Marc Glendening: Invasion of the Euro-McCarthyites --- EU sceptics should be prepared to be smeared.

Marc Glendening is Political Director of Democracy Movement.

One week ago, at the Fabians’ Why Europe? The Left’s Answer, sponsored by the European Commission, Labour MEP Richard Howett said that those opposed to the EU were ‘racists and xenophobes’. I asked him from the floor if he included in that category Tony Benn, as well as Labour MPs Graham Stringer, John Cryer, Kelvin Hopkins and Kate Hoey? He refused, revealingly to answer this inconvenient question and instead said:

“Mark Reckless, Bill Cash, William Hague, Nigel Farage and Nick Griffin are racists”.

Mr Howett then said defiantly, playing to the Fabian audience: “I will not back down and apologise.”

He has been challenged subsequently to repeat this allegation and to provide firm evidence to back up his oafish accusation. He has now gone silent. He has failed to respond on twitter to those challenging him to back up his claims. Not quite so brave now. Howett’s intervention is one manifestation of the campaign the mainstream pro-EU lobby has been waging for some time and which they can be expected to intensify in the long run up to the possible referendum in the next parliament. The New Labour inclination has always been keen to play the man rather than the ball.

What was strange about an event advertised as being an intra-left discussion on Europe was that nobody critical of the EU from the Labour movement was invited to participate. The only anti-EU speaker in a whole day of ‘debates’ was Stephen Woolfe from UKIP. No doubt the organisers were disappointed to hear him say that he had been a former member of the Labour party and the Fabians twenty years earlier. Last year’s Fabian Europe conference similarly featured no left EU-sceptics, but, yes, you guessed it, a UKIP MEP.

Marc Glendening: Is your Prime Minister a referendum cheat? Three questions that will reveal the truth about him...

Marc Glendening is Political Director of People's Pledge.

Love rats that have been caught out by their partners often then go through an elaborate, desperate act of contrition to buy more time and keep the relationship afloat. David Cameron, having been exposed late last year as not being true to his apparent promise to give us a definitive say on EU membership, is now apparently about to re-commit for the long-term to those of us who want a real referendum.

David Cameron’s big European speech later this month will be for him and those who support an EU referendum the equivalent of a final, make or break Relate session. It’s important we all understand this.

It took a wily, suspicious woman to tease the truth out of the prime minister last time round. At PMQs on October 16 2012, Labour MP and People's Pledge supporter Natascha Engel, ingeniously asked Mr Cameron which way he would vote in the in-out referendum he had recently appeared to endorse on the eve of the Tory conference. He prevaricated uneasily before confessing, finally, that the ballot he was thinking about giving us (at some unspecified point in the future) would not, after all, give the electorate the option of actually leaving the EU as he did not believe this was in Britain’s interest. It was unclear then what this hypothetical ballot would actually be about. So, just a load of sweet nothings.

Marc Glendening: Let’s be clear, Cameron is only talking about an in-in referendum

Marc Glendening is political director of the People's Pledge.

David Cameron might not exactly be in the Derren Brown class when it comes to pulling off extraordinary illusions, but he did pour some '70s magic act dry-ice over the issue of an EU referendum during the week of the Tory conference. He wanted to kick the EU referendum into the long-grass and so he gave the impression that were he to win the next general election he would re-negotiate a new relationship with Brussels. This would then be put to a popular vote at some unspecified point in the lifetime of the next parliament.

The impression the prime minister was trying to create in the minds of the 70% plus of voters who want a referendum was that we would eventually have the chance to either accept the deal he had struck, or, if we rejected it, we would then leave the EU. He tried to sound unequivocal, and therefore sincere, when he said that an EU referendum would be the "cleanest, neatest and simplest way" to decide the issue.

However, when questioned by Labour MP and People's Pledge supporter, Natasha Engel, at PM's questions (Wednesday October 16) on how Cameron would vote in a referendum on EU membership, he said:

"I don't want an in/out referendum because I'm not happy with us leaving the European Union, but I'm not happy with the status quo either. I think what the vast majority of this country wants is a new settlement with Europe and then that settlement being put to fresh consent. That's what will be going in our manifesto."

Marc Glendening: Only an EU referendum can bring about real re-negotiation

Marc Glendening is campaign manager of the People's Pledge.

The Eurozone crisis has presented David Cameron with a huge opportunity to force Brussels to the negotiating table and get back key powers. If ever there was a chance to put a gun to the collective head of the Euro-elite and demand, 'our money and our right to do X, Y and Z or your life', this was it. Instead theTory leadership have rolled over and promised to support the EU's new drive to establish European economic governance. Following next year's treaty the Eurozone 17 will become enshrined as a majority-voting bloc and the UK will be even more vulnerable.

There's the vague promise that Angela Merkel will support a relaxation of the Working Time Directive in return for us ratifying the treaty. But, as Open Europe's Mats Persson warned in his ConHome blog last week, even this tiny concession might not happen because the European Parliament could veto it.

