LABOUR ON ELM STREET

A New Labour nightmare: Fear of the press has put Tony Blair on the wrong side of the referendum argument (The Economist, May 29th 2003)

Thanks to Mr Blair's commitment to hold a referendum before joining the single currency, there has been a kind of armed truce between the government and the anti-European press. Each has known that they might one day come to blows over the euro. But as long as Gordon Brown was Keeper of the Five Tests, it has seemed a fairly distant prospect, even as the chancellor's verdict, to be delivered on June 9th, draws near.

However, this informal non-aggression pact has had two important consequences. The first is that it probably lulled the government into thinking that some of the heat had gone out of Europe as an issue, particularly as even the Tories no longer seemed very keen to talk about it. The second is that it convinced Mr Blair that he must do everything to avoid his European policy being again exposed to the loose cannon of referendum politics.

Once a referendum was conceded on anything to do with Europe, Mr Blair reasoned, the Europhobic press could be relied on to poison the argument so thoroughly that even the most moderately integrationist proposal would stand little chance of gaining support. Promising a vote on the euro was a mistake not to be repeated. It followed that if Britain was to play a positive role in designing a new constitution for the European Union the best thing was to pretend that nothing very important was going on in Brussels. The national interest was therefore perfectly safe in ministerial hands.

Given the kind of coverage that the latest draft of the constitution has been getting this week??Death knell for democracy?, screamed the Daily Mail; ?The end of our nation?, bellowed the Sun? it was entirely understandable, if naive, that Mr Blair should have hoped that this ruse might work. Even without this level of hysteria, it would still be clear to most people who can be bothered to look at the thing that the government is being economical with the truth in describing the constitution as a mere ?tidying up? of existing treaties. And having enthusiastically conjured up referendums to decide on everything from Scottish and Welsh devolution to whether or not Hartlepool would like to be run by a mayor, to many it also seems a bit rich now to be talking sonorously about upholding the principles of parliamentary democracy.

If the Tories want to return to power with their honor intact, they should hammer away at the EU, instead of wingeing on about the war like a pack of Chamberlainian throwbacks. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 5, 2003 8:28 AM