Realistic and Feeble
The venerable Guardian columnist Michael White asks whether Labour's complete U-turn over a referendum on the UK's continued membership of the European Union (EU) is realistic or feeble?
Both I would say, because a referendum on the country's EU membership is going to go ahead one way or the other, so what 's the point of standing on the sidelines?
Yet feeble as well, because Labour has turned its previous policy (of opposition) on its head without any explanation or debate which makes the party look rudderless and leaderless.
Which has the merit of being accurate at least, I suppose.
Labour's EU referendum U-turn: realistic or feeble?
Yet feeble as well, because Labour has turned its previous policy (of opposition) on its head without any explanation or debate which makes the party look rudderless and leaderless.
Which has the merit of being accurate at least, I suppose.
Labour's EU referendum U-turn: realistic or feeble?
By Michael White - The Guardian
Does interim leader Harriet Harman have the authority for such an important policy shift, and is it the right move?
Does interim leader Harriet Harman have the authority for such an important policy shift, and is it the right move?
Harriet Harman, Labour’s interim leader. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters
Harriet Harman got Labour back on some front pages on Sunday by announcing that the party would no longer oppose David Cameron’s plan to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in 2016-17. Good or bad move by the interim leader?
My own instinct is to say the shift – or U-turn, as we say only in Fleet Street – was a bad move. That’s not just because I’m not quite sure where Harman and her new shadow foreign secretary, Hilary (“A Benn, but not a Bennite”) Benn quite get the authority for such an important policy shift between elected leaders. It smacks of the Farage School of Evidence-Based Policymaking, done from a bar stool after a couple of pints.
More substantial is whether or not a second referendum on EU membership (the first, in 1975 was won by 67% to 32% when it was still the European Economic Communities) is a good idea in principle. If you think it isn’t, and that referendums in general are as bad an idea as Margaret Thatcher and Clem Attlee both thought, then there’s a case for sticking to Ed Miliband’s position.
That’s a theoretical position, of course. When the then Labour leader set out his policy in 2014, I endorsed it – not something I did every day during the now fast receding Miliband era.
Miliband bores for Britain in Europe: three cheers!
But politics is about process as well as ideas and ideals. Despite those overpaid pollsters, Cameron won his election with a 12-seat majority – well done him – and is free of Lib Dem coalition hindrance in the pursuit of his strategy. I use the word “free” ironically since he is now in the clutches of the Tory right and their fellow travellers in Ukip, far more dangerous cellmates than Nick Clegg.
So Labour has persuaded itself that, now that it cannot prevent a referendum bill from passing – the cross-party House of Lords may take a different view – it should embrace reality and “give the British people a say”. The vote remains a high-risk strategy that could go disastrously wrong for No 10’s hopes of staying in the EU on looser terms, as Scotland’s 55%-45% independence referendum result showed. Alex Salmond’s “once-in-a-generation” decision turned out to mean once a week.
Labour is shortening the line of political fortification it has to defend. That’s OK, it’s practical politics in the wake of a defeat. It will still try to make the case for Europe (most polls confirm a majority in favour of EU membership) but won’t get much credit. And there’s always a case for courage, for sticking to a principled opposition, as Barack Obama did when he spoke out against the Iraq war before it started and things went wrong.
At Riga and in EU capitals (Chequers too this week) Cameron is setting out his positions – “too modest”, cries starry–eyed Dan Hannan MEP in Monday’s Mail.
But just to make things more fun, the PM is also using Wednesday’s Queen’s speech debate to steam ahead with his half-baked scheme to repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA) and make the British supreme court final arbiter of human rights in the UK, rather than the European (it’s not an EU body) court of human rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. This flies in the face of a century or so of sovereignty-limiting internationalism in such matters. But Dave and his team think tactically. “We saw off Ukip, didn’t we?” Er, no.
Brexit – what would happen if Britain left the EU?
To make for further excitement, the so-called libertarian Tory right is split on the HRA/ECHR controversy, with Liam Fox and John Redwood pointing one way and David Davis and Dominic Grieve (sacked as attorney general for his realistic analysis) pointing in favour of continued engagement with Europe and the notion of supra-national accountability. Liam Fox v Dominic Grieve? It’s a clue as to which side the brains are on here. Grieve-ites plus Labour, SNP, Greens and Lib Dems could spell defeat.
