AN ESTABLISHMENT FIX

TORY REBELLIONS RARELY live up to their billing; but will today’s be the exception that proves the rule. The referendum debate should have been a public display of the prime minister’s e-petition in action. The e-petition was meant to be a direct link between the people who vote, and the country’s primary debating chamber. It was meant to give the people the chance to make  parliament debate an issue close to the e-petitioners heart: providing the individual could gather 100,000 signatures, the Speaker of the Commons could allow the subject to be debated.

            I am sure that, from his behaviour regarding this afternoons debate, David Cameron, whose dislike of the Speaker matches that of his backbenchers, will be even less inclined to send him a Christmas card after Speaker Bercow allowed this particular debate to take place.

            I find it extraordinary that the prime minister has deployed the nuclear option, by imposing a three line whip on his backbenchers. This ultimate form of discipline is only used in exceptional circumstances, like an important piece of legislation or a motion of no confidence. It was never intended to be used for an occasion of such singularly unimportance in terms of legislation; for all an e-petition promises is the chance of a debate - there is no obligation on the prime minister to enforce the petitioner’s  will if the debate is won.

            A referendum on our relationship with Europe is another example of how distant our politicians are from the people who elect them. None of the main parties will be voting for this afternoon’s motion. David Cameron, Ed Milliband and Nick Clegg have all said they oppose this motion.

            We are a Eurosceptic nation governed by Europhiles; none of our party leaders want this debate (although Labour believes they have hit a rich  political seam, by seeking political advantage over Cameron’s Tories). It has been the intention of our political elites, for several decades, to cajole and wheedle this sceptical nation into a federal union with the rest of Europe. Since Margaret Thatcher’s demise, successive Tory leaders have had to work hard to try and convince us that European Federalism was off the agenda. But it never was as far as the European political elite were concerned; and the current euro crises has once more brought the possibility of  political and monetary union ever nearer. Which is why I cannot understand the insistence of those who say that this issue is a waste of time when we have to tackle our current economic crises – both are linked.

            We hear it all the time. Now is not the time for such a referendum. The people want us to concentrate on the economy…this is a side issue, blah, blah, blah. This is the voice of Europhile fear; and the three line whip is an expression of such fear.

            The Tory party has always threatened to implode on this issue: simply because Conservatism is about conserving; it is about defending the nation state, its culture and its history; and the true Conservatives are those much maligned Eurosceptics who remain loyal to a centuries old validation of their existence. But conservatism goes beyond any political party. It gathers around it people from all political ideologies. Both Tony Benn and the late Michael Foot; each from a distant planet compared to the Tories, but each of equal distance from the modern Labour Party on this issue of a referendum on Europe.

           

THIS AFTERNOON’S DEBATE (only allowed to take place at all, let us remember, by an external petition) is  probably the most important debate from the perspective of this nation’s history, that the House of Commons has had to consider since the Second World War - and it was all brought about by a young, talented, and over ambitious  Tory politician seeking to bring to an end a decade long Labour governance.

            Whether David Cameron lives to regret his decision to allow different public issues to be debated within parliament, remains to be seen. But, if anything, the events taking place on the continent of Europe make it all the more important for the British people to be given another say on Europe - the second only since the 1970’s.

            This fact alone should enlighten the British people to the true intent of our political establishment. Not since the 1970s have the people of the UK had any say in the way their relationship with Europe was to evolve. Whenever important treaties needed to be signed, our political establishment have collectively undermined the importance of such advances by use of such neutral and comforting adjectives as, an adjustment or technicality. Through such means were both the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties given free passage.

            This debate does matter because it will in all probability be this country’s one and only chance to determine its future: because there will never be a referendum on our relationship with Europe, if the main parties have their way - there will never be a time for such a vote as far as our current political leadership are concerned.     

NEXT WEEK'S VOTE

Trying to dragoon people on a three-line whip will cause a great deal of resentment within the party and leave the public – who support a referendum on Europe – completely mystified about what we stand for.’

Conservative MP Philip Davies

NEXT WEEK, there will be a debate and vote in the Commons on whether the people of this country should be given a chance to vote, through a referendum, on our future relationship, if any, within the European Union.

            The Conservative MP, David Nuttal has tabled the motion for debate, and a three line Whip, demanding that every Conservative backbencher votes against David Nuttal’s motion on penalty of having their whip withdrawn has been registered by No10.

            An e-petition had collected over 100,000 votes - this being the minimum number required for a parliamentary debate to be considered.

