European Union (Amendment) Bill

I thought that the Committee would enjoy that. I support these amendments. From UKIP’s point of view, a referendum on the Lisbon treaty is second best. However, even if we were to get such a referendum and win it, it is difficult to see how we would be wholly released from our ensnarement in the project of European integration. Since the leaders of all three main political parties favour staying in the European Union, at any cost it would seem, it is not difficult to foresee the sort of things that would happen straight after the British people had voted down this treaty by a massive majority, as of course they would if given the chance. The first thing that would happen is that the Prime Minister would crawl off to Brussels with his tail between his legs to patch up the situation as best he could and to beg for mercy from our Eurocratic masters. He would be supported in this degrading venture by the Liberal Democrats, with, I suspect, the Conservatives making uncertain noises in the wings. None of them would say that they wanted to take the opportunity of the British people’s expression of their view to leave the European Union. There would then be two probable ways forward. First, the Eurocrats might agree that the treaty could not go ahead without British participation and that, therefore, another period of reflection was called for, as it was after the French and Dutch rejections of the constitution. The project would carry on pretty well regardless, stretching clauses in the existing treaty to a credibility achieved only by the judicial activism of the Luxembourg Court. After all, Brussels legislated 25 per cent faster after the French and Dutch rejections than it did before. The claim that the EU cannot function without this treaty, given all its new members, will prove just as deceitful this time as it did last time. Another treaty will probably be slowly cooked up. It might be more beguiling and even more confusing than this one, giving even greater scope for development after it is passed. That is one way forward. The other way forward is that a special protocol will somehow be cooked up to accommodate the wishes of the surly and ungrateful British people. The other countries will go ahead with the treaty. Over time, the judgments of the Court will wear us down piecemeal and we will gradually be wholly devoured by the corrupt octopus. Members of the Committee who are nervous of a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, because they fear that it might lead to our early departure from the European Union, may relax. That will not happen, which is why we say that a referendum on Lisbon is second best and why we want a referendum on whether we stay in or leave the European Union. I shall speak to that liberating prospect under Amendment No. 167A. Of course, a referendum on Lisbon would be better than nothing. From our point of view, it would have two great advantages. First, the campaign would at last enlighten the British people as to the true extent of their entrapment in this project of European integration. It would enlighten them as to its colossal economic cost and the burdens that it places on them in their trade with the great wide world outside the sclerotic European economy. That would be a step in the right direction. Secondly, in spite of the fact that the project would somehow struggle on, the UK’s rejection of the treaty might cause a genuine debate in Brussels, from which some genuine reform might emerge. Brussels might even be forced to revisit the laudable aim of the Laeken declaration of bringing Europe closer to the people, whereas the constitution that emerged from that declaration and this treaty, which mirrors it precisely, go in the opposite direction. I fear that this beast in Brussels is not that sort of animal. An octopus does not easily become a dolphin, but it might, just a little bit. Anyway, the confusion would be another step in the right direction. I support the amendment.