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TRUST IN PARLIAMENT
It is the job of politicians to speak for the people. Sometimes they must wonder why they bother. Even Mrs Thatcher may have wondered this if, on her way back from Rome last Sunday, she had time to read the Harris poll on attitudes to Europe which was published in the Observer. Roughly half the British people, it sug- gested, would have no objection to the disappearance of the pound sterling. Near- ly. half of them (45 per cent) would not mind if their British passports were re- placed by European ones. A much larger proportion (62 per cent) said they wished the United Kingdom to remain a separate nation; the poll did not ask, unfortunately, what they understood Separateness or nationhood to mean. But it did try to measure their understanding of the EEC: 22 per cent, it discovered, thought that Turkey was a member, and 4 per cent believed that Egypt was as well. It would be interesting to correlate these figures with the statistics for the holiday destinations of British tourists; this might confirm the suspicion that 'Europe', to the average Briton, is the place advertised in holiday brochures. It is where using foreign money is fun, because all money is spend- ing money; it is where one sleeps in hotels and dines in restaurants. Mrs Thatcher may have complained that her fellow sum- miteers were living in never-never land: but that is exactly what Europe is to many of her own electorate, which is why they would not mind living there too.
These not entirely cynical thoughts should give some pause to those politicians who may be tempted by the idea of a referendum on Europe. It is an idea which appeals to anti-federalists, who imagine that a referendum would finally give Mrs
to the absolute mandate she needs 1.(3 oppose the absorption of Britain into a back States of Europe. They should look back at the history of the 1975 referendum cLainPaign, and remind themselves of just how easy it was, in the end, to bamboozle lie. Public. They should remember the official leaflet, delivered to every house in e,. land, stating that 'no important new the can be decided in Brussels without the e consent of a British minister', and that "le 'threat' of 'movement towards an
Economic and Monetary Union' had 'been removed'. They should remember too the ubiquitous posters showing pictures of children with the heartstring-tugging cap- tion, 'Europe: you owe it to your grand- children'. Today's posters might say, `Europe: you owe it to your vacations'. One cannot sound these warning notes without being accused, inevitably, of being anti-democratic. Should we not trust the people? Of course we should; but the burden of our trust should be that we trust them to elect representatives to make decisions on their behalf. There is some- thing illogical about the defenders of the powers of Parliament demanding that those powers be pre-empted by the people. Proponents of a referendum will point out, rightly, that European political union is a matter quite unlike the ordinary run of governmental or legislative issues, since it will involve an irrevocable transfer of sovereignty. There is nothing wrong with saying that if Parliament ever did decide to extinguish itself in this way, it would then be right to demand that the decision be ratified by the people of Britain in a referendum. But this is not the same as saying that the decision should be pre- empted by a referendum in advance.
That distinction, although important in principle, would inevitably become blurred in practice, as the prospect of an eventual referendum would alter the ways in which politicians would behave. If Mrs Thatch- er's advisers think it would be useful to suspend the possibility of a referendum like a sword of Damocles over the Inter- Governmental Conferences which begin next month, then they should think again: it is over her head that the blade would hang. Her opponents round the conference table would know that instead of trying to accommodate her views, they could always toughen up their own proposals, provided they also toughened up their threats about how Britain would be made to suffer economically if it excluded itself from the next phase of European union.
For the fatal flaw of any referendum on these matters is that it will be impossible to give the people a choice of equally clear alternatives. If they are asked, 'Do you want Britain to sign the new Treaty?' they will know what they are voting for if they vote 'Yes': but a 'No' vote will be a vote for a future which will be described to them mainly in terms of unverifiable threats. And those threats would in turn prejudice the crucial negotiations between Britain and Europe which would follow.
We must trust the people in the end; but the people must trust their elected leaders first. On this issue at least, their trust in Mrs Thatcher will not be misplaced.
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