ORGANISING a fair referendum on the European constitution will be tricky enough anyway without unnecessary rows. The zealots are worried about the wording of the question. But this is almost completely irrelevant. One, the issue has already been largely settled and, two, the wording does not really matter.

The Electoral Commission has a statutory duty to comment on the intelligibility of referendum questions, with guidelines to ensure that the wording is not loaded, leading or lengthy. The commission intervened over the phrasing of the question in the legislation on referendums for elected regional assemblies.

After Lord Blackwell, a Tory peer, proposed a referendum Bill on the EU constitution, the commission recommended in late September that the question should be simply: “Should the UK approve the ‘Treaty Establishing a constitution for Europe’?” The level of public awareness would be “sufficiently high to remove the necessity of having a lengthy preamble”, or even having one at all.

All this is good sense, but there is no evidence from past referendums that the precise wording makes any difference. They are very different from opinion polls, where the exact phraseology of a question matters and can produce contrasting responses on the same issue. This is because polls are instant, whereas, by defintion, a referendum follows a lengthy campaign when the issues will have been lengthily aired, and there will have been a barrage of propaganda.

In practice, however the question is worded, the campaign slogans will be yes or no, and that is what will stick in voters’ minds. The corollary is that voters’ responses to a poll now on the constitution are unlikely to be settled or firm. Opinions may change during the course of a referendum campaign, as happened before the 1975 referendum.

Hence, referendums matter. There are questions about who can vote, and about spending limits. Sam Younger, chairman of the Electoral Commission, has already highlighted inconsistencies in the current legislation, as well as difficulties in policing the spending caps. The law limits the amount that campaigning organisations can spend in the ten-week referendum period (£5 million each for two designated groups, and up to £500,000 each for “permitted participants” who register). But government spending is not limited until the final 28 days of the campaign.

Last month the anti-assembly campaign protested against this advantage for the Government/pro-side in the referendum in the North East, although this had no apparent impact on the big vote against. Mr Younger has called for the current rules to be changed, and they will be challenged in the courts.

The “no” campaign has more money than the “yes” side, which faces an uphill fight. The Government has not yet fought a consistent, high-profile campaign on the constitution, with rare exceptions such as Jack Straw’s speech at the Centre for European Reform conference this week. The lesson of the three-to-two victory for the “yes” side in the French Socialists’ ballot is that intensive campaigning round the country will be required over the next 18 months, rather than just a short-term media offensive. We will all know what is at stake by the spring of 2006.

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