Tony Blair scores “nul points”. His handling of the twin issues of the euro and the European constitution has been a disaster. He has never been frank about the choices, never put the choices before the British people, never put them squarely before his European partners. He has created nothing but angry confusion and a crisis of confidence.
The choice is the same in both cases: it is the choice between self-government and European government. In the case of the euro, the choice is between United Kingdom interest rates being set by the Bank of England in the light of British economic needs, or by the European Central Bank in the light of general European circumstances. In the past three years Britain has outperformed Germany because we control our own rates and they do not.
In the case of the constitution, the choice is between British self-government or European government in many areas — law, foreign affairs, defence, economic policy, home affairs, immigration, crime, health, education, environment, pensions and so on. Will we subordinate our government to the European system, or do we still have confidence in democratic self-government? That is the question.
The issue of democracy has been put forcefully by Tony Benn. Will we keep the right to remove governments which have lost our confidence? Even the Bank of England owes its powers to the House of Commons; like the judiciary, the Bank is a British institution ultimately answerable to the British electorate. The other main functions of government are more directly answerable.
British independence would not survive the constitution which is to be presented as a draft treaty to the Thessaloniki summit on June 20. That constitution, even after amendments, will create a single European state as a legal entity, whose law will be supreme over national laws, with a common foreign and defence policy, substantial co-ordination in economic policy and exclusive or overriding powers in almost all other areas of government. This Europe will be a giant in powers but a dwarf in democracy. Amendments may make this constitution a little more illiberal or a little less, but they will not change its basic character. It is intended to create a bureaucratic superstate.
Tony Blair has never told the British people either what was contemplated, or what he would prefer. He is now, at the last minute, trying to pull back some of the more extreme provisions of European power. In the drafting committee, the Labour MP Gisela Stuart is fighting to win back lost ground, and may achieve the sort of gains we won in the First World War — a few hundred yards of recaptured trenches.
There could have been an alternative British draft constitution, defining the areas in which the nation states would retain exclusive rights. That opportunity was missed. Insofar as such proposals were made, they were put by David Heathcoat-Amory, a Conservative, with no backing from the British negotiator, Peter Hain; they were arrogantly brushed aside by the chairman, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. Tony Blair did make an extravagant speech, last November in Cardiff, which supported the idea of “more Europe, not less”. The constitution will offer much more Europe than the British can stomach.
The Prime Minister’s failure has put everyone in a false position. The other Europeans have been negotiating a centralist constitution which they thought would be largely acceptable to the British Government. They had no reason to think that Peter Hain, who — absurdly — called the great new constitution for Europe “a tidying up operation”, would fight for British independence. Nor did he. They knew from the start that Tony Blair did not want to hold a referendum on the outcome. Blair still thinks that would be a “nonsense”, which shows how out of touch he has become in Downing Street.
The Europeans, dominated by the Paris-Brussels-Berlin axis, went ahead and negotiated between themselves a draft constitution for a United States of Europe, thinking that they were dealing with a defeatist but mildly Euro-fanatic British Government. They forgot about the British people, though most European governments were arranging to give their own people the referendum we are to be denied.
They are now beginning to realise that a new constitution for Europe is not a matter that can just be agreed at the official level. The British people have pricked up their ears; they do not like what they hear. They certainly do not like to be told by Hain and Blair that they will not be consulted and that they are to be refused a referendum, after referendums on less important subjects.
The Prime Minister has forgotten about British independence. His failure has misled the other Europeans and postponed the awakening of the British people. He has also failed to understand the necessity of consent. A constitution is a contract between a people and their government. No contract is valid without consent, which must be obtained before it is signed, or, in the case of the constitution treaty, before it is ratified. No such consent exists and Tony Blair is determined to avoid seeking it.
This requirement for consent is to be found in British common law, in the law of the US, even in the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church. The Prime Minister is not free to choose whether or not to seek consent on the constitution. There seems to be no way except a referendum by which he can demonstrate that consent has been given. The new constitution will not be valid without clear consent, even if ratified by Parliament.
The other Europeans would be wise to insist on full consent, by all the member states, as Romano Prodi, the President of the European Commission, has proposed. The British constitutional tradition goes back to the 1689 settlement and the writings of John Locke. In his view, which was followed by the Americans in 1776, no constitution is valid without the consent of the people.
Indeed, Locke could scarcely have put it more sharply. “The delivery of the people into the subjection of foreign power, either by the Prince or by the Legislative, is certainly a change of the Legislative, and so a Dissolution of the Government. For the end why people entered into society, being to be preserved one entire, free, independent, society, to be governed by its own laws; this is lost, whenever they are given up into the power of another.”
No consent; no valid ratification. No valid ratification; no national commitment. There would follow a whirligig of constitutions and revolutions. This is what has happened in France. After the turmoils of the French Revolution, which themselves followed a failed attempt to reform the old French Constitution, Napoleon declared himself First Consul for life in 1802. In the subsequent 200 years France has had at least 11 constitutions. No French constitution in this period has won the undivided loyalty of the French people. Britain does not want to imitate the agonies of France.
In any case, Tony Blair is committed to a referendum on the euro, sooner or later. The two issues cannot be separated. Both form parts of the project of “ever closer union”. The British do not want “ever closer union”. Suppose that Blair did abuse his power and tried to ratify the European constitution without popular consent, he would still face the euro referendum, and an angry people. Nothing could make a massive defeat on the euro more certain.
When the draft constitution is finally published the British people will see it as a whole. They will then have to decide whether it is wholly acceptable, acceptable subject to amendment, or represents a completely unacceptable loss of self-government. The purpose of the draft matters even more than the detail. It is deficient in democratic control, and is designed to create a single European state. Public opinion polls all suggest that the British would repudiate such a constitution.
Certainly the demand for a referendum is growing every day as people learn — often with horror — what the draft may contain. I think it will not be possible for the Prime Minister to avoid a referendum on any constitution which is similar to current proposals. He would be paddling his canoe up Niagara. I doubt whether there will be a majority in the House of Lords to ratify without a referendum, but public opinion matters much more than that. The British still want “to be preserved one entire, free, independent, society, to be governed by its own laws”. That will not be on offer in Thessaloniki on June 20.
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