EU referendum: hostages to fortune
Monday 20 May 2013
 What might stick, though, is Mandelson's jibe about UKIP whom he called the "UK Isolation Party". That is just the sort of snide slur that can gain a certain currency, and it struck me at the time that it was far from spontaneous. This has been worked on by Mandelson and his little friends, all part of the classic technique of denigrating the opposition. If it does stick, though, it will be because there is a grain of truth in it. One just has to look at the comment threads on the online Booker columns, and other threads on EU-related issues. Very visible and voluble are the self-identified UKIP members who demonstrate by their comments that their only interest is immediate withdrawal from the EU, whatever the cost, and whatever the damage caused. This we also see on our own forum, the relentless advocates of unilateral withdrawal who are so obsessed with leaving that they would destroy any chance of a negotiated settlement and cause endless damage to British business and other national interests. What these people don't seem to realise, though, is that our withdrawal will almost certainly depend on us winning a referendum. And it is there, where the vote is soft that we will be relying not on the politically committed, but on the swing voter, who will have no settled view on the EU issue. What people also need to realise is that political engagement is a minority occupation. Only a tiny and diminishing band of people follow politics. The "mainstream" media is in fact purveying a minority view, and the bulk of people who get their news only from television rarely give the bulletins their full attention. Yet, it is these people upon whom will be relying to get us out of the EU. They are people we haven't spoken to yet. These are people who don't read the comments (thank goodness) and who don't read the blogs. Many of them don't even vote in most elections. But it is these people who will be most affected by the scare tactics of the europhiles, and the claims of people like Mandleson, who revel in claims that we are isolationists and "little Englanders". And they will be given plenty of opportunities by the BBC and the legacy media to make their points. Then, it will we our own rabid, swivel-eyed loonies, foaming at the mouth about "traitors" and "illegal treaties", German domination and all the rest, who let us down. Their squealing for immediate repeal of the European Communities Act, regardless of the damage caused, will seem to confirm the slurs from the Mandelsons of this world, giving their claims credibility as they seek to tar us all with the same brush. Thus, as eurosceptics, we need to be thinking hard, not only about our arguments, but how they play with the politically uncommitted. What might sound good to the faithful, or stack up the "recommends" on the comment threads, are not necessarily the arguments that are going to convince the swing voters. To do that, we are going to have to be careful what we say, and compromise. What many committed eurosceptics could end up doing, in promoting their preferred courses of action, is alienating – or frightening - ordinary people to such an extent that we end up losing a referendum. As it stands, it is going to be difficult enough to win. There is no need to make it impossible. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 20/05/2013 |
EU referendum: disturbing stability in the polls
Sunday 19 May 2013
 In the Independent on Sunday we have the results of a ComRes poll and it also puts the number wanting to leave at 46 percent, as opposed to 25 percent who want to stay in. That gives us a slightly healthier margin of 21 percent. However, this poll also tells us that voters would back remaining in the EU by a margin of 43 to 24 percent if some (unspecified) powers were returned to the UK, a finding which is very similar to the June 2012 YouGuv survey which found that people would elect to stay in the EU by a margin of 42 to 34 percent. Taking that last finding, on the face of it, the margin for staying in the EU following renegotiation has strengthened from eight percent just over a year ago, to 19 percent currently, in what could be considered a boost for Mr Cameron. But the main findings are nothing to write home about either. The 16-point ICM margin compares unfavourably with the Mail on Sunday poll last October, which gave a 17-point lead to the "outers". But, when the YouGov poll in July 2012 also gave the "outers" a lead of exactly the same 17 points, one can conclude that sentiment is not moving a great deal. One can take greater comfort from the ComRes poll and its 21 percent margin, but that would only represent a four-point shift in a year which has seen an upsurge in support for UKIP and a supposed strengthening of anti-EU sentiment. Here, we have to remind ourselves – as always – of the private poll conducted for the Labour Party in August 1974, which showed that, should there be a referendum on membership of the Common Market, 50 percent would vote to leave, against 32 percent who would vote to stay in, a "huge" lead of 18 points. At around the same time, Gallup confirmed these proportions, with a poll coming out at 47-30 percent in favour of leaving, giving a lead of 17 percent, almost exactly the same as the ICM poll. And, as we well know, nearly a year later in 1975, 67.2 percent voted to stay in the EEC, while those voting to leave had fallen to 32.8 percent – a lead of over 34 percent in favour of staying in, representing a swing of over fifty