How to fight a referendum

Last week William Norton offered readers some of the lessons he learned from being the official referendum agent for the North East Says NO campaign. The five-part series was written in the context of a possible referendum on the EU constitution so it's definitely worth a read:

• Use political parties as they have the necessary resources, but the campaign should be ran by a one-off specialist team
• Make the argument on your own terms by finding and sticking to a line that opens up the soft areas of the other side's potential support
• Know all the boring details and use them against the Yes campaign, who will want to focus on vague aspirations
• Ignore fringe elements that threaten to derail the designated No campaign
• Hire a team of lawyers to navigate the messy referendum laws and to keep the government and BBC on their toes

Comments

[Jim Tague]

I agree almost wholeheartedly with the comments of William Norton, for I speak not only as a Conservative member, but one that put his political alleginace to one side during the North East Referendum, and sadly still attempting to correct the pro-regionalists in the press.

Members of our association worked with both the official campaign, and that of the hard working Neil Herron, whose campaign had already done much to undo the "Yes" team.

The campaign was kept pretty simple, the No team primarily acted as non-political body attacking a Yes team that wanted another layer of politics...and tax and red tape.

Pretty easy to sell.

What should be remembered though, is that despite the vote, we in the North East are still paying for the North East Assembly and quite possibly next year we will lose our District Councils, both primary objectives of the Yes camp.

As with all things ultimately attributed to the EU, bit by bit, and despite widespread disapproval, they carry on with the agenda.

The North East media constantly talks about regions, sub-regions, city-regions. New places have been created without a murmor, but at what cost to the taxpayer? Some place called Tees Valley emerged at the mouth of the Tees.

Historic county boundary signs are moved (Co. Durham)to align with these made up these sub-regions. Only last year the signs were uprooted and moved to their correct place, only for the jobsworths to jump up and down demanding the culprits be fined.

I'm quite sure a referendum could be won quite easily for those wanting a NO outcome, whether or not the hidden agenda will carry on regardless is quite a different matter!

[Oberon Houston]

I think we are assuming we already know the terms of the referendum, and the circumstances of the vote. Look, I agree, we need it, and the public should reject it. But lets be careful what we are asking for. The LbDems (the rubbish party) are turning it into a vote on exiting the EU. Labour don't really know what they want, which is very worrying, and we are... well fairly united against the federal option. But we need to fight for the right thing here and not be bounced into a stupid LibDem integration call or union-lead social/hunan right chapters we know are crazy.

[David Parker]

If Brown continues to refuse a referendum and the Con/Treaty is then forced through Parliament, against the wishes of an overwhelming majority of the British people,this would be the death knell for any remaining credibility of the Parliamentary process and of democracy as we know it in Britain.
This is`why the referendum campaign for a No vote must be a genuinely cross party and inclusive one.
However, Cameron can not afford to be in the least ambivalent over the grounds for his support of the campaign, which appears to be the case at present.
It is not sufficient for him to say that we need a referendum because Brown has broken his manifesto promise.Politicians break their promises so frequently that it is almost expected of them and this, on its own, is not sufficient to stir the nation to action.
It is therefore essential that Cameron and all his` colleagues should demand a referendum on the grounds that the Con/Treaty itself would not only would be bad for Britain, but that its implications are so fundamental and far reaching that to approve these without the consent, not merely of Parliament but of the British people as a whole, would violate the essential constitutional concept upon which British democracy is based.

This is an argument in which there can be no middle road or compromise. There may be a small minority of Conservative MPs and party supporters who are convinced Eurofederalists, however, that is no excuse for ducking the issue of a referendum and denying other people their rights to express their opposing views.

[Anne Palmer]

You have written (and seem to accept) that the tax payer (That is YOU) will still have to pay for the Regional Assemblies that none of you seem to want and lose the District Councils you do want. Of course you should pay while you STILL have the Councils that you want and you should campaign more and better to keep them. As long as you have both you can have a good fight and expose the European Union's Regional Assemblies for exactly what they are. An invention of the EU, and another layer of Government we cannot afford.

The point that really troubles me is that the Government have not "cottoned" on yet to the fact that it is THEY that will be redundant. Why on earth should we continue to vote for them when we in England will have our own little Parliaments like Scotland and Wales eh?

There really is no need for Members of Parliament if you eventually embrace the EU's Regional Assemblies because we really cannot afford to keep MP's because as you know, the EU brought in Regional Assemblies to bring DEMOCRACY closer to the people. We lost democracy in our Parliament ages ago, for they ignored the people. Government and Political parties ALL know the majority of people in this Country want no further integration into the European Union. Yet Governments signed up to the Berlin Declaration and signed up to the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, what more do you expect from such a display of betrayal? How can our Queen be a Queen of the United Kingdom and a citizen of the EU at the same time?

MP's will have done exactly what the EU wanted in setting up the EU's Regional Assemblies, our MP's job therefore is done. MP's will be redundant. If the penny has not dropped where the MP's are concerned, that is just too bad, because Parliaments will be as redundant as the District Councils. Our MP's could have said NO to any of the EU's Treaties. (See also Denning)

Our new Parliament alternates between Brussels and Strasburg. Get used to it, and our new Government, once the EU Reform Treaty is ratified especially if ratified by National Parliaments and not the people, will also be in Brussels.

Betrayal of the people comes at a great price. It is not only the people of this Country that will pay that heavy price, it is Parliament as a whole and particularly a British Government, simply because they forgot they were British and that at the time of signing these EU Treaties, they were under solemn Oath of Allegiance to their Crown and Country.

[Tally]

nominating a tory led North North East says no campaign in the labour voting north east seemed to me like a conspiracy to fail , especially as we have seen recently that conservative councillors and councils were and still are reluctant to abolish RA's.
The whole issue was supposed to be non partisan.On the eve of the referendum all parties agreed to abide by the result, after the result all parties ignored the result and tories are still sitting on them.

[Ekky Thump]

It was a good result and a fair result. The government threw everything they had at that referendum. Prescott fought the dirty fight with all pies flailing.
Is this the first recorded incident of this government deliberately lying their way out of a democratic result?
I wonder how many more corrupt tricks they've played on us?
Perhaps the RA referendum gave them the impetus to refuse a referendum on the EU constitution? Not one politician did anything about the RA results, so why should we trust them to do what is right over the EU referendum?
Labour walk all over them and always will do.

[Patrick Harris]

I would have thought that rule one of fighting a referendum would be to find one in which to fight
The first fight should centre around making Labour (and the Lib Dems) fulfil their manifesto promise to hold a referendum, a hard enough fight in itself, then bother about drawing up plans to fight "yes" or "no".