DEMANDS BY British Conservatives for a Lisbon Treaty referendum in the United Kingdom are set to be aired today, despite party leader David Cameron’s bid to ensure that the EU does not overshadow the party’s final conference before the general election.
Leading Tory MEPs and their European Parliament allies drawn from mostly eastern European states will speak at a fringe meeting on the margins of the Conservatives’ conference in Manchester.
However, rank-and-file members are expected to voice strong support for a Lisbon referendum, regardless of whether Poland and the Czech Republic have ratified the document before the election.
Up to now Mr Cameron has insisted that he will call a referendum and campaign against Lisbon if it has not been brought into force by the time the British election is held in May. But he has not made clear what he would do if it is by then law.
In a bid to assuage delegates’ feelings, shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said there was “a very strong sense” in the party that they “simply cannot accept what is on the table” in the treaty.
However, he urged the grassroots not to focus on Lisbon this week “when the rest of the country wants to be debating health and education and how we are going to balance the books”.
British prime minister Gordon Brown’s predecessor, Tony Blair, promised voters a say on the European constitution, but this promise was not honoured when it developed into the Lisbon Treaty.
However, Lisbon has been properly ratified by the House of Commons and House of Lords, and even Tories yesterday were unable to say if the British could “deratify” a document that they had already legally accepted.
Meanwhile, the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, demanded that Mr Cameron release a copy of a letter he wrote to the Czech president, Václav Klaus, in August, urging him not to sign the treaty into Czech law. In a letter to Tory foreign affairs spokesman William Hague Mr Miliband said: “To be credible in the eyes of British people you need to answer the simple question of what you now plan to do following the failure of your campaign against the Lisbon Treaty.”
“Isn’t it really the case that the old obsessions and divisions in the Conservative Party have not been addressed, and that the issue of Europe shows that your party only promises a repeat of the dysfunction that marred the Major government?” he said.
Leading pro-EU Tories, such as shadow business secretary Ken Clarke, sought to ensure that neither Mr Cameron nor any other senior party figure made any rash pledge on Lisbon.
Saying the party leadership’s line was “settled”, he said: “I do not think it would be remotely sensible to seek to change that policy in the course of this conference.”
Former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, speaking on BBC radio, said a referendum would not make sense: “It ceases to be a referendum and becomes an opinion poll. We would win that referendum, no doubt about that, but what do you then do?”