The Referendum We Don't Need, And The One We Do

Today's Telegraph piece, on which comments are welcome over there as well as here:

Brace yourselves. David Miliband is right. It is an extreme position to want a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. But not in the way that he presumably has in mind. Rather, because it is a Eurofederalist position. That is why David Cameron supports it.

If Cameron really were against the Lisbon Treaty, then he would have put down Second and Third Reading Amendments rejecting it because of its content, without mentioning a referendum. And he would now be promising not to ratify it, again without any need of a referendum. We all know why he isn’t. He wants to hand the decision to the BBC during the month leading up to a referendum, thereby guaranteeing a Yes vote. The party of the Treaty of Rome, of Thatcher’s Single European Act and of the Maastricht Treaty has not changed one bit. It never will. It can’t.

Meanwhile, there is apparently to be a referendum in Scotland on independence. I beg your pardon, but the United Kingdom is my country, and no one has the right to take it away from me. There is no precedent for a referendum on secession, to which devolution does not compare. The continued existence of the state is a matter for the whole state. And there is no state in the United Kingdom except the United Kingdom. That is a fact. Who is to vote in this proposed referendum in Scotland? Everyone on the electoral register? Which one? For local, European and Holyrood elections, any resident EU citizen can be registered. Are they to have a vote on the continued existence of my country? While I have no vote?

There is no West Lothian Question. It does not exist. The Parliament of the United Kingdom reserves the right to legislate in any policy area for any part of the United Kingdom. It doesn’t have to do so. It merely has to be able to do so. And it is. An English Parliament is a truly awful idea, anyway, and I don’t know why so many Tories are so keen on it. It would only be under Tory control about half the time even if it were elected entirely by First Past The Post, which it wouldn’t be.

If an independence referendum must be held at all, whether in Scotland alone or throughout this single state, and at enormous cost in this period of enormous economic hardship, then there should be an option of returning to the pre-devolution situation. Not least to expose the Tories for failing to campaign for it.