After the night before
- 6 Mar 08, 05:31 PM
Tim Montgomerie of Conservativehome.com has written with details of an internet poll of 1,529 Conservative members, asking them:
"If the European Constitution (the Lisbon Treaty) has received Royal Assent and been adopted by the other 26 member states BEFORE the election of a Conservative Government, the Conservative Party should hold a retrospective referendum on the text.
76% agreed with that, and only 18% disagreed.
I can never understand why pro-referendum campaigners, especially Conservatives, don’t make more of the pledge which David Cameron made in The Sun on 26 September last year, in which he said:
“Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations.”
Not much wriggle room there. After all, it was a “cast-iron guarantee” on “any EU Treaty”. Perhaps the only excuse for watering down this commitment is that it was written amidst pre-election fever, and the widespread belief that Gordon Brown would call an election within a few days. Yet it was hardly off-the-cuff, or to an insignificant audience. It was a signed article to the newspapers three million or so readers.
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