Tony Benn

"no [MP] has the legal or moral authority to hand over powers borrowed from the electors to people who would no longer be accountable to them" Tony Benn

Within the space of a week, we lose another left-wing Eurosceptic, this time the passing of Tony Benn. I had the privilege of seeing him speak when I attended Parliament during the Maastricht debates and so in his memory I reproduce one of them here. It still resonates 23 years later:

We are discussing whether the British people are to be allowed to elect those who make the laws under the which they are governed. The argument is nothing to do with whether we should get more maternity leave from Madame Papandreou than from Madame Thatcher. That is not the issue.

I recognise that, when the members of the three Front Benches agree, I am in a minority. My next job therefore is to explain to the people of Chesterfield what we have decided. I will say first, "My dear constituents, in future you will be governed by people whom you do not elect and cannot remove. I am sorry about it. They may give you better creches and shorter working hours but you cannot remove them."

I know that it sounds negative but I have always thought it positive to say that the important thing about democracy is that we can remove without bloodshed the people who govern us. We can get rid of a Callaghan, a Wilson or even a right hon. Lady by internal processes. We can get rid of the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major). But that cannot be done in the structure that is proposed. Even if one likes the policies of the people in Europe, one cannot get rid of them.

Secondly, we say to my favourite friends, the Chartists and suffragettes, "All your struggles to get control of the ballot box were a waste of time. We shall be run in future by a few white persons, as in 1832." The instrument, I might add, is the Royal Prerogative of treaty making. For the first time since 1649 the Crown makes the laws--advised, I admit, by the Prime Minister.

We must ask what will happen when people realise what we have done. We have had a marvellous debate about Europe, but none of us has discussed our relationship with the people who sent us here. Hon. Members have expressed views on Albania and the Baltic states. I have been dazzled by the knowledge of the continent of which we are all part. No one has spoken about how he or she got here and what we were sent here to do.

If people lose the power to sack their Government, one of several things happens. First, people may just slope off. Apathy could destroy democracy. When the turnout drops below 50 per cent., we are in danger.

The second thing that people can do is to riot. Riot is an old-fashioned method of drawing the attention of the Government to what is wrong. It is difficult for an elected person to admit it, but the riot at Strangeways produced some prison reforms. Riot has historically played a much larger part in British politics than we are ever allowed to know.

Thirdly, nationalism can arise. Instead of blaming the treaty of Rome, people say, "It is those Germans," or, "It is the French." Nationalism is built out of frustration that people feel when they cannot get their way through the ballot box. With nationalism comes repression. I hope that it is not pessimistic--in my view it is not--to say that democracy hangs by a thread in every country of the world. Unless we can offer people a peaceful route to the resolution of injustices through the ballot box, they will not listen to a House that has blocked off that route.

There are many alternatives open to us. One hon. Member said that he was young and had not fought in the war. He looked at a new Europe. But there have been five Europes this century. There was the one run by the King, the Kaiser and the Tsar--they were all cousins, so that was very comfortable. They were all Queen Victoria's grandsons, and there was no nonsense about human rights when Queen Victoria's grandsons repressed people. Then there was the Russian revolution. Then there was the inter-war period. Then there was the Anglo-Soviet alliance.

Then there was the cold war. Now we have a Boris Yeltsin who has joined the Monday Club. There have been many Europes. This is not the only Europe on offer.
I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) is a democratic federalist, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes). They want an American-type constitution for Europe. It could be that our laws would hang on which way the Albanian members voted. I could not complain about that, because that is democracy, but it is unworkable. It is like trying to get an elephant to dance through a minefield, but it would be democratic.

Another way would be to have a looser, wider Europe. I have an idea for a Commonwealth of Europe. I am introducing a Bill on the subject. Europe would be rather like the British Commonwealth. We would work by consent with people. Or we could accept this ghastly proposal, which is clumsy, secretive, centralised, bureaucratic and divisive. That is how I regard the treaty of Rome. I was born a European and I will die one, but I have never put my alliance behind the treaty of Rome. I object to it. I hate being called an anti-European. How can one be anti-European when one is born in Europe? It is like saying that one is anti-British if one does not agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. What a lot of nonsense it is.

