written before about the evidence for this). So in fact if we did have a referendum nominally on the Reform Treaty, in fact what people would really be voting about would be a vague general sense of what they thought about the EU.

So why don’t we actually have a vote on the real question, whether Britain wants to be part of the EU or not? Read the rest of this entry »

In a pre-conference interview yesterday, Ming told the FT that he doesn’t believe a referendum on the European Reform Treaty is necessary. I think he’s absolutely right: this treaty does not justify one of the very very rare occasions when the UK deviates from a system of Parliamentary democracy.

Firstly, for me it is clear that it is strongly in the interests of the UK to continue to play a leading role in the European Union. It seems to me massively in our interest to work together effectively with our neighbours on crucial issues such as cross-border crime, terrorism and climate change.

But this certainly does not mean that I think the EU is perfect. Indeed for many years I and we as a party have been arguing for reform of the EU to make it more accountable and effective. We have basically won the argument on many of these points, which are now actually embodied in this treaty. I think everyone should welcome these reforms and I very much hope they are implemented.

Clearly some anti-European groups do not agree and hence they have launched a campaign to hold a referendum on it, which they obviously hope to win.

And indeed there is perhaps a case to say that pretty much any time anyone requests a referendum on any subject, it should be held so that the public can have their say (which is not too far from the Swiss system).

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As regular readers of this blog know, I am passionately committed, almost to the point of obsession, about accountability and democracy, for example in local health services.

So why do I find myself opposed to a referendum on the European Reform Treaty? It seems rather a counter-intuitive, anti-democratic and an unpopular view to take so I think it needs a bit of explanation.

Referendums are clearly initially very appealing. It seems quite simple: if you believe in democracy, then you should be prepared to ask the public anything and everything, and get them to make the decision.

This seems fine until we look at the actual experience of what actually happens when you do put something to a referendum. And the general (if not universal) experience is that when voters go to the polls, they don’t actually vote about the question on the ballot paper - but instead treat it as a poll on how they think the government of the day is doing generally.

Referendums

The European issue itself provides some good examples of this. Read the rest of this entry »

In fact he also knows 33 other pieces of personal data about you, if you have taken a flight to the USA any time in the last few years.

How?

Well*, in the wake of 9/11 and as part of their attempt to prevent a repeat, US government agencies insisted on knowing a wide range of pieces of personal information about anyone flying into US airspace from Europe (the so-called Passenger Name Recognition, or PNR, system).

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Saturday’s meeting of the UK European Movement’s new national Council was a very heartening experience: after a very difficult couple of years, the EM has clearly picked up itself, dusted itself down, and is really starting to focus on the future.

The last meeting I attended elected Peter Luff as the EM’s new Chairman, with a strong team of others too to lead the organisation and they have obviously been working very hard since, both in sorting out some of the challenging practical issues, but also in pursuing ambitious but realistic aims. Many of these will be coming to fruition and becoming visible over the next few weeks and months.

There is already a major programme of meetings, run mostly by EM branches around the country, the Speak Up Europe project. This has taken off mainly thanks to the efforts of Margaret Daly, and is an excellent project (and part of an EU-wide programme).

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I’ve been trying to find time to sit down and try to read what runes exist about the approach that Gordon Brown will take to Europe, as Prime Minister.

I haven’t managed to get down to it properly yet, but Jon Worth has a very good analysis of a pamphlet by Ed Balls for CER, which may offer some interesting insights - I recommend it.

Next year it will be twenty years since Margaret Thatcher made her famous ‘Bruges speech’ . That event definitively marked the shift of first herself and then very soon afterwards the British public, away from being friendly to the European Community - in the wake of the 1975 referendum in which she played a leading part in the yes campaign - to the hostility to anything emerging from Brussels, to which we have become so used ever since.

And the following year it will be twenty years since the Berlin wall came down and the countries of eastern and southern Europe began their slow march towards membership of the EU which finally ended for most of them with accession in 2004 or at the start of this year.

Those two events have been the cornerstones of both the development of the EU, and Britain’s response to it, over those last twenty years.

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