So Cameron will need all the luck he can get to make a success of both policies since the scope for mishap and failure is huge, as is the price of either. Scotland’s SNP government is pro-EU and ECHR. As you will recall, it may use a no vote on staying in Europe to reopen its own referendum issue. Though it pains me to say so, the SNP would have a point in doing so. That’s it, you see: as in 1975, a referendum win solves nothing if the losers just keep going. And they do.
Angus Robertson, the SNP’s amiable leader in Westminster (how amiable he will remain with Alex Salmond back and backseat driving in SW1 remains to be seen), has penned an article in Monday’s Guardian saying he does not favour a referendum – the Miliband position. But since we are going to get one, the SNP wants a “double veto” whereby all four constituent nations of the UK must vote no before a simple majority to leave would be valid.
That’s quite a neat device too, if only to help the SNP leverage Scotland out of the UK. But Amiable Angus made another point that aligns him with Harman’s new position. His Guardian article refreshed the case for giving 16- and 17-year-olds the vote, as was the case in Scotland’s referendum. Miliband also endorsed that change for UK elections before 7 May. Whereas – to the Daily Mail’s delight and Ukip’s satisfaction – Cameron has decided to stick with the existing general election franchise.
That also excludes 1.5 million EU citizens living in Britain who can vote here in local elections, and – a reversal of earlier pledges – most Brits living in Europe who would, of course, be seriously inconvenienced by a vote to leave. Irish and Commonwealth citizens will get to vote, so that means EU Cypriots and Maltese too.
EU referendum voting rights will not be extended to all UK citizens living abroad
It sounds daft, but at least it’s coherent and sticks to past practice, usually a sound if cautious principle when a change is contentious. Tory Eurosceptics oppose giving a referendum vote to Brits living abroad (are there as many in the EU 27 as there are EU citizens here – more than two million?), presumably because most would vote to stay in.
Pro-Europeans argue the other way for the same reason. Ditto for giving youngsters the vote, as does Robertson in the Guardian. He called doing so “best practice”, by which he presumably means “they’ll vote yes” to independence, as this BBC survey suggests the kids in Scotland did by a wide margin.
By the same token, Holyrood included 450,000 Brits living in Scotland but born in the rest of the UK, but excluded 850,000 Scots living elsewhere in the UK. In each case the politicians are not arguing from first principle (“teens are mature/immature”), but on the interested calculation of which group of voters will best serve their own cause. That’s depressing. Let’s hope it’s self-defeating too. It would teach them a lesson.
Harriet Harman got Labour back on some front pages on Sunday by announcing that the party would no longer oppose David Cameron’s plan to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in 2016-17. Good or bad move by the interim leader?
My own instinct is to say the shift – or U-turn, as we say only in Fleet Street – was a bad move. That’s not just because I’m not quite sure where Harman and her new shadow foreign secretary, Hilary (“A Benn, but not a Bennite”) Benn quite get the authority for such an important policy shift between elected leaders. It smacks of the Farage School of Evidence-Based Policymaking, done from a bar stool after a couple of pints.
More substantial is whether or not a second referendum on EU membership (the first, in 1975 was won by 67% to 32% when it was still the European Economic Communities) is a good idea in principle. If you think it isn’t, and that referendums in general are as bad an idea as Margaret Thatcher and Clem Attlee both thought, then there’s a case for sticking to Ed Miliband’s position.
That’s a theoretical position, of course. When the then Labour leader set out his policy in 2014, I endorsed it – not something I did every day during the now fast receding Miliband era.
Miliband bores for Britain in Europe: three cheers!
But politics is about process as well as ideas and ideals. Despite those overpaid pollsters, Cameron won his election with a 12-seat majority – well done him – and is free of Lib Dem coalition hindrance in the pursuit of his strategy. I use the word “free” ironically since he is now in the clutches of the Tory right and their fellow travellers in Ukip, far more dangerous cellmates than Nick Clegg.