            The debate itself was meant to take place next Thursday, but has been brought forward to Monday because the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, would have been in Australia with the Queen next Thursday; but, as he wished to open for the government in the debate, it has now been brought forward.

            There is now talk of panic within the government as up to 58 MPs are expected to vote in favour of a referendum, which is in probability why the Foreign Secretary changed his arrangements for next week - in order to dissuade by rhetoric what the Whips will fail to do by threats.

            This debate has been a long time in coming and the politicians within all the parties should vote with their consciences and forgo their selfish ambitions for one day and think of their constituents, who want a chance to vote on their future. The people of this country want this vote. They were promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty by David Cameron before the last election only to see it disappear through a spin doctors sausage machine soon after.

            This time the politicians can help restore the public’s confidence in them by voting with their consciences. If not; if they are cowed by the Whips; if they bow to the promises of preferment and so oblige their leader; then the public will look for alternatives to the Conservatives when they come to vote next time. By then, considering its current disposition, the EU may have crept far enough up the public agenda to allow UKIP to prosper and the Conservatives to fail miserably.

MUCH ANIMOSITY was created within his own party and the country generally by David Cameron when he retracted his ill-varnished pledge to allow a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. This is why I, a lifelong Labour voter, voted Conservative at (then) 60 years of age. For I felt that our nationhood was at stake, and Cameron’s Lisbon pledge was all I needed to steer a different course from my lifelong voting habits.

            Between now and next Monday, what one senior Conservative has described as “panic” (according to the Daily Telegraph, no less) will beset No10 – a state of mind already acknowledged by the presence of the Foreign Secretary in the debate.

            Apparently, any referendum would offer the following questions on the ballot paper: first of all, that we should remain as we are; secondly, that we should vote to remain part of the EU, but only by negotiating the taking back of the many powers frittered away by our previous governments on their people’s behalf without a vote. Lastly, we can decide to leave altogether from the EU.

            The latter is my preferred option because it leaves us a free country with the ability to make our own laws (exempted from any other nation’s rebuke). Like children wearing Halloween masks, our leaders tell us that if we leave the EU, our economy will suffer the consequences. It is comparable to being warned off the bogeyman.

            In a free market system, trade rules; it is a two way process. We buy what we need and sell what others want to buy. If, like poor old Greece today, we have nothing worth selling, then, like Greece, we should indeed join the euro zone and leech from the more advantageous borrowing conditions that such a club offers - but will have to be paid for by the more advanced nations in Europe, i.e. Germany - when the whole pyramid finally collapses.

            If we in the UK left the EU, we would be free from all of the bureaucratic demands placed upon our economy. We would be free to prosper without any restriction upon such prosperity. We could once more look to our own parliament to make laws that would remain binding because our politicians could never undermine them by allowing them to be overruled by an outside agency. We would be in full control of our destiny as a sovereign people with the skills and ambitions to succeed.

            If there is something another European country wanted from us that we produce; then no anti-free trade strategy (for this is what it would amount to) by Europe, would stand in the way; and if there was something we, as a nation needed, there would be no European entrepreneur who would not be prepared to, through a sense of European idealism, refuse any trade in order to turn a profit and keep his employees and their families solvent.

NEXT WEEK’S VOTE is important for the British people. It gives them the only chance to win a referendum on our membership of the EU. Although Monday’s debate is just that, a debate; and the vote that follows is just that, a parliamentary vote with no obligation on the government to order a referendum were they to lose; it would however once more highlight how out of touch our party leaders are with both the people in the country, and their own back benches, who, if they vote in sufficient numbers for David Nuttal’s motion, will bring nearer the day when a referendum on our future within Europe becomes a reality.

            At the moment the political classes all over the European Union are out of touch with their people; whether they are Greeks, Spanish, Portuguese or Italian citizens; they have all been left to pay for the folly of their leaders in allowing such mismatched economies as theirs  to partake of a monetary union and, through cheap borrowing this allowed them, incur insupportable amounts of debt - debt that they must have known, they would not be able to repay.

            Meanwhile, the citizens of Germany are resentful of their political class because they are being asked to make the major contribution, through their hard earned taxes, to the bailing-out of southern Europe.

            The French people are also being asked to help with the bailout, despite the credit agencies starting to down grade their country’s rating.

            It is time to pause and reflect over the whole wretched experiment. Before our politicians dig us even deeper into this mess, the people have a democratic right to a voice on such a fundamental issue of national sovereignty and national independence. Monday’s debate and vote will hopefully make our leaders fearful of the political cost of not allowing a referendum at the next election.