BRITAIN:CONSERVATIVE PARTY leader David Cameron will refuse to heed growing calls from party grassroots for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty following Ireland's Yes vote.
The issue of Europe is looming heavily over the party’s annual conference, one that Mr Cameron wants to use instead to focus on the Conservatives’ policies to cut spending and reform education and the welfare state.
However, in a bid to assuage Tory opposition to the EU, Cameron will demand the return of powers over employment legislation from Brussels, if his party wins in next year’s election. “We think the social and employment legislation ought to be determined nationally rather than at a European level,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr in a television interview yesterday.
Cameron has so far insisted he would hold a referendum on Lisbon and campaign for its rejection if the document is not ratified by all member states – Poland and the Czech Republic have still to do so, by the election.
However, his party membership is clearly unhappy with the line he has adopted. Eight out of 10 party voters polled by a Tory-supporting website ConservativeHome.com want a referendum, even if the treaty has been approved by everyone else at the next election.
Nearly 40 per cent of the Tories questioned favour the UK leaving the EU altogether. Meanwhile, another poll by YouGov for a centre-left pressure group called Compass showed 75 per cent of Tory voters want a referendum.
“I don’t want to say anything or do anything now that would undermine or prejudice what is happening in other countries where they are still debating whether to ratify this treaty. That is a very sensible thing to do,” he said.
“There were three countries that it hadn’t been ratified in: Ireland, the Czech Republic and Poland. There are now two, so I don’t see any reason to change our approach because one of those has decided to ratify.
“I think people will understand this argument that, while there are other countries actually delaying the implementation of this treaty, don’t do anything or say anything that stops them from doing that,” he said.
MPs and other leading figures were contacted by Cameron on Saturday to make it clear he would not go further during this week’s Manchester conference, urging them not to make Europe the main issue of the gathering.
However, Tory opposition has been fuelled by the prospect that former Labour prime minister Tony Blair could get the new post of EU president of the European Council at the upcoming Brussels summit of EU leaders.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson said in a newspaper interview: “If we are faced with the prospect of Tony Blair suddenly emerging, suddenly pupating into an intergalactic spokesman for Europe, then I think the British people deserve a say on it.
“I do think it would be right for such a debate to be held, particularly if the upshot of the Lisbon Treaty is going to produce president Blair,” said Johnson, who is representing the views of the party’s grassroots.
The Lisbon issue is unlikely to be voiced from the main stage of the carefully organised conference, though it will feature heavily at a number of fringe meetings, including one organised by Open Europe. The eurosceptic Bruges group, which is closely tied to many Conservatives MPs, said if he was serious about becoming prime minister, Cameron must show “leadership and announce that a retrospective referendum will be held in Britain”.
Eurosceptic Tory MEP Daniel Hannon insisted a Europe debate within the party would not open the type of wounds that effectively destroyed John Major’s premiership in the early 1990s.
“This is not the Conservative party of the past. Everyone I speak to here is broadly opposed to Europe and they want a referendum, if not on the Lisbon Treaty then on Europe more generally,” he told Sky News.
However, former British EU commissioner Leon Brittan, who, along with others such as Ken Clarke, are strong supporters of Britain’s EU membership, said it would be ludicrous to hold a Lisbon referendum if all other states had ratified.
“You cannot expect the others to untangle the whole treaty. It would be a great error for a new British government to get into this position,” said Brittan in an interview.