VERBATIM REPORT OF SPEECH MADE BY DR BRIAN BURKITT SENIOR LECTURER IN ECONOMICS,  DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF BRADFORD AND DIRECTOR, EUROPEAN ECONOMIES RESEARCH UNIT to the EIGHTH CONGRESS FOR DEMOCRACY held in London on Friday 1 November 2002

THE EURO REFERENDUM

THE EURO: THE BATTLE FOR BRITISH HEARTS AND MINDS

It is a great pleasure to be here today, although I think the general discussion afterwards will probably be rather more enlightening than what I have to say because I think this referendum, if it is held, is going to be a very crucial one as is discussion of the tactics. I would like to think that all of us in this room would have a very great deal to contribute to that because it is a very vital issue indeed.

In introducing the book and providing the background to the referendum, I want to look at one or two issues briefly and then throw them open to general discussion.

First of all, I want to answer the question that is often put to me - why do I go on and on all the time about the euro? Is the euro more important than all the news headlines we have had in the papers this week about the Constitutional Convention? Is it more important than the proposals for the European Army? Is it more important than the proposals for the European corpus juris? Probably not in itself, but it is more important, I believe, to all of us in this room because it is the one issue that each leading political party in this country is prepared to offer us a referendum on. Therefore we have to concentrate on that without completely ignoring the other things because it is the one chance we have immediately to put a spoke in the momentum of European integration. And if there is a referendum and we can get a decisive No note - and by a decisive No vote I mean at least 55%, 45%, hopefully better in percentage terms - then that will settle the issue at least for a decade and it will affect Britain’s relationship with Europe in all the other aspects I mentioned a few moments ago and also others that I did not have time to mention. So if Britain is out of the euro at any rate for a generation that will ultimately have knock-on effects far wider than the euro.

So the euro referendum is going to be crucial to us. In an ideal world, of course, we would persuade Mr Blair never to call one, to keep him in the position where he believes he will never win one, but we cannot be sure that will happen.

I would like to say, first of all, what I think the current situation is, where I think the No vote stands and then we will throw it open for general discussion.

I think the present situation is fairly clear. Mr Blair would love to take us into the euro tomorrow - partly maybe for vainglorious reasons: that he would like to go down in history as the person who did it - but also I think he genuinely believes, as he said at the Labour Party conference, that Britain’s destiny is to be at the heart of Europe and he believes that we cannot be at the heart of Europe as a euro-opt out. And in the long run I think he is correct in that. That is why he wants to take us in; that is why I want to keep us out.

However, the main bar to Mr Blair calling a referendum is public opinion. Now we must not - and this booklet stresses this - get complacent. It is easy to say, "Oh, Mr Blair’s in trouble with people over Iraq, he might run into problems over delivering his promises on public services, there must surely be at least a mid-term when, whatever the turmoil of the Conservative Party, Labour becomes unpopular. They can’t surely go through another parliament and not have at least a year in the opinion poll doldrums".

It is easy, therefore, to say, "We are bound to win. He will either not call the referendum or he will call it and be beaten." But this pamphlet makes clear that there are huge resources available to the government and if Mr Blair should have a popular success, stare down the firefighters, have an easy victory in Iraq, he might suddenly feel inclined to take a risk on the referendum. So while we are in a much stronger position than we were in 1975, we cannot for one moment drop our guard. We must never be complacent.

Having said that, though, I think we can face the future with some optimism because I think there are at least five ways in which our campaign is much stronger than the campaign I took part in to say No back in 1975.

First of all, unlike then, there is one major political party, the Conservative Party, which will campaign for a No vote. Remember last time the leaders of all parties were campaigning Yes: that’s a big change.

