Today sees a welcome intervention into the EU Constitution debate by David Cameron. In an article in The Sun he points out that Gordon Brown and his fellow MPs were elected on a pledge to offer the new EU Constitution to us all in a referendum. The Labour hierarchy have been attempting to weasel out of the unambiguous manifesto promise by claiming it is a reforming treaty and not now a constitution, but other EU leaders have not been playing ball.
As Cameron says in The Sun:
What makes you think you can break your promises to the British people? And what makes you think you can change the way our country is governed without asking the British people first?
There’s a simple answer to both questions: Arrogance.
And when it comes to Europe, arrogance is what we’ve seen from Labour time and time again.
It’s the arrogance that says: “We, the powerful elites, know best.”
It’s the arrogance that puts more and more decisions in the hands of bureaucrats that no one’s ever heard of and no one can ever get rid of if they do a bad job.
And it’s the arrogance that Gordon Brown displays when he says we don’t need a referendum on the European constitution.
It is to be hoped that this represents a new front in the political battle against a federal European Union increasingly encroaching on British sovereignty. Whilst some may fear that resurrecting Europe as an issue is a retreat to a discredited core vote strategy I think they are wrong. The problem in the past was a sometimes shrill anti-EU message which was easy to paint as being small-minded or old-fashioned, but here we have the perfect European message:
“Trust the people, Gordon, you said you would.”
To add your voice to the campaign just download the template letter (extract from text below) and post or e-mail it to your Labour MP.
Labour MPs in Parliament today were elected on a manifesto promise that their government would hold a referendum on the European constitution. That promise could not have been clearer. It said: “We will put it to the British people in a referendum, and campaign wholeheartedly for a Yes vote.”
And just two months ago, Gordon Brown said: “The manifesto is what we put to the public. We’ve got to honour that manifesto. That is an issue of trust with me and the electorate.”
As one of your constituents, I am calling on you to make sure your Party honours its pledge, and gives the electorate a right to vote on this crucial issue.
