Europhiles join campaign for EU referendum

Brendan Carlin
London Telegraph
Saturday Sept 1, 2007

Gordon Brown is under intense pressure to give way over an EU referendum after pro-Europeans joined with Eurosceptics to demand a vote.

But the pro-Brussels Mr Vaz appealed to the Prime Minister to widen the vote to include a question on Britain's membership of the EU.

"The British people should have the chance to vote in a referendum on the treaty which will enable us to continue our engagement with Europe," he said in an open letter to a newspaper.

The intervention came as The Daily Telegraph's "Let the people decide" petition calling for a referendum passed the 76,000-signature mark.

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Mr Brown and his ministers insist that the new treaty is substantially different from the defeated EU draft constitution, on which Labour promised a referendum in its 2005 manifesto and which was voted down by French and Dutch referendums in 2005.

He told the BBC that in the replacement treaty, the "constitutional concept is abandoned".

He said: "Parliament is the right place for ratification - just as it was for the Single European Act under Baroness Thatcher, the Maastricht Treaty under Sir John Major, and the Nice and Amsterdam Treaties under Tony Blair."

However, there are growing claims that the revised treaty is essentially the same as the defunct constitution. It contains the same proposals for a permanent EU president and an EU foreign minister.

Yesterday, it emerged that an internal European Parliament minute referred to "the Constitutional Treaty" - a fact highlighted by Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party.

Graham Stringer, the Eurosceptic former Cabinet Office minister, warned that it would be more damaging for Mr Brown "not to hold a referendum than to hold a referendum and lose it".

Mr Stringer, Labour MP for Manchester Blackley, insisted the 2005 pledge remained valid. "We made a commitment at the election to hold a referendum. I think it is quite straightforward," he said.

Mr Brown already faces a potentially tricky vote on the issue at this month's TUC conference. The GMB union yesterday accused Labour of "ducking and diving" over the issue of the EU reform treaty.

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