Dread threats from the EU will not stop us from returning power to the people
On October 24 2011, David Nuttall MP rose in the Commons to lead a backbench debate triggered by a petition of more than 100,000 voters. The motion called for a referendum on whether we should remain a member of the EU, leave, or renegotiate terms for a new relationship based on trade and cooperation. It resulted in the Tories’ largest post-war rebellion, as 81 Conservatives voted in favour and 15 abstained. Despite the usual dire threats, more than half of David Cameron’s backbenchers were in open revolt. I whipped the rebels for ringleader Douglas Carswell, earning the moniker “rebel commander” from the Guido Fawkes website.
The debate and division list repay close reading. I found myself making an intervention in the company of Labour’s Gisela Stuart and Kate Hoey. Among the Conservatives who rebelled, some went on to high office and, ironically, others eventually lost the whip on the pro-EU side. Nigel Dodds explained how the DUP was the only party united in favour of a referendum. In the debate, much the same people made much the same arguments they had been articulating for years. What had changed?
It was the establishment of the Backbench Business Committee, enabling ordinary MPs to put votable motions before the Commons in response to public demand. And voting crystallises the positions of politicians. Talk is cheap, then you decide and the numbers steer the future. In 2011, too many Tory MPs to gainsay believed power can only be exercised with consent.
When the Maastricht Treaty founded the EU, however, consent was not sought. Referendums on the treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe proceeded until France and the Netherlands said no. As so often, power kept running in the trammels long decided. Materially the same arrangements in the EU Constitution came forward as the Lisbon Treaty to avoid triggering referendums across Europe. The constitution of France was changed to avoid a public vote. The Irish were asked twice. Gordon Brown snuck off to sign it alone, as if we would not notice. The Conservatives opposed the treaty and committed to a referendum up to the point of ratification. Eventually Václav Klaus, then president of the Czech Republic, could hold out no longer, signed it and the deed was done.
When our party said that we would not leave matters there, only one implication could follow: it was time to ask the public to decide in a referendum. That position secured a majority at the 2015 general election and a renegotiation of our membership was attempted, but David Cameron could deliver nothing. So the fundamental factor behind our exit heaves into view. The public asked for change and the powers that be refused.
We will shortly cease to be an EU member state. If sense prevails, our future relationship with the EU will be negotiated successfully. But there’s the problem. Sense hasn’t prevailed in the past and looks at risk today.
When the story set out above drove me from engineering into politics, I read widely into the political economy of liberalism. My favourite thinker became Karl Popper, who lived out the last of his days in what became the constituency I represent, Wycombe. He wrote of utopianism, “even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous – from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows”.
Today our impatient, well-meaning friends in the Commission are making dread threats of non-cooperation and domination. Despite agreeing to negotiate the future relationship this year, now they say it will take too long. We are told trade won’t be possible unless we stay within the regulatory and legal order of the EU. Four times the British people have voted recently not to do that: in a referendum, two general elections and a European Parliament election won by the Brexit Party. Their votes will be honoured.
We go forward now fundamentally to restructure the use of power in the world, better to fit it for a future in which the cost of distance is collapsing. The world has never been smaller and change has never happened faster. But the world will get smaller and more dynamic yet as free people innovate, create and solve the problems which are the inevitable fabric of life in society. We must shake off the ghosts of the past, but we will not forget our history or our ideas. Far from it. We will grow in strength and confidence as stability and unity return and develop.
The UK has now decided who we are and what we wish to become: a free and responsible people achieving great things with our friends. We must hope our friends make allowances and walk with us, for we will now go where we have agreed, with or without them.
We are told trade won’t be possible unless we stay within the regulatory and legal order of the EU. Four times the British people have voted recently not to do that