percent. What is puzzling about the current findings is the stability of anti-EU sentiment. In broad terms, it has hardly moved in years and seems largely resistant to the ebb and flow of the debate on the EU. And, if we are to take the historical precedent, the level of support for withdrawal is by no means enough to ensure a victory in any coming referendum. Patrick Hennessy in the Telegraph ventures the opinion that 44 percent wanting an immediate referendum – as opposed to 29 percent prepared to wait until 2017 – represents a "further boost for the eurosceptic cause", but on current showing, we would most certainly lose an early referendum. The most disturbing thing, though – given the lack of movement in the polls and the favourable response to the suggestion of renegotiation – is that we might lose a referendum in 2017 as well. We can only hope that the opinion dynamics might change when a referendum is declared. But, if they don't, it could be too late to find out why and affect significantly the course of public opinion. Anyone truly interested in getting out of the EU, therefore, might feel some alarm at these figures, and be looking for stratagems which might improve future odds. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 19/05/2013 |
Booker: we can't have our cake and eat it in the EU
Sunday 19 May 2013
 George Osborne had gone over to Brussels determined to resist this additional demand, but was derisively outvoted. UK taxpayers must therefore fork out a further £1.2 billion, making a mockery of that ancient and jealously guarded rule that money can only be taken off them by agreement of the House of Commons. The previous week, our Government, in the Queen's Speech, could only scrape together proposals for a mere twenty new Bills, when not long ago Parliament could regularly pass up to 200 Bills in a session. But this is because so much of our lawmaking has now been outsourced to our real government in Brussels (the European Parliament website lists over 1,300 "legislative acts" being considered in its current session). The MPs we elect to Westminster have no more control over that than they do over the EU's decision to filch another £1 billion of our money. A measure of just how far the power has drained from our emasculated Westminster Parliament is the sight of our politicians now resentfully stumbling around in a fog, arguing one way or another about some possible referendum, without really grasping any of the realities of the situation in which we now find ourselves. We see them falling into three main groups. The first includes all those unreconstructed Europhiles who think it pointless even to discuss a referendum because the polls show "Europe" way down the list of issues voters think important. Oddly enough, the last thing such people want to explain to those voters is that the EU is now the chief engine of our government, let alone what an unholy mess it is making of all it touches. A second large group, led by Mr Cameron, favours the "have our cake and eat it" option. They admit that Britain's position is desperately unsatisfactory, but kid themselves into thinking that we can remain a member of the EU while somehow renegotiating the return of some of those powers we have given away. But they are baying for the moon, ignoring the most sacred rule on which it has steadily accumulated its powers for 60 years: that once power is given away to the centre, it can never be handed back. The "reformed" EU they babble of is one that does not and cannot exist. Still further across the spectrum are those dreamers demanding an in/out referendum as soon as possible, because they want us to get out. What they overlook is that, if such a referendum were held in the foreseeable future, the "yes" vote to stay in would win overwhelmingly, because a) no one has yet offered a properly worked out and positive vision of how well Britain could fare if we were to leave, and b) the leaderships of all the major parties, most of the media – led by the BBC – and big business would campaign to keep us in. Because of the absence of a positive alternative, it would be only too easy to scare voters into thinking that we would be left miserably out in the cold, losing half our trade and all that influence that we enjoy sitting around in Brussels being outvoted by our 26 colleagues. In short, we might be just like Norway and Switzerland, the two most prosperous countries in Europe, outside the EU but free to do more of their trade with it than we do. In many ways they actually have more influence on its affairs than Britain, through belonging to those global bodies that now make many of the rules on which we are represented only by the EU. Scratch away at what Mr Cameron's lot think they are after, and what it really comes down to is that they want us to be allowed to continue trading with the EU, like Norway and Switzerland, but without all that suffocating political baggage that goes along with the EU's drive to "ever-closer union".
The only way they can get that is by invoking Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, which alone could compel the EU to sit down with us to negotiate precisely the sort of a deal they want. But the snag is, of course, that we can only open that door by saying we want to leave: the very last thing Mr Cameron is prepared to do.
He wants to have his cake and eat it, Booker concludes – a dish that is simply not on the menu. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 19/05/2013 |
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