Referendum News

Fresh Reasons for a Referendum

The BBC reports here that it has discovered a surreptitious change which has been made to the so-called "amending" treaty at the behest of the French (who else?). The Huntsman asserts that this change is one which not only goes to the heart of the original purpose of the EU but is fundamentally subversive of the whole-hearted consent given by the people of the United Kingdom at the 1975 referendum to our membership of the then Common Market.


Since the early 1970s British policy has set its face against propping up ailing industries or companies with masses of state aid, a policy which has subsisted to this day, with the dishonourable exception of the money given for squalid electoral reasons by Labour to the moribund Rover concern at the time of the 2005 election.

At the 1975 referendum, the European project was sold to us as creating a level playing field in terms of trade and competition (no mention was ever made of handing over such things as immigration, employment, justice and foreign policy to Brussels, as you might imagine) which would be in the natural national interest of the UK which espouses free trade and and end to protectionism.

Now that is to be abandoned. Protectionist states such as France and Italy will take this a a legal green light to pump its ailing industries with lots of loot to keep them afloat. It will be used to keep British and other overseas companies excluded from French markets. And the ECJ will go along with it, abandoning its former firm stance against such destruction of the level playing field.

The British people have been betrayed by this. A fundamental plank for the securing of our consent to the EU is to be destroyed. Regardless of Blair's so-called 'red lines' this change must trigger not just a referendum on further integration but on the continued membership of the United Kingdom in the EU.