NEXT MONTH there will be historic votes both in Britain and France; the British general election on May 5 and the French referendum on the European constitutional treaty on May 29. In both countries the Government is in favour of the European constitution and supports ratification. In Britain, the Conservatives are the only major party opposed to the constitutional treaty.

In France, the past three months have seen a large and rapid swing of opinion against the constitution. Earlier in the year the “Yes” vote had a majority of 60 to 40 per cent in the polls; that has been reversed and the “No” campaign is now in a 60 to 40 majority. In Britain, where the European issue has played hardly any part in the election campaign, there has been a small increase in the Government’s lead, from around 5 to 6 per cent. The European issue has moved public opinion massively in France, but the opposition campaign in Britain has so far failed to prevent a small seepage of support back to Labour.

The European issue has gripped the imagination of France. If there had been a similar 20 per cent swing in Britain, the Conservatives would be in the lead by a wide margin. This actually happened last June in the European elections. The Conservatives came comfortably first. The combined Eurosceptic vote, including both Conservative and the UKIP, won 45 per cent of the vote to Labour’s 23 per cent.

Europe is a big issue for Britain and for France. Whatever view one takes of the constitutional treaty, it needs to be argued through. The United Kingdom cannot lose its liberty in a fit of mere absent-mindedness.

It is argued, mainly by the small minority of Conservative Euro-extremists, that voters are not interested in Europe, that William Hague’s Eurosceptic campaign in 2001 did not help him much, and that the electorate is content to leave the euro and the constitutional treaty to future referendums. Since the Conservatives have refrained from campaigning on the European issue, we may never know whether these arguments are valid. I doubt it.

I was reporting on the 2001 general election mainly in the West Midlands, but also in Scotland and the West Country. My view is that the opinion polls at the time did reflect some reality, though they always exaggerated the Labour lead. They recorded a huge Labour lead in the middle of the campaign, whittled down in the last ten days when William Hague was emphasising the issue of the euro. On May 24, MORI in The Times gave Labour a 25-point lead; on June 7 Labour won the election but with only a nine-point lead. MORI may have been exaggerating, but there probably was a big swing to the Tories during the European phase of Hague’s election campaign.

I do not believe that British voters do not care whether they become a province of a European superstate, whether European integration is taken further, whether European law is given complete constitutional priority over British law or whether Britain remains a self-governing democracy.

I can remember 1940; we did not then have time for the general election that was due. We certainly would not have thought then that the most important political issues were asylum-seekers and council tax. Yet 1940, if by more violent means, raised the same issue as the constitutional treaty — is the United Kingdom to remain an independent, democratic, self-governing country, or are we to become part of a European superstate?

None of the three main parties is campaigning on this issue. I quite understand why the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats do not do so. They are both in favour of joining the single currency, with the loss of control of our own currency and interest rates, and of ratifying the constitutional treaty, with the loss of our national independence. They know that these policies are extremely unpopular.

Last June the European election gave the Lib Dems only 15 per cent of the vote, in fourth place below the UKIP. Yet on the same day, in the same polling stations, the Lib Dems won 30 per cent of the vote in the local government elections. As their European policies lost the Lib Dems half their support, they are wise not to talk about them. The same is true for Labour.

It is the Conservative failure to make an election issue of Europe that is impossible to explain. The Conservative policies are perfectly sound. They are against joining the euro, which in principle the Government wants to do. They are against ratifying the constitutional treaty, which the Prime Minister has already signed. They want to recover powers from Europe, particularly in fisheries and immigration.

The Conservatives want to remain inside the European Community, as I do, but they want to limit Europe’s pretensions. They are opposed both to the superstate and to the constitution on which the superstate would be based. The Conservative approach to Europe is infinitely preferable to that of Labour or the Lib Dems, even for the most moderate Eurosceptic, indeed for any democrat. Why are the Conservatives not talking about their most popular and important policy?

Perhaps the reason is that there has been some internal Tory agreement not to mention Europe; perhaps the agenda has been set by the dreaded focus groups, a reliable recipe for political imbecility.

Perhaps their Australian campaign director, Lynton Crosby, has told the Tories to keep it simple and revolve their mantra of the five issues, like a Tibetan prayer wheel. It is not too late. We should not leave our freedom to be decided by the French referendum, or by some future British referendums which may be micro-managed by Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson, the twins of darkness. We should take the decision for liberty every time it presents itself. Labour and the Lib Dems want to give up British independence; the Conservatives want to keep it. That is the central fact of this general election. For many people, it would justify a vote.

Join the Debate

Send your e-mails to debate@thetimes.co.uk

Times Recommends

• It’s the beginning of the affair
• Afghanistan: still a price worth paying
• Heroes of the downtrodden