So Labour has persuaded itself that, now that it cannot prevent a referendum bill from passing – the cross-party House of Lords may take a different view – it should embrace reality and “give the British people a say”. The vote remains a high-risk strategy that could go disastrously wrong for No 10’s hopes of staying in the EU on looser terms, as Scotland’s 55%-45% independence referendum result showed. Alex Salmond’s “once-in-a-generation” decision turned out to mean once a week.
Labour is shortening the line of political fortification it has to defend. That’s OK, it’s practical politics in the wake of a defeat. It will still try to make the case for Europe (most polls confirm a majority in favour of EU membership) but won’t get much credit. And there’s always a case for courage, for sticking to a principled opposition, as Barack Obama did when he spoke out against the Iraq war before it started and things went wrong.
At Riga and in EU capitals (Chequers too this week) Cameron is setting out his positions – “too modest”, cries starry–eyed Dan Hannan MEP in Monday’s Mail.
But just to make things more fun, the PM is also using Wednesday’s Queen’s speech debate to steam ahead with his half-baked scheme to repeal the Human Rights Act (HRA) and make the British supreme court final arbiter of human rights in the UK, rather than the European (it’s not an EU body) court of human rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg. This flies in the face of a century or so of sovereignty-limiting internationalism in such matters. But Dave and his team think tactically. “We saw off Ukip, didn’t we?” Er, no.
Brexit – what would happen if Britain left the EU?
To make for further excitement, the so-called libertarian Tory right is split on the HRA/ECHR controversy, with Liam Fox and John Redwood pointing one way and David Davis and Dominic Grieve (sacked as attorney general for his realistic analysis) pointing in favour of continued engagement with Europe and the notion of supra-national accountability. Liam Fox v Dominic Grieve? It’s a clue as to which side the brains are on here. Grieve-ites plus Labour, SNP, Greens and Lib Dems could spell defeat.
So Cameron will need all the luck he can get to make a success of both policies since the scope for mishap and failure is huge, as is the price of either. Scotland’s SNP government is pro-EU and ECHR. As you will recall, it may use a no vote on staying in Europe to reopen its own referendum issue. Though it pains me to say so, the SNP would have a point in doing so. That’s it, you see: as in 1975, a referendum win solves nothing if the losers just keep going. And they do.
Angus Robertson, the SNP’s amiable leader in Westminster (how amiable he will remain with Alex Salmond back and backseat driving in SW1 remains to be seen), has penned an article in Monday’s Guardian saying he does not favour a referendum – the Miliband position. But since we are going to get one, the SNP wants a “double veto” whereby all four constituent nations of the UK must vote no before a simple majority to leave would be valid.
That’s quite a neat device too, if only to help the SNP leverage Scotland out of the UK. But Amiable Angus made another point that aligns him with Harman’s new position. His Guardian article refreshed the case for giving 16- and 17-year-olds the vote, as was the case in Scotland’s referendum. Miliband also endorsed that change for UK elections before 7 May. Whereas – to the Daily Mail’s delight and Ukip’s satisfaction – Cameron has decided to stick with the existing general election franchise.
That also excludes 1.5 million EU citizens living in Britain who can vote here in local elections, and – a reversal of earlier pledges – most Brits living in Europe who would, of course, be seriously inconvenienced by a vote to leave. Irish and Commonwealth citizens will get to vote, so that means EU Cypriots and Maltese too.
EU referendum voting rights will not be extended to all UK citizens living abroad
It sounds daft, but at least it’s coherent and sticks to past practice, usually a sound if cautious principle when a change is contentious. Tory Eurosceptics oppose giving a referendum vote to Brits living abroad (are there as many in the EU 27 as there are EU citizens here – more than two million?), presumably because most would vote to stay in.
Pro-Europeans argue the other way for the same reason. Ditto for giving youngsters the vote, as does Robertson in the Guardian. He called doing so “best practice”, by which he presumably means “they’ll vote yes” to independence, as this BBC survey suggests the kids in Scotland did by a wide margin.
By the same token, Holyrood included 450,000 Brits living in Scotland but born in the rest of the UK, but excluded 850,000 Scots living elsewhere in the UK. In each case the politicians are not arguing from first principle (“teens are mature/immature”), but on the interested calculation of which group of voters will best serve their own cause. That’s depressing. Let’s hope it’s self-defeating too. It would teach them a lesson.
