Jon Bright (London, OK): One of the many things that stuck in my mind during the run up to the Iraq war was a furious Joschka Fischer shouting at Donald Rumsfeld: "You have to make the case". It's about a minute in to the video below. You can feel his frustration: the US wasn't consulting on the Iraq war, they weren't convincing people it was right, they had just decided to go for it, and were expecting everyone else to sign up uncritically.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cV6RCnA5WY]
The frustration he felt reminds me of the way many people feel about the EU reform treaty. Perhaps we do need it. Perhaps it won't seriously impact on our lives while making the EU better. But in a democracy, as Fischer says, you have to convince people what is best. That's why the UK needs a referendum on the EU reform treaty - and it needs to vote no.
As Timothy Garton Ash argues in the Guardian today, the EU has been an enormously beneficial institution for the UK and the rest of Europe. But it hasn't got the politics right. Political institutions must be supported by a feeling of public legitimacy, and in a democratic system that legitimacy has to come through engagement and representation. George Monbiot made the point a month or so ago that even a referendum wouldn't be a good enough say on the treaty - how could a simple yes or no to a 448 article document constitute engagement? Scraping a narrow 'yes' vote home, in what would almost certainly be a low turnout referendum, would not be enough to restore public trust in the institution. We need to junk this treaty and restart the EU on a basis of public involvement rather than central control - and we need an EU that makes the case for the good work it does and should continue to do.