I ask myself why the House is ready to contemplate abandoning its duties, as I fear it is. I was elected 41 years ago this month. This Chamber has lost confidence in democracy. It believes that it must be governed by someone else. It is afraid to use the powers entrusted to it by its constituents. It has traded power for status. One gets asked to go on the telly if one is a Member of Parliament. The Chamber does not want to use its power. It has accepted the role of a spectator and joined what Bagehot called the dignified part of the constitution, leaving the Crown, under the control of the Prime Minister, to be the Executive part.

If democracy is destroyed in Britain, it will be not the communists, Trotskyists or subversives but this House which threw it away. The rights that are entrusted to us are not for us to give away. Even if I agree with everything that is proposed, I cannot hand away powers lent to me for five years by the people of Chesterfield. I just could not do it. It would be theft of public rights.

Therefore, there is only one answer. If people are determined to submit themselves to Jacques Delors, Madam Papandreou and the Council of Ministers, we must tell the people what is planned. If people vote for that, they will all have capitulated. Julius Caesar said, "We are just merging our sovereignty." So did William the Conqueror. It is not possible to support the Government's motion. I have told the Chief Whip that I cannot support the Labour amendment.

I invite the House to vote against the Government's motion and not to support a motion which purports to take us faster into a Community which cannot reflect the aspirations of those who put us here. That is not a nationalist argument, nor is it about sovereignty. It is a democratic argument, and it should be decisive in a democratic Chamber.

The Most Damaging Clause In The Lisbon Treaty

 

It seems to me that there is an implied and odd kind of consensus, between those who advocate EU membership and those who don't, that any EU exit will be a final chapter. For many who support membership, such an action would be a "disaster" from which there is apparently no return. Conversely some if not many who oppose membership understandably see exit as a cause of celebration and a job well done - a historical correction finally completed.

What is not in doubt is that any referendum campaign to exit will be difficult, rigged and unfair. What also is not in any doubt is exit, as consequence of an "out" vote, will be difficult, long and protracted. A simple act of parliament cannot magically make the Japanese Knotweed-like-tendencies of the EU  - that has acted like an invasive species - disappear over night.

Yet while there would be much to applaud regarding an EU exit, 40 years of very hard work and money could be undone within a space of just a couple of months. The reason? Article 49 of the Lisbon Treaty - the accession clause:

Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union. The European Parliament and national Parliaments shall be notified of this application. The applicant State shall address its application to the Council, which shall act unanimously after consulting the Commission and after receiving the assent of the European Parliament, which shall act by an absolute majority of its component members.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument Cameron, having won the General Election in 2015, has his EU referendum in 2017 and the “outers” win against all the odds. All well and good, Cameron is then forced to begin negotiations to leave via Article 50.

However...no Parliament may bind its successor. So, despite the expressed will of the people in a referendum, there’s nothing preventing a future government from invoking Article 49 and applying to rejoin. And as history acutely informs us no popular mandate is needed in order to do so. We would be no further forward from 1972 and would have to start all over again.

It's for this reason that I believe the importance of Harrogate's 6 demands is not to get us out but instead to prevent us from ever re-entering such a project again. That should be its successful legacy. EU exit for the UK in my view will probably be dictated by other factors beyond Harrogate.

In some ways membership of the EU may have done us a favour, highlighting dramatically the failings in our own system of governance albeit such a revelation has come with a very very heavy price tag.

By dramatically reforming the way we are governed we can ensure we are better governed than we have ever been before in our history. And ultimately we can prevent the fundamental failings that Tony Benn highlighted during the Maastricht Treaty debate: "no [MP] has the legal or moral authority to hand over powers borrowed from the electors to people who would no longer be accountable to them".

But they did, and will do so again without changes. Exit from the EU is not merely enough.

Cameron's Europe Problems Just Increased

From the Telegraph (my emphasis):

The European Court of Human Rights upheld a previous ruling that a blanket ban on inmates being able to vote was unlawful.

However, the court signalled that the UK government could decide which prisoners should be enfranchised, meaning serious offenders such as murderers and rapists could be excluded.

Judges may even be handed discretion to decide which criminals are allowed the vote. The Government now has six months to comply with the ruling or face a raft of challenges and huge legal costs. 

I'm liking the way unaccountable ECHR judges are helping us to decide our own law. At this point I feel it's worth repeating a quote made in 1977 from former Labour MP Tony Benn in his diaries:

...I was a member of the first British Government in history to be informed that it was behaving illegally by a court whose ruling you could not alter by changing the law in the House of Commons. It was a turning point...