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Prepare For A Euro-Fudge?
How will the Prime Minister wriggle his obligation to call a referendum on the EU Constitution?
Yesterday, conservative newspapers were fishing around desperately for stories likely to boost the sinking morale of Tories and their supporters. Things looked slightly better today, though, as a series of council election votes showed Tories doing better than expected. Indeed, the results led some reporters to speculate that plans for a snap election in November could be shelved.
Tories should take heart that for all his strategic triumph over the opposition, Brown's self-confidence must be a fragile thing if it surges and collapses so easily in the face of opinion poll fluctuations. Labour insiders say that the famously cautious PM is agonising over whether to leap for an election now, with his ratings high but nervy, or wait, when he may have more solid support, but could face an economic downturn.
There's also the issue of Europe.
For all that Brown and his cabinet wish they could magic the issue of the EU referendum away, it isn't going anywhere. Few buy the Labour line that as Britain's "red lines" are secure, the treaty is substantially different from the Constitution rejected by the French and Dutch in 2005. Indeed, thanks to Internet campaigns, if anything civilians are better clued-up than many government spokesmen and their cheerleaders in the press. It's easy to find any number of quotes from EU leaders judging that the current treaty is anywhere between 95 and 99 percent identical to the previous version.
Brown's people are clearly using the DNA argument. Humans shared 90-odd percent of their genetic make-up with moths, but we're completely different organisms. The same isn't true, unfortunately, of European treaties.
Indeed, apart from the possibility that another EU nation - the Irish, the Danes, the Czechs or the Dutch - rejects the treaty, there isn't really a positive outcome for the PM.
Now comes news that both Scotland and Northern Ireland are considering their own "non-binding" "consultative polls" on the treaty.
Should Scotland and Ulster vote against the EU Constitution (and this outcome is far from guaranteed), it will prove embarrassing for the PM (who is a Scot) and intensify calls for a referendum for the rest of the UK. Several small villages are already calling their own consultative polls on the treaty.
If however the Scots and Irish vote for the treaty, supporters of the Constitution may press Brown to stand up to Europhobia, and call a poll.
It's hard to imagine the stubborn, cautious Brown being pushed in this direction, though.
Basically, supporters of the Constitution don't want a referendum because they believe they will lose it (Tony Blair was convinced he could persuade Britain to vote Yes). They don't think their arguments or the treaty itself is flawed. On the contrary, Europhiles believe they won't get a fair hearing in any Constitutional debate, with popular newspapers like the Sun and the Daily Mail and influential broadsheets such as the Telegraph and the Times lining up against it. (On the other side, pro-EU media outlets include the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Mirror, the Independent and a little startup broadcast operation called the BBC.)
Supporters of the EU reckon that the European debate in Britain has been poisoned by xenophobia and tabloid nationalism, much of it orchestrated by arch-Europhobe Rupert Murdoch. They argue that if the Referendum is lost, it would seriously harm Britain's position in Europe and with it British trade with the continent. They add that there are plenty in the EU who would be delighted to see the back of the Brits, and rejecting the Constitution might give them the chance to put right the enormous mistake of allowing the UK to join the Union in the first place.
Where does Brown stand? Well, despite spending much of the past five years sniping at Brussels, and much of the previous five preventing Blair from signing up to the single currency, Brown is no Eurosceptic.
Unlike Blair, he just doesn't think Europe is that important. Brown would like the issue to go away, quite frankly. A while ago, he thought it no big deal if Britain voted against the Constitution. Now, with a vote being called on his watch - and one which he would be obliged to campaign in - he's turned against it. Brown knows he isn't loved by the British: He didn't have a honeymoon period as such, but has enjoyed some grudging respect. Does he really want to expend valuable political capital on a referendum - even while that capital is being eaten up by his refusal to call a vote?
Perhaps the smart money could go on some kind of fudge. Wonder how the Chancellor's famously enormous brain is working over that one...
