A Referendum Stitch-up? By Nigel Farage, UKIP Leader

The British establishment is quite prepared to doctor the record when it suits them - last week's Hillsborough revelations graphically showed that. It can be decades before the truth is dragged out of our political class.

There is no subject on which this is truer than Britain's membership of the European Union.
Whether it's Whitehall suppressing key papers or British governments of all stripes issuing misleading statements and using weasel words, we now know that the whole truth and key information has long been suppressed.
This matters particularly now, because EU Commission president Barroso has announced that he wants to see a new EU Treaty within two years. This Treaty would be to create a European Federation and would wrest control from the UK of a whole series of powers - powers that Brussels would never relinquish.
The polling evidence suggests that over half of us want to leave the EU. Even more want a referendum to give us the chance to have our say. The Daily Express has taken a courageous stand on this great issue, putting enormous pressure on the Government.
And in the end David Cameron is going to have to offer this country a referendum. But I want to make sure that we are asked the right question and I want you to help me. History warns us that this is far from certain to be the case.
For my sins I know how the political class operate – and co-operate – in both Brussels and London. They may offer us a referendum but on a question that suits them and is designed to produce the “right” result. I believe they are going to try to repeat an old trick.
To try to help remove the scales from our eyes I am publishing a pamphlet, ‘A Referendum Stitch-Up?’ into what happened back in the 1970s.
In 1975, my parents’ generation was led to believe that they were voting to stay part of a “Common Market” or free trade area.
They were not. Harold Wilson's government publicly claimed, "no important new policy can be decided in Brussels". But, behind the scenes the Foreign Office had already told it that "Community law" would "prevail over conflicting national legislation".
Both statements could not be true. They were contradictory. We have learnt to our considerable cost, that it was the "censored" one - the one withheld from us - that was accurate. The Conservatives and Liberals of the time co-operated in the deceit.
What we were in fact voting for was to remain in what economists call a “customs union”. In the EU, being part of a customs union means everything has to be “harmonised”, i.e. made uniform. That is what the European Union has been busily doing for decades.
It gives rise to a whole range of laws from environmental regulation via common employment law to unrestricted immigration, with its resultant welfare costs.
In the last few days plans have been presented to create a federal state of Europe, with a Common Treasury and a single budget. Alongside this legislative overlordship come the practical costs. In trade we run a deficit of £50 billion with the EU when we run a surplus with the rest of the world.

Europe grows relatively poorer as each new member joins (just wait for Turkey: the coalition and Labour all want to add another 70million people), and becomes more of an economic backwater in terms of world trade as growth switches to such countries as Brazil, China and India.

Worse still, for the privilege of having to implement all these regulations, Britain has to pay the European Union a gross contribution of more than £50million per day. Yet the Prime Minister says we must stay in at any cost.
It is clear that the political class is trying to mislead us again.  They suggest that a straight “in or out” referendum question should be replaced by a complex question offering a third way: continuing as part of the Single Market without full political union. In short, we are being presented with a recycled version of what we thought we were getting in 1975.
But just like then, there is no third way. My research explains why any apparent renegotiation of membership terms can only be a mirage. With the design of the EU as it is meaningful renegotiation is neither possible nor credible.
In fairness to the EU elite, they have never tried to hide this. A binding commitment to “ever closer union” was there at the beginning and has been constantly repeated ever since.
But the same cannot be said of the British establishment: ever since the membership and referendum debate of the early 1970s it has tried to conceal this fundamental commitment. And the leopard is not about to change its spots.
We are committed by Treaty to make progress towards an ever-closer union. Until the Treaties are repealed by British law, this remains a statement of fact.
What I am afraid of - as we increasingly win the argument about how the UK’s membership is damaging rather than beneficial - is that the British establishment will appear to renegotiate, come back claiming to have got “not all we want but enough”, fix the wording for a referendum into a leading question giving them endless “wriggle-room” and win by fraud - all over again.
In contrast with nearly 50 years of lies and half-truths from successive governments, I believe you, the public, are entitled to hear the truth about what the EU is and where it hopes to go.
There must be no more EU stitch-ups. It is time for our political class to be honest with the people of Britain and for the people of Britain to have their say.

TOP TORY QUITS TO JOIN UKIP

THE crusade to get out of the EU got a huge boost last night when a former Tory grandee announced that he is joining anti-Brussels party Ukip.

Lord Stevens of Ludgate told the Daily Express that he had given up hope David Cameron would take the radical action required to unshackle Britain from the yoke of Brussels.

The peer – chairman of Express Newspapers until 1999 – is the latest political heavyweight to back Ukip because of the Prime Minister’s failure to hold a referendum about whether Britain should quit.

He follows a string of high profile Tory defections and his appeal to others to act on grounds of sovereignty puts the Tory leadership under massive pressure for a tougher anti-Brussels line before next month’s party conference.

Lord Stevens said: “I would urge everyone to consider whether they want to be run from the unelected Brussels Commission or Whitehall. I believe in the United Kingdom being the United Kingdom. We fought two World Wars to preserve that.”