Secondly, while Labour will definitely campaign for a Yes vote if there is a referendum, there is a very substantial body of opposition to the euro within the Labour Party, and that is growing. John Cryer will tell you in due course about this relatively new organisation LATE (Labour Against The Euro) in the Labour Party, which is to campaign against the euro. There is also the election of a whole new generation of trade union leaders, and whatever our views about their politics on other issues, I think we can safely say they will not be as placid and compliant with the Blair line on the euro as the present generation on the whole have unfortunately been.

Thirdly, we have much more support in the press than we had last time. I can’t remember in 1975 whether it was still the Daily Worker or the Morning Star, but that was the only national paper which on the morning of the referendum said "Vote No". This time it is likely that the Times, the Mail, the Telegraph, the Sun will all campaign for a No vote, and while that is a minority of the national titles, it is a majority of the readership - very important.

Fourthly, there are the public opinion polls. Those who want to go in are always reminding us that at the end of 1974 for two months the public opinion polls were saying that most people wanted to pull out of what was then the Common Market and yet when the referendum came six months later there was a two-thirds majority in favour. But this time the majority against, as this pamphlet makes clear, has been constant not for two months but for ten years. We have had a roughly two-thirds/one-third split, slightly up, slightly down, with the No side in the two-thirds majority since we left the ERM in September 1992. That puts us in a much stronger position than we were last time. We can’t be complacent, things can change: we saw what happened in Ireland. But we are in a much stronger base position because we have a much more solid and lasting lead in the polls than we have had before, or they had in Ireland or any other country.

The fifth point I would like to stress is that the facts are on our side. We only have to look at how the eurozone is performing. Take any conventional indicator. Take growth in living standards. Take unemployment levels. Take the late rate of inflation. Take any economic measure you like and for the last ten years while the eurozone countries have been preparing for the euro, outside the ERM, outside the euro, we have consistently out-performed them. That will be very hard for any government to get the people to ignore. So the balance of forces, the economic facts, are much clearer and much more on our side than they were 27 years ago. So I am much more confident but, as the pamphlet makes clear, by no means complacent.

But I don’t want to leave anybody - I’m sure there isn’t anybody in this room, but if there is I don’t want to leave anybody - with the impression that the euro is simply, or even mainly, a matter of economics. It is also a matter of democratic politics. If we join the euro, all the key decision-making institutions, the European Commission, which polices the Stability and Growth Pact, the European Central Bank, the Council of Ministers, are all unaccountable to us. They all operate behind closed doors, we cannot every one, five or seven years if we don’t like what they do, boot them out. And whatever the imperfections of democracy, its ultimate value, its ultimate sanction, its ultimate preferability to any other system we have ever devised, is that at the end of the day we can get rid of our rulers. In the eurozone, people we can never get rid of will be taking key decisions. That is crucial and that would mean that power does not come closer to the people, it will get further and further away.

And democracy does not belong to Tony Blair, or Iain Duncan Smith or Charles Kennedy. Still less does it belong to any European Central banker. Democracy belongs to you and me and we are in very grave danger, even as we are, of losing it. Take the last two general elections. In 1997 the turnout was lower than at any election since 1935. In 2001 the turnout was lower than in any election since 1918, when a large part of the potential voters were still in the mud of Flanders. And the most worrying thing of all is that the turnout in 1997 and 2001 was lowest amongst the 18 to 25 year old group: the voters of not only now, but of the future. It is vital, if we are to preserve our liberties and our way of life, to reconnect a whole new generation with the democratic values that our ancestors fought for. It is hard enough to do that when you have democratic rights at home. It will be almost impossible if we enter the euro and give these rights to unaccountable, unelected bankers and bureaucrats. They may be very nice people, but they are not responsible to us, and therefore whatever their intentions, they will take away our rights.

So it is vital that when we discuss our tactics in the next half hour or so, we remember we are fighting for our jobs, our living standards, but also to make our democratic traditions come alive again. That’s a huge responsibility on all of us in this room and that is why I am looking forward very much to hearing what you have to say about the tactics we adopt to make sure that we win in this most vital vote of all.

 

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