David Davis Suggests A Way Forward on Lisbon

When I wrote about the decision by David Cameron to change policy on a EU Referendum on Sunday, I suggested that, instead, there should be a referendum giving a new government a mandate to negotiate to repatriate powers from the EU. I wrote...

I can see a very strong case for a referendum with the aim of giving the British government a direct mandate to negotiate repatriation of powers, but it is equally possible to argue that this mandate would already have been given by virtue of the policy being included in a party election manifesto.

David Davis takes this argument one stage further in an article for the Daily Mail this morning, in which he proposes a double referendum - one to give a mandate and then one to approve what has been achieved by the negotiators. It's an interesting proposal, but perhaps it comes a bit late. You can't hope to influence a decision on the day it is announced. He writes...

What we should do is, in my view, clear. We should have a referendum, not on the treaty, but on the negotiating mandate that the British Government takes to the European Union.

This has many virtues. It allows the British people to express their view on the future of their nation. Most of all, it gives the Government a formidable negotiating weapon.

Referendums terrify the European Commission and the political elites who run Europe. They are clear statements of the popular will. They force issues to be stated in clear and unambiguous terms. They are impossible to ignore.

referendums are incredibly powerful weapons. What is more, they are necessary if a single nation is going to achieve any material change.

The Europeans are past masters at the permanent negotiation that makes up the federal project. They know all the tricks of isolation, pressure, delay, coalition, vague language, and institutional and judicial expansion.

They are entirely capable of repackaging rejected ideas over and over until they get them accepted. Lisbon is a good example of this. Indeed they are capable of retabling a rejected proposal five or ten years later, after the relevant national governments have changed.

So if we are to be able to manage our relationship with the European Union, let alone change it, we need to have a powerful weapon like a referendum.

But what should be the question in such a referendum? It should be a question that would result in a solid majority, because that would give the maximum reinforcement to our negotiating position.

The question should contain four or five specific strategic aims which clearly summarise our objectives.

The sort of things we might include are: recovering control over our criminal justice, asylum and immigration policies; a robust opt-out of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights; serious exemptions to the seemingly endless flood of European regulations which cost the UK economy billions of pounds each year; a recovery of our rights to negotiate on trade; exemption from European interference into trade in services and foreign direct investment rules; and an exemption from any restrictions on our foreign policy.

Some fear this would become an 'in or out' referendum, a decision on whether to continue our membership of the European Union. It would be nothing of the sort. Killing this tired old canard is one of the reasons the referendum question has to be absolutely clear in language and intent.

If our opponents keep trying to make this argument, it will give us an opportunity to highlight the fallacy that there are only two options in Europe: either capitulate to the Franco- German federalist model, or leave. It is clear that this notion of such a vote being an 'in or out' referendum is both craven and wrong.

After winning such a referendum, the position of our negotiating team in Brussels would be the strongest in British history. In effect they would be the advocates of the popular will ranked against the defenders of the current establishment.

That will not be comfortable for the European Commission at all.

Of course it is possible that we will not achieve every change we want.

If that is the outcome, we should give the British people the right to accept or reject it in a further referendum. This is, in effect, using the European Commission's own trick against it. They are notorious, when a referendum delivers what they think is the 'wrong' answer, for asking the question again until they get the 'right' answer.

This 'double referendum' strategy may seem a very tough way of playing these negotiations. It is. But it is hard to see any less robust strategy delivering any significant change.

We should not forget that what we are arguing about is the democratic right of the British people to decide large and important sections of our national policy. It is time that we achieved a stable, reasonable, and civilised settlement of these matters, based firmly on the popular will.

It is interesting that the main media objective in this story is to create a Tory split. So far they have been remarkably unsuccessful in doing so. Dan Hannan and Fraser Nelson were united on Newsnight in saying that a referendum on an existing ratified treaty would be pointless. I did the Nick Ferrari Show yesterday with Stanley Johnson on the issue. They were clearly thinking Stanley would rail against the injustice of it all, but we both expressed the same view. People like David Heathcoat-Amory have taken the same view. Long may it continue!

Meanwhile, we all await David Cameron's speech this afternoon.