A cross-party coalition of MPs yesterday launched a campaign for a referendum on the new treaty. The group includes Eurosceptics and Europhiles alike. Among its members are three Labour former ministers and Gisela Stuart, the Labour delegate to the convention that helped draw up the doomed constitution. The disparate group of MPs is united by one mission: a referendum was promised by Tony Blair in 2004 and written into Labour's general election manifesto in 2005, but is being prevented by Gordon Brown in 2007; how can he bemoan the lack of participation of citizens in the political process while at the same time denying them a clear say in a treaty that alters the powers of the EU over each member state?
Mr Brown's answer is to say that the proposed treaty is not the same as the constitution, because of the opt-outs which Mr Blair negotiated at the EU summit in June. There is no need for a referendum if the coming intergovernmental conference, which hammers out the fine print of the treaty, honours Britain's position, he says. This is an implicit warning to the EU and allows Mr Brown some room for manoeuvre if the referendum campaign gets traction. To ensure that it does not he has written to union leaders urging them to defer calls for a referendum at the forthcoming TUC conference.
The problem with a referendum lies not in textual analysis of the treaty or in past commitments. It lies in the mixed motives of those who call for one. If the Europhiles have honourable motives for calling for a referendum that they could well lose, the Eurosceptic purpose can only be to erect a tripwire to topple the project of closer European integration. The referendum is not, as they claim, a means in itself, but a means to an end. Their mindset is still mired in the sovereignty debates of the last century. But the world, and more specifically Britain's view of its strategic Atlantic alliance, is changing rapidly. The assumption that the next US president will put a stop to the exceptionalism that marked America's response to September 11, and embrace international cooperation, is untested. As Britain withdraws its forces from Iraq, so too does it withdraw from the assumption that where America goes, Britain follows - Afghanistan notwithstanding. Britain's view of the threats it faces diverges from that of America, which continues to behave as if the threats are external. What happens in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan has a direct pipeline, through broadband, into British homes. Britain, like Germany, is grappling with the problem of how disparate conflicts around the world have the capacity to radicalise citizens with no ethnic or national connection to them.
The list of common causes with Europe that Britain is rediscovering does not end there. Resurgent Russian nationalism, energy security, global warming, immigration, migrant workers - all act as powerful gravitational forces pulling Britain closer to the continent. Those campaigning to wreck a settlement designed to make the EU more efficient in its decision-making have a duty to tell us how British interests would be served by a looser and bigger union of member states and by a weaker, more isolationist America.