Not The EU Referendum Bill

No, we do not need some gimmick of a Referendum Bill, to be published whenever you like, but to be introduced only if David Cameron won the 2015 General Election, which he is not going to do. It has nothing to do with the decamping to UKIP of half the Shire Tory vote at local elections, a very small percentage of the eligible or even General Electorate at large, that we need legislation with five, or possibly six, simple clauses.

First, the restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law, and its use to repatriate agricultural policy and to reclaim our historic fishing rights in accordance with international law: 200 miles, or to the median line. Secondly, the requirement that, in order to have any effect in the United Kingdom, all EU law pass through both Houses of Parliament as if it had originated in one or other of them.

Thirdly, the requirement that British Ministers adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard. Fourthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of any ruling of the European Court of Justice or of the European Court of Human Rights unless confirmed by a resolution of the House of Commons, the High Court of Parliament.

Fifthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs certified as politically acceptable by one or more seat-taking members of the House of Commons. Thus, we would no longer subject to the legislative will of Stalinists and Trotskyists, neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura, people who believe the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, or Dutch ultra-Calvinists who will not have women candidates.

And sixthly, if we must, the provision for a referendum on the question, “Do you wish the United Kingdom to remain a member of the European Union?” The first five would come into effect at the same time as this provision, and would not be conditional on that referendum’s outcome. But there is really no need for any of that, and a referendum would certainly result in a Eurofederalist victory after a month of the BBC on the subject.

The appropriate person to move this is the Leader of the Labour Party, with a Labour three-line whip in favour of it and the public warning that the Whip would be withdrawn from any remaining Blairite ultra who failed to comply. That ought not to be a problem: of the three members whom Labour MPs have just elected to the party’s National Executive Committee, two are Dennis Skinner and Dame Margaret Beckett; the third, Steve Rotheram, is far from a federalist; and nor was the only other nominated candidate, Yasmin Qureshi. One third of Labour MPs voted to be chaired by John Cryer. Every Labour MP without exception has voted for a real-terms reduction in the British contribution to the EU Budget, joined by fewer Conservative rebels than there are Liberal Democrat MPs.

The Liberal Democrats set great store by decentralisation, transparency and democracy, and they represent many areas badly affected by the Common Fisheries Policy. The Liberals were staunch free traders who were as opposed the Soviet Bloc as they were to Far Right regimes in Latin America and Southern Africa, while the SDP’s reasons for secession from Labour included both calls for protectionism and the rise of antidemocratic extremism. (Both the Liberal Party and, on a much smaller scale, the SDP still exist, and both are now highly critical of the EU.)

The SDLP takes the Labour Whip, the Alliance Party is allied to the Lib Dems, the Greens are staunchly anti-EU, so is the DUP, and the one other Unionist is close to Labour. The SNP and Plaid Cymru can hardly believe in independence for Scotland, greater autonomy for Wales, yet vote against the return to Westminster of the powers that they wish to transfer thence to Edinburgh or Cardiff; the SNP also has the fishing issue to consider. Even any remaining Conservatives who wanted to certify the European People’s Party as politically acceptable might be brought on board.

Leaving those fabled creatures, backbench Tory Eurosceptics. It is high time that their bluff was called. This is how to do it. It would also kill off UKIP overnight. But that would be a fringe of a fringe benefit.