Today, the House of Commons will be having a debate over holding a referendum on Britain’s future in the EU. It may help to put this into context.
The last time people in the United Kingdom were given a real choice on Europe was in 1975. In that year, the Wilson Government lived up to a pledge for a vote on whether to remain in the EEC.
If you can’t remember the Wilson Government, you are already onto a loser. If you can’t remember the EEC – well, that rather proves the point.
To have actually voted, it means in effect you would have had to have been born before the Suez Crisis. Everyone born after Anthony Eden became Prime Minister has, in a sense, been disenfranchised.
We could even coin a new word for this – Macmillanisation. For decades we have been voting in general elections for parties in which the European issue was but one policy amongst many affecting our ballot, while a number of Prime Ministers (starting with Macmillan himself) increasingly sought to get us into the European Community or, in changing treaty after treaty, marched massively away from the 1975 remit. Meanwhile, only people born before this process began have had a genuine say on it.
Some will argue that having a referendum today is a breach of our traditions as a parliamentary democracy. That argument would hold water had there not been such a raft of referendums over the past decade, on elected local mayors, regional devolution (including changes to London Government), Scottish devolution, and Welsh devolution (twice).
Under David Cameron’s government, there has been a referendum on the Alternative Vote, which was in no manifesto, but none on a referendum on the European issue, on which all three major parties have made a commitment that they have failed to deliver while in power. Meanwhile, the UK Government has said it “will not stand in the way” of a referendum on Scotland’s future, with David Cameron even calling upon First Minister Alex Salmond to accelerate the process. National independence can be an issue for plebiscite, then, providing the blue on the flag is of the right hue.
The very nature of today’s three line whip, uniting the leadership of the major parties, demonstrates the need to remove this decision from the hands of the party managers. In general elections, all three big parties find it within their leadership’s interests to smother any debate on the EU. On the issue of EU membership, the UK is still locked in continental-style consensual politics, deepening the split between the public and its representatives. Nothing could be more dangerous for democracy.
Whatever your viewpoint – whether you believe the UK should leave the EU tomorrow; that the country needs a powerful mandate to negotiate a new system from within the structures of the existing treaties; or even and particularly if you genuinely believe in a democratically-developed and accountable federal system for the continent – wherever you come from, the time has come for two new generations of voters to be asked our opinion. Because, increasingly across the country, we find people holding strong opinions, but silenced ones.
