I am not pretending at all; any amendment may well have certain consequences.
I am reminded of the noble Metternich, the great leader who, when news was brought to him of the death of his opposite number, the Russian ambassador, was alleged to have said, “What was his motive?”. We are quite entitled to ask of the Bill: what is the motive? What has changed the view of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary over the past two years? Can it be anything other than the rise of UKIP? I congratulate the UKIP representative on the influence that the party has had on the Government.
Is it just the result of looking at opinion polls or the taking of soundings by a well padded Lord? Is it the fact that the Conservative Party has no confidence in the word of its leader, who has said that he would certainly have a referendum, and wants to tie him down? Equally, surely the Conservative Party has no confidence that it will win the next election. As many Members of your Lordships’ House have said, no Parliament can bind its successor, so this is a total charade. It may be a signal, but it is a signal only of the divisions within the Conservative Party. This is a partisan Bill and should be treated as such.
I could linger on the details of the Bill, but they are matters for Committee: the Electoral Commission, the wording of the question, whether there should be a threshold and the precise electorate. I just want to make three brief reflections at this stage.
First, there is the problem of the alternative. The Prime Minister put it well when he said that,
“the problem with an in/out referendum is it … only gives people those two choices: you can either stay in with all the status quo, or you can get out”.
Surely, if we seriously wanted to ascertain the views of the great electorate—Rousseau’s “popular will”—we should ask them, “What is the alternative?”, and therefore have questions on that. Is it the fact that you, the people, would want to be wholly alone? Is it the fact, as the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, said, that you would wish to evolve some sort of new, free-trade relationship with the Commonwealth? It is not clear that any members of the Commonwealth seriously want to do that. Certainly India would not. Perhaps Canada would, but you really need two to tango and there is no traction in that.
What about the Norwegian example? There is a continuing debate in Norway—I am part-Norwegian—and the Norwegians certainly know that with the single market, they are told without any serious input what they should accept. That is hardly democratic, but it is the current reality of the Norwegian relationship with the European Union. What about the Swiss? No—surely, rather than going into the emptiness of a void, there should be some way of ascertaining, if that be the case, what it is that the people want. What are the so-called alternatives?
I shall not linger on my second reflection, because the point has been made often, but the date of 2017 is wholly arbitrary and unrealistic. Since the Prime Minister has said that any negotiations will not start until after the 2015 general election, can the position be such that we will know clearly what is on offer from our European partners and that all the various ratification processes will have been gone through? The only question that can be put is: do you, the people, believe that the Government should continue along the course they have set? What are the prospects of a radical new deal and of it being done and dusted and ratified by 2017? The Prime Minister is not going about it very well. He must have read over Christmas the book, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, because he has already put off a potential ally in Mr Sikorski of Poland and harmed his relationship with Monsieur Mitterrand.