Referendum News

One of the tricks of politics, it seems to me, is that one has to be good at spotting what is and what is not a fertile field.

As a young man I used to drive about the Fens of what was then called Huntingdonshire (until a Conservative government, if you will believe it, came along one day and told us we were now living in Cambridgeshire, which we had always thought was the county next door). You had to keep an extra look out as all the farmers in their Land Rovers would also be out and about. You always knew who the farmers were: there would be a large hairy arm resting on the ledge of the open driver's window and the vehicle would be driven erratically, not because the farmer had been at the sauce since daybreak but because he was not looking at the road as he drove along. Instead he was scrutinizing the crops growing on either side of the road, judging what had been sown, how far along it was, whether his neighbour had sprayed for this or that yet and so on.

Politicians would do well to emulate the Good Old Boys of the Fen. Instead of rushing to opine on every subject under the sun, spend some time looking about you for the fertile fields and, having examined their condition, go back to your own farm and apply some of what you have seen to your own crops.

So, today we have some pretty clear evidence from polls that when it comes to Europe, the Conservative party is marching in step with the wider public. Now is an ideal moment to seize control of this particular battlefield. A referendum will be popular, not least because it will enable the British people to let off steam. Far too often the political elite is seen as detached from and not listening to the electorate. All the main parties subscribe to the view that we must be in rather than out of the EU which means that those of us who hate the EU and all its Imperial Works are deprived, disenfranchised if you will, on the European issue that is most important.

Only the Scots Junta and its English Catspaws actually say that the present Constitutional Treaty does not reintroduce the Constitution that was so resoundingly rejected by the discerning citizens of France and the Netherlands (and would have been here if Vanity Blair had not gutlessly shuffled out of his promise to us to hold a referendum). It is difficult to believe that this group of educated people actually believes that guff.

As I noted yesterday, some Labour MPs are beginning to wake up to the fact that the Zombie-like Mantra "The Constitution is dead" is playing very badly at the theatre of public opinion. Frank Field, who, like the inestimable Kate Hoey, ought to be poached for a safe Tory seat forthwith, has written a quite excellent article in today's Daily Telegraph (here) in which he makes the case for the politics of demanding a referendum. All who care about this issue should read it.

One problem for those of us who are passionate about defeating this Treaty is that the document that they have produced is comprehensible only by the most obscurantist of unelected Eurocrats and dishonest EuroNabobs and EuroMafia. Now comes the news, and breathtakingly scandalous it is too, that an the only version available at present is in French. Mysteriously no copy in English will be available for some time yet and the EuroNabobery have deliberately dispensed with an official version in English or German. You do not need a Nobel prize in Nuclear Physics to work out why that has been done. Not only do they make the Treaty incomprehensible but they make it available only in incomprehensible French.

They doubtless laughed until they cried at that one over their Foie Gras and Sauternes in the Restaurant de L'Auge (look it up: it's worth it!) over in Brussels Place de La Porcherie (that too folks!). The problem is that we understand perfectly well what is going on here: The EuroNabobery want to give the British people as little time as possible to read and understand their Treaty so as best to forestall the assault upon it. Sadly our Quisling Government neither protests nor does terribly much about this state of affairs.

In the meantime the party should be courting UKIP voters by pointing out to them that the only way to achieve the referendum we so desperately need will be to bite their tongues and vote Conservative at the next General Election. They can do whatever they want at the next Euro Election, though one would prefer they work within the Tory Party to secure a firmly 'out of the EU' policy. But vote Tory at the General Election. If Mr. Cameron were to couple this with a promise to hold a referendum within six months of taking office, the polls would react accordingly.

Macavity will, of course, try to portray this as a return to old themes. I believe that that is a serious misjudgement on his part. The public actually wants this referendum and does not trust him on this issue and will not see it as the Tory party reopening old wounds.

I would also like to see a considered return to the phrase "whole-hearted consent of the British people" which was the mantra that underpinned the Referendum of 1975 as politicians promised not to do anything without such consent. It is, if one thinks about it, a rapier-like phrase that can be used at every turn. If every time Macavity refuses to give us a referendum his interlocutor bangs on about getting such consent, he will begin to look and sound utterly undemocratic, anti-democratic even.

Meanwhile Mr. Cameron must be seen to be in control of his party. What better way than to bring to heel the EuroMafia of Clarke, Patten, Hurd and Heseltine whose snidey anti-referendum comments are wheeled out against the Conservatives by the BBC every time any of them tries to make the case for a referendum. Perhaps we could send Lord Tebbit round to have a quiet word in their shell-like ears......

Oh to be a fly at that little rendezvous!