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Daniel Hannan

Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the European Union is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free.

The Government finally admits its reason for opposing an EU referendum: it would lose

By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: September 15th, 2011

219 Comments Comment on this article

Yes, Minister is a documentary not a comedy

A constituent gets in touch following last week's blog about how opponents of an In/Out referendum never admit their real motive. He had written to the Prime Minister to ask for such a vote, and received a reply from an FCO official called Cathy Kerry. It began as follows:

Thank you for your letter to the Prime Minister about concerns you have regarding the European Union. I apologise for the delay in our response. Where relevant, letters are delegated to officials for a response. Therefore your letter has been forwarded to the Europe Directorate of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for a reply.

Like you, many British people feel disconnected with how the EU has developed and about the decisions that have been taken in their name. The Government believes that membership of the EU is in the national interest of the UK. We champion vigorously the interests of the UK and play an active role within the EU. We also believe that the EU needs to change and can improve, and we are confident in the UK's ability to move the EU in the right direction. For this reason, there will not be a referendum on this issue.

Well, ten out of ten for honesty. We're against a referendum because we'd, you know, lose it. The FCO functionary artlessly admits what elected ministers dare not: Britain would vote to leave the EU.

Never mind the twisted logic ("many British people feel disconnected with how the EU has developed and about the decisions that have been taken in their name," so "for this reason, there will not be a referendum on this issue"). The most striking aspect of the letter is what it tells us about the location of power.

You possibly have to have been in politics to understand the extent to which David Cameron works for Cathy Kerry rather than the other way around. Alright, not for her personally, but for the mandarinate she represents. When she writes in the name of "the Government", she doesn't mean a few dozen transient ministers; she means the state machine.

Civil servants in general, and diplomats in particular, tend to be Euro-fanatics. They understand that the EU was designed by and for people like them. As Hugo Young put it in This Blessed Plot:

By 1963, a corpus of diplomats was present in and around the Foreign Office who saw the future for both themselves and their country inside Europe. The interests of their country and their careers coincided. It was an appealing symbiosis.

So appealing, indeed, that senior officials were quite prepared to frustrate the declared wishes of their elected ministers in order to keep Britain's application on track. Young identified the guilty men (or, as he saw them, the heroes): John Robinson, Roger Makins, Michael Palliser.

They got their way, of course, as their successors have done since. Ministers come and go, but the bureaucracy is permanent (pace any diplomats reading this, it's nothing personal; on the contrary, my mother was one of you).

As long as the day-to-day negotiations are entrusted to Sir Humphrey and his team, there is no prospect of any meaningful improvement in Britain's membership terms. Which, of course, is precisely why we need a referendum. If you haven't yet done so, please take two minutes to signhere in support of one.

Tags: FCO, mandarins, Sir Humphrey Appleby, Yes Minister