A Place to Stand

A couple of links from the BBC on the parties' positions on an EU referendum. In Thursday's collective agreement/"debate"

David Cameron said that politicians had given away powers without asking the voters first. He reminded the audience that they had been told they would get a referendum. "People feel cheated," he said. The Conservative leader said "we should have had one." He said that in future any new treaty that involved new powers going to Brussels would trigger a referendum....

Labour finds itself in the position that the two other parties are offering referendums. The Liberal Democrats want to ask the British people whether they want to be in or out of Europe. The Tories will hold a referendum on any new treaty that transfers powers to Brussels.

What the BBC omits to mention is that while 2 of the parties are promising a referendum next time all 3 of them have already promised it anyway. If these parties were in any way whatsoever honest we would already have that referendum. To be fair to the Tories they did go through the motions of voting for it before saying that, once it had passed, we wouldn't get a referendum after all. The precedent of Harold Wilson allowing a referendum on our membership of the EU (then called EEC) after the Conservatives had passed it shows that there is no truth to Cameron's excuse. What can also be proven, by the next BBC link, is that Cameron is not only opposed "in principle" (if the phrase applies) to the British people getting a say in our own fate but is so strongly opposed he risked & probably lost his opportunity to win this election because of it

The UK Independence Party says it offered not to fight the next general election if the Conservatives agreed to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty...

The Conservatives said any mention of a deal had been rejected "straight away".

We offered that if we got a clear, written promise with an agreed wording for a referendum on whether we stayed in or left the European Union... then we would stand down for the general election, providing we had this absolutely clearly in writing.

"And then when we had the referendum - which we believed we would win - we would then be out of the European Union and then at that point UKIP, well it would have been up to UKIP, but it would probably have disbanded because its major point would no longer be in existence."

Lord Pearson said he had taken the proposed deal to Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative leader in the Lords, after UKIP beat Labour into third place in this year's European elections.

He said he was acting on behalf of Mr Farage and told Lord Strathclyde to relay the offer to Tory leader David Cameron.

Overall I think it is better that this did not happen & UKIP dissolve. Had most of the UKIP supporters gone for the Conservatives they would certainly be several points ahead in the polls. Would the Conservatives have kept this promise merely because it was in writing. All manifesto promises are in writing & indeed the most solemn promises any politician can ever make. Only wholly corrupt politicians lightly break manifesto promises as all 3 parties have, so there is no particular reason to think Cameron wouldn't have broken a new one.

More importantly UKIP, however it started out, is not a single issue party & is, on many issues, the main party presenting a real opposition - the only one actively supporting nuclear power; economic growth; sceptical about "catastrophic warming"; whose record shows them opposed to unlimited immigration; for referenda as a general policy; against destroying half our national wealth; opposed to criminal wars; & for cutting back the state to significantly less than half the economy. To have lost all that would have seriously impoverished what passes for our democracy. The Tories forced UKIP to fight.

Iy may be that a lot of people will vote LudDim in this election because they have promised to introduce a democratic electoral system & equally important, have a real incentive beyond having promised, to keep it. That would not be an unreasonable position for anybody who wants an uncorrupt electoral system. We should all remember, next time we get a vote, that that does not make them any less liars, thieves, fascists, murderers & indeed incompetent buffoons unfit to hold office than the other liars.

We are going to have change. I would much prefer it were achieved peacefully but that is up to the fascist liars & thieves in power.

Labels: British politics, election