This from the Telegraph on Monday ...
David Cameron must call a referendum on Europe or face a rebellion from his own party and a backlash from voters, a leading back-bench Tory warns today.
Mark Pritchard, the secretary of the 1922 committee of Conservative MPs, is the most senior Tory yet to demand a vote on Britain’s membership of the European Union following the eurozone crisis. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Mr Pritchard says that the EU has become an “occupying force” which is eroding British sovereignty and that the “unquestioning support” of backbenchers is no longer guaranteed.
He says the Government should hold a referendum next year on whether Britain should have a “trade only” relationship with the EU, rather than the political union which has evolved “by stealth”. He warns that the Conservatives will see constituents “kick back” if taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for the failure of “unreformed and lazy” eurozone countries to introduce fully-fledged austerity measures.
George Eustice, a backbench MP and former close aide to Mr Cameron, is also demanding a “new relationship” with the EU. William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, recently threw his weight behind the Eurosceptics by saying that Britain might prosper by loosening its ties with Europe. Mr Pritchard’s intervention will further increase tensions within the Coalition.
Danny Alexander, the Liberal Democrat Treasury minister, yesterday attacked Eurosceptics as being “enemies of growth”.
These are Mark Pritchard's actual words ...
”Over the first year of the Coalition, the Conservative Parliamentary Party has restrained itself over European issues. In part this is because it has recognised the need to focus on tackling the huge public deficit left behind by Gordon Brown and his protégé, Ed Balls. This break-out of impassiveness has also been helped, although to a lesser extent, by the Government's EU Bill, which has made the Conservative Party look and sound far more Eurosceptic. Many colleagues have also reluctantly accepted that, with the Europhile Liberal Democrats as the Coalition's bedfellows, banging the Eurosceptic drum would be unhelpful and could be destabilising. But, with Europe's ever increasing bail-outs and international loans – many drawn on the backs of struggling British taxpayers – it is no longer tenable to separate the economics of Europe from British domestic politics.
“Whatever the economic justification for past European bail-outs – such as with the Republic of Ireland – any future "back-door" interventions through multi-billion-dollar loans distributed via the IMF are a clear and present danger to the Coalition's period of European serenity. Moreover, recent Europhile comments by senior Liberal Democrat ministers have not helped matters.
“Bail-out fatigue was always going to be a danger for the Treasury; but, mixed with the heady cocktail of falling living standards at home and the self-inflicted Mediterranean origins of Europe's financial crisis, unquestioning political support from the Conservative backbenches can no longer be taken for granted. Conservative MPs will not continue to write blank cheques for workers in Lisbon while people in London and Leicester are joining the dole queue. The Government tells us that Britain's bail-out commitments are limited, shared with other countries and will end in 2013. This is all true, but, unless eurozone countries accept similar austerity measures to those expected of British taxpayers, then MPs can expect their constituents to kick back. As Britons lose their jobs, struggle to pay utility bills, forgo annual holidays and are made to pay more into their pensions, future bail-outs of Europe's mostly unreformed and lazy economies will not attract Conservative parliamentary support.
“When Britain voted to stay in the European Economic Community in 1975 the country was promised it would be a common market. Yet over time, mostly by stealth and within every new treaty, we have been drawn relentlessly into an "ever closer union" with the Continent. For many Britons, the EU has already become a kind of occupying force, setting unfamiliar rules, demanding levies, curbing freedoms, subverting our culture and imposing alien taxes. In less than four decades, Britain has become enslaved to Europe – servitude that intrudes and impinges on millions of British lives every day. Brussels has become a burdensome yoke, disfiguring Britain's independence and diluting her sovereignty.
“Those who suggest the Lisbon Treaty should be ripped up and replaced with a new EU constitution, or that the eurozone's move towards "fiscal union" provides a major opportunity for Britain to re-negotiate her relationship with Europe, are well-meaning; but these measures would only change things at the margins and do little to arrest the EU's democratic illegitimacy. The majority of Britons living today have never had a say on Europe. After nearly four decades of subjugation to Europe, it is time for the British people to choose their own destiny and to be set free. The 1975 mandate is neither immutable nor eternal. That is why the Coalition should agree to a referendum on Europe asking whether Britain should be part of a political union or of the trade-only relationship we thought we had signed up to. This is a moderate proposition that would attract voters from across the political spectrum, unite many on the Left and Right within Parliament and galvanise the support of most in the media. Even the Liberal Democrats, given their commitment to a Euro-referendum in their last election manifesto and their so-called "freedom agenda", would be hard-pressed to veto it.
“The referendum should be held next year, and a successful "No to political union" result would immediately strengthen the Prime Minister's negotiating hand in Brussels to commence serious and meaningful negotiations with our partners on Britain's new relationship. The process of returning political sovereignty to Westminster would then take place over the proceeding two years.
“But, if Brussels refused to repatriate specified powers within a designated 24-month period, then a second referendum – this time an "in or out" vote – would be triggered in 2015 and held on the day of the next general election. This stepping-stone approach would give voters, the British Government and Brussels Eurocrats an action list and a timetable. Having been served notice by the British people, Brussels would need to act. If specified powers were not returned within the defined timetable, Brussels would have only themselves to blame if Britons voted to leave the EU.
“The British have grown weary of Europe. The Coalition government should end decades of political appeasement by successive governments and champion freedom and democracy for Britain – and agree to a referendum.”
The GOS says: My guess is that Mark Pritchard is now saying what 90% of voters over 40 (in other words, those with any sense) have been saying for at least the last decade. We never voted for the EU we've got, and for Macaroon to suggest that we did is a lie, plain and simple.
We should be given the opportunity to vote again, now, and more power to those Tory MPs who are coming out of the woodwork and saying so.
I don't think anyone across the Channel would mind us having another vote, because we all know they'd just ignore it anyway. But there is a difference between having a voice which no one listens to, and not having a voice at all ...
Erm ... isn't there?
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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