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Another bottling moment

WHY did Gordon Brown decide to take the extraordinary Election risk, which has in fact done him so much harm? Why did he start? Why did he stop? No doubt, a large part of his motivation was pure opportunism, whatever he says.

He responded to the polls that put Labour 10 points ahead at the end of its Bournemouth Conference. When the polls turned against him, he decided not to call an early election. But what inducement led him to venture on to such treacherous ground?

The possibility of winning his own mandate as Prime Minister must have been attractive; an Election victory would have given him another five-year term; the polls at their best for Labour did suggest a significant increase in his majority. Yet there must have been a bigger political and constitutional strategy behind it all. As so often, Europe was the hidden hand in British politics.

According to a widely held constitutional doctrine, there are two acceptable ways of gaining public assent to constitutional changes, such as devolution to Scotland and Wales or the creation of a Mayor for London. One way is to hold a referendum, which the Labour Party promised on the European Constitutional Treaty in its 2005 election manifesto.

Such a referendum would have provided proper public consent. The sovereign people would have agreed a transfer of sovereignty. The difficulty was that Brown thought the sovereign people would vote against the treaty. He did not want a referendum because he thought he would lose it.

For that reason he has argued that the new Reform Treaty, though largely identical in content with the Constitutional Treaty, did not require a referendum.

This was always special pleading to get the Prime Minister out of a difficulty. It has now been largely abandoned, even by Downing Street, in the face of the report on October 9 of the European Scrutiny Committee of the House of Commons, which has a large Labour majority. The committee does its job thoroughly. The other and more common method of establishing public support for constitutional change has been to hold a General Election. It is less satisfactory, in that an Election manifesto contains many different commitments. Yet it would be binding.

If Brown had stated in an Election manifesto that he planned to sign the European Reform Treaty, subject to certain qualifications, and did not intend to hold a referendum, then, if he won the Election, he would have been entitled to ratify the treaty in Parliament. In effect, Labour would have had a 2007 manifesto that overrode the commitment of the 2005 manifesto.

Of course, all this would depend on his winning the Election. For some days the polls did suggest that Labour would win a November ballot with an increased majority. That was the moment of greatest temptation.

The polls then turned against Brown. He was locked out of a referendum because the polls showed he would lose one, and was also locked out of an Election because the polls told him he might lose that, or at best be returned with a reduced majority.

He is now left with no way in which he can demonstrate popular support for the European Reform Treaty, which does involve a substantial transfer of powers.

At the same time, Brown’s argument that a referendum is not required because the Reform Treaty is not a Constitutional Treaty is collapsing. Last week, the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee published its latest report.

The committee found that ‘taken as a whole, the Reform Treaty produces a general framework which is substantially equivalent to the Constitutional Treaty’. Labour promised a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty; it follows logically that the Government is also committed to a referendum on the Reform Treaty, which is ‘substantially equivalent’.

That is why Downing Street has shifted its position. It no longer pretends there is any radical difference between the two treaties. It now says the Government will negotiate opt-outs, the so-called ‘red lines’, which will protect Britain from having to make unacceptable transfers of power.

The Scrutiny Committee does not share the Government’s confidence. In its report it says it is concerned that ‘the Government’s claim to safeguards’ might be overruled by the European Courts of Justice.

Last Thursday, Michael Connarty, the Labour chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, wrote a highly significant letter to Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Connarty states: ‘The committee has a particular concern over the effectiveness of the safeguards for the UK’s position on those questions identified by the Government as “red-line issues”.’

The committee does not accept either of Brown’s two main arguments against a referendum. He is left with no argument at all.

This week Brown will be going to Lisbon to try to negotiate the ‘red-line issues’. He has already indicated he may be forced to give Britain a referendum if the other European countries do not accept his ‘red lines’. This has created some ill will.

In the dance macabre of European negotiations, the same theme has been played again and again—we have seen the plot repeated for the past 35 years. A British Prime Minister goes to a European meeting to defend a British interest. At the last minute, a concession is made. The PM returns a hero. The concession turns out to have been pre-planned and of little value. The Brussels juggernaut moves on.

Brown’s greatest difficulty in winning public support for his European policy—whatever it may prove to be—is that there has been a breakdown of public trust. That is a problem he inherited from Tony Blair.

Most British voters have lost trust in the integrity of the European Union, and of their own Government so far as its European policies are concerned. When Tory leader David Cameron asked whether anyone any longer believed what Brown said, he was not indulging in mere abuse but pointing to a regrettable but real problem.

Few people can believe Brown would not have called an Election if the polls had offered him a majority of 100. They cannot understand why he sticks by so implausible an assertion. British trust on European policy can be restored only if Brown accepts his party’s commitment to a referendum. That would also be the best way to negotiate on the Reform Treaty.

The original Constitutional Treaty represented a Euro-federalist coup d’etat in Brussels. The British still want a close economic relationship with Europe, while keeping our traditions and preferences open and liberal. The British voters were promised a referendum; they will not accept the treaty unless they get one.

Lord William Rees-Mogg is a former editor of the Times. This column first appeared in the Mail on Sunday