Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The TUC vote in favour of a referendum is very bad news for Gordon Brown. It will push the issue into the Labour Party conference, which, in turn, will make it a perfect punch bag for Cameron to unite his party around. Yet again Ming has made the Lib Dems irrelevant by announcing that a referendum is "not necessary" as if the issue is a technical one when it has become one of 'trust'. This makes it especially potent/toxic depending on your point of view.
Brown launched his PMship by making the renewal of trust in the political system a defining goal. By achieving this, he would create a hegemonic trust in himself - at least this was the game plan - distancing him decisively both from Blair and that decade as well as a Tory party led by opportunist Etonians reconfigured in an avatar makeover.
This may not work out for him now, however carefully the government lays its plans for citizen engagement. After the Maastricht Treaty the Labour Party led by John Smith tortured and demoralised the John Major government forcing it to suffer rebellion and discord from its eurosceptics when - despite all of its opt-outs from the social chapter and the euro itself - the Treaty went through the ratification process in parliament. The irony of this, which infuriated Major at the time, was that Smith assisted by Paddy Ashdown (who got it right) were passionate pro-Europeans. As Major put it in his memoir, "I thought their party games with the amendment were unscrupulous, since their support for the substance of the treaty was well known". Looking back, he describes how he had to turn away from what happened "in despair" and ask, "how had it ever come to this. How had so much bad blood welled up so fast? How had members of what had so recently been a winning team turned against each other, plotted against each other, betrayed each other, careless of the opportunity that was building for their common enemy?"
The episode is forgotten, or perhaps repressed because of the well of bad-faith that implicated everyone; but it was as important as Black Wednesday in dooming the Major government.
Are the Conservatives now being offered their revenge? Will Labour too be brought down by the curse of Europe? Can a United Kingdom ever shake off the curse while it rejects the European project but insists on membership of its institutions?
Of course, Cameron's opportunity is to be equally unscrupulous. He will be calling for a referendum he cannot want. The right's call for a referendum is a demand that we should have the chance to say 'Non', just as the French did because this is what Labour originally promised. But that was then and this is now and Europe, being what it is, has moved on. With all other EU members signing up to the new treaty, however much its substance may be the same as the rejected Constitution its circumstances are quite altered. This is now the EU. The treaty is an accomplished fact (to avoid using French) not a proposal. The continent has decided. It will not be put on hold by the English scratching their backsides over the possibility that the Charter of Fundamental Rights might prevent Whitehall from freely using ID information on its citizens. In effect, a referendum would be about membership itself which Cameron supports. His game, just like the one John Smith played that so damaged John Major (and which Brown observed at close quarters), is to call forth the demons of opposition banking on them being defeated while aiming to reap the damage they will sow.
The greatest damage of all, of course, will be to trust in the political system. Is there any way out for Brown?