David Cameron could have threatened to call a referendum on membership, or even just on the forthcoming treaty, unless the Euro-elite came up with something significant. Had he been serious about this issue, he would have put the frighteners on the Lib Dems by challenging them to pull out of the coalition over it and so precipitate a general election. Cameron didn't and so we are left with the reality that there will be no re-negotiation in the lifetime of this parliament, as things stand. After 2015, and with European economic governance established, it is difficult to envisage what opportunity will then exist for a future UK government still wedded to the mantra that leaving the EU is inconceivable, to force Brussels to the negotiating table. The Tory front bench carry all the potency of C of E vicars who hold pray-ins and tea parties for local hoodies who have been stealing lead from the church roof, but who rule out prosecution.

Marc Glendening: Re-negotiation is not an option, and banging on about it risks splitting the right-left coalition for an EU referendum

Marc Glendening is Campaign manager of People's Pledge.

Regimes and politicians periodically feel the need to reiterate arguments and claims that they know to be untrue, we the recipients of their propaganda know to be untrue and they know that we know are untrue. Yet, they feel strangely compelled to continue repeating their claims or impossibilist demands anyway. One Tory equivalent of ‘widget production is running at record levels in the Upper Urals’, or ‘violent crime is at its lowest point in the UK for 50 years’, is the periodic re-articulation of the pretence that the EU treaty can and should be re-negotiated. 

A number of conservative EU-sceptics, including John Redwood, have recently tried to revive the line, in the wake of the Eurozone crisis, that the opportunity now exists for David Cameron to play real hardball with Brussels. Unless the EU returns powers over aspects of social policy and other matters, the UK should not sign any new treaty enabling the creation of ‘economic governance’ in the Eurozone, they urge. That nice Dr Cameron, however, can be confidently expected to respond to this proposal by applying his trusty political sedative based on a carefully crafted cocktail of pretending to take this demand seriously, combined with the making of vaguely sympathetic, soothing noises. A sense of calm will return to the Tory ‘patient’. And nothing will then happen, except, of course, that the current government will agree to a greater EU centralisation of power, claiming that none of this will apply to non-Eurozone countries.

Marc Glendening: Denis MacShane outs the anti-EU xenophobes in the closet

Marc Glendening, campaign director of the Democracy Movement,  accuses former Europe minister Denis MacShane of engaging in 'neo-McCarthyite' smear tactics against those critical of the EU.

The former Europe minister and arch New Labourite buffoon Denis MacShane has been up to his old 'EU-McCarthyite' tricks again. In a Guardian On-Line article this week, he attempted to obscure the key issue underlying the strike at the Lindsey oil refinery plant with a typical New Labour smokescreen. Instead of tackling the key democratic question of who ultimately should determine employment policy in Britain, and on what terms foreign nationals should be allowed to work here, the MP for Rotherham hurled abuse at anybody who has had the audacity to take a position contrary to his own.

Instead of there being 'reds under the bed' he wants the British people to start out with the assumption that all EU-sceptics - whether they support the international free movement of labour or not - are really 'xenophobes in the closet' (or wherever he thinks we like to conceal ourselves). So, William Hague has, according to MacShane, engaged in 'vulgar anti-European xenohobia'. No evidence is given of the usually mild-mannered shadow foreign secretary having done so. In fact, on the specific question of whether IREM should be allowed to bring in Italian posted workers, Hague holds exactly the same view as MacShane.   

Labour MPs who supported the strikers and/or questioned the EU Posted Workers Directive were said to have engaged in 'nationalist-protectionist rhetoric'. Again, and in a rather cowardly fashion, MacShane did not name names. Was he possibly thinking of Jon Cruddas who has made, in highly temperate terms, criticisms of the way the Single Market is working regarding his party's traditional support base? If not him, who exactly, Mr MacShane?

Marc Glendening: Cameron needs to steer a stronger course on the EU if he is to avoid a UKIP resurgence next year

Marc Glendening, campaign director of the Democracy Movement, looks at the politics behind how the Conservative Party approaches the issue of an EU referendum.

David Cameron has confirmed what many always suspected, namely, that the Tories will abandon the pledge to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in the advent of it being ratified before he comes into office. This is motivated by the desire to generally close off Europe as a topic of debate in the run-up to the next general election as part of the modernising agenda, and to prevent Labour claiming the Tories' real agenda is to get Britain out of the EU. There are three key problems with the stance Cameron has adopted.

Firstly, while the party leadership can decide to focus on those other issues which it feels voters are more concerned about, it cannot stop the party's European position being put under the microscope in the run-up to the European Parliamentary elections next year by its political opponents and the media. The strategy which appears to have worked (just) regarding tax will not wash regarding the EU. Refusing to say anything meaningful and precise will soon simply not be an option. If the Conservatives go into the elections having abandoned the referendum pledge, UKIP and others will be able to say, quite rightly, that the Tories only differ from New Labour and the Lib Dems in terms of rhetoric. In practice, they will argue, voting Tory will signify supporting the new EU status quo. The only way to signify a protest at the undemocratic way in which the EU is moving towards full statehood will be to vote UKIP. Given the party's need to maintain its electoral momentum and not suffer a disappointing result this will be a risky strategy at the one set of elections at which many voters do make Brussels the basis on which they cast their ballots.