The march of the ‘yes’ men

Forty years ago this week, Britain voted to remain part of the European Community. That remains the only direct vote on the European question that the country has had. The promise of a say on the EU constitution was shelved when that document metamorphosed into the Lisbon Treaty, and the ‘referendum lock’ that the coalition introduced has not yet been triggered by a transfer of power to Brussels. So it’s a historic process that the government will begin on Tuesday, with the first Commons vote on its referendum bill.

Straight after the election, there was much speculation that the government would opt for an early referendum on EU membership, rather than leaving it until the 2017 deadline set in the Tory manifesto. The thinking, not entirely discouraged by Downing Street, was that David Cameron could use the momentum generated by his election victory to rapidly negotiate a deal in Europe and then put it to a vote next year, ending the uncertainty that supposedly worries multinational businesses.

That plan appears to have fallen out of favour, because rushing the renegotiation and the vote would make it harder to keep the Tory party together afterwards. Instead, there is now much Whitehall chatter about a vote in the second half of 2017 — during the British presidency of the EU, after the French presidential election, and before the German federal election. In other words, with François Hollande gone but Angela Merkel still in place.

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Political romantics might have hoped that the first chance for those under 60 to vote on Britain’s membership of the European Union would have captured the nation’s imagination. For the moment there is decidedly little excitement. Perhaps this is because referendums tend to favour the status quo; the result might have been very different if this country had been asked to vote before joining the European Community.