European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am grateful to Comrade Zhou for raising that point, but it is important to accept the context in which the exact wording was written. Let us remember why we did what we did. The Prime Minister made a statement indicating that there would be a referendum on whatever appeared in the document, in order to park the issue before the general election. When the document appeared, of course the party said, ““This is the document on which we will have a referendum.”” The Prime Minister could hardly say ““We’ll have a referendum”” on 20 April, and then say, once he saw the document, ““No, we will not have a referendum.”” Of course the one followed on from the other. He would have said that there would be a referendum, and the manifesto would have reflected that we were going to have a referendum on the document, whatever was in the document. It is not fair or true to say that a referendum would have been ruled out, had the current document been produced at the time.