He’s a giant of Fleet Street, an immensely respected member of the House of Lords and a huge asset to Ukip and to the cause of Britain’s freedom

Nigel Farage

A jubilant Ukip high command will unveil their latest recruit at the party conference in Birmingham this week. 

Leader Nigel Farage said: “He’s a giant of Fleet Street, an immensely respected member of the House of Lords and a huge asset to Ukip and to the cause of Britain’s freedom.”

MEP Roger Helmer and former Conservative chief whip in the Lords, Alexander Hesketh have already been welcomed into Ukip’s ranks.

Although no longer an official member since a dispute with the leadership over Europe in 2004, Lord Stevens is a life-long Conservative supporter who has sat in the House of Lords as a “Conservative Independent”. Now he has decided his only course is to become a fully-fledged member of Ukip.

Lord Stevens said he believes that only a referendum asking people if they want to be in or out of Europe, held as soon as possible and certainly before the next election in 2015, will do.

He admitted that turning his back on the Conservatives was a hard decision. “All my life I have been a Conservative supporter,” he said.

“It’s a wrench for me, to say I’m pro-Ukip and effectively anti-Conservative. That’s why it’s taken me eight years. But I have made up my mind. I’m taking the plunge.

“I had hopes of this Government but I finally got exasperated. My patience is exhausted because I don’t think this Government is going to do anything. I delayed this decision because I was hopeful the Government would be more positive on sorting out the problems of Europe. They are just prevaricating. I don’t regard it as disloyalty to the Conservative Party. It’s loyalty because I’m pointing them in the right direction.”

Lord Stevens said a vote to endorse a renegotiated relationship with Europe, which Mr Cameron is believed to be considering, was insufficient, because any new position would end up being “nibbled way at again” by eurocrats.

“They just don’t let go, and the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers don’t have time to watch over Brussels all the time,” he said. “The referendum has to be in-out, yes or no: do you want to be part of the EU and I would want it as soon as possible.”

More people are speaking out against Brussels, said Lord Stevens – and he praised the Daily Express crusade for leading calls to leave the EU.

“I’m very proud of the Daily Express, that it’s leading the charge. It’s a brave and a great decision,” he said.

“The Daily Express has always been a campaigning newspaper and it has always believed in Britain and the working man. The working man is basically in favour of free trade and not being run by Europe.”

He warned failure to tackle the Brussels issue, as well as shortcomings on other policy areas such as simplifying tax would cost the Tories votes.

Lord Stevens, 76, said that since he was a young man he had supported a free trade area and no more.

“The people of this country voted in 1975 for a free trade association, not for anything more than that,” he said.

But he added warnings that the aim of the new bloc was complete political and economic union had been proved correct. “Every step along the way has been another step in that direction and I have been opposed to it all my life.

“We can operate perfectly effectively outside the EU. We want the freedom to have a free trade agreement. Our trade outside the EU is increasing more rapidly than within the EU and that’s been the case for some time.

“We have an EU with an ageing and declining population, now in serious economic trouble which we are helping to bail out.”

Lord Stevens said the key problems with the EU included its ever-increasing cost to Britain, its sky-high spending and the massive red tape it imposes.

“The bureaucrats in Brussels have nothing better to do than to dream up new regulations,” he said.

“To get the UK economy moving we have to cut regulation and we can’t do it under the present regime. We have to reduce immigration, which costs us a fortune, and we can’t do that as long as we are part of the EU.”

Mr Cameron faces increasing pressure from within his own party as well as outside to give Britain a say on our relationship with the EU.

Last week Tory MP John Baron said he was launching a new cross-party group to urge Mr Cameron to pass a law committing the next government to a referendum.

On Monday we reported how former PM Sir John Major and ex-Defence Secretary Liam Fox were stepping up calls for our relationship with Brussels to be redrawn and the results endorsed in a referendum.

However, many Tories want to go further and announce a straight vote on whether to remain an EU member, an idea Mr Cameron is resisting.

Nigel Farage: A new EU powergrab has been launched

But you won’t hear anything about it from the BBC or Westminster politicians
We are still not having a proper debate in the UK about our relationship with the EU. It suits our political class to pretend that all things EU are ‘over there’ and need not worry us.
Look at what happened last week. We saw an astonishing powergrab launched in Brussels. Yet silence in Westminster.
We heard a lot about the Hillsborough Report. It still proves to be a powerful and emotive subject and the arguments about the behaviour of the police are very important. But it meant the EU plans were completely overlooked.
On the morning of Prime Minister’s Questions a plan for a complete EU takeover of regulations of our banking industry was trailed in the FT and Telegraph. In Westminster there was silence. Then hours before the PM stood up European Commission President Barroso had announced that he wanted a new EU Treaty ready in time for the 2014 European election. Again one could see the tumbleweed rolling over the Treasury benches. There was not a single mention of the EU question at PMQs, instead there was much concern over speed bumps.
Just as Ken Clarke had once envisaged, Westminster was a debating chamber of a local rate-capped authority. It was as if events of earlier in the day in Strasbourg had simply not happened.

“From my close up ringside seat I watched a speech that repulsed me”

Jose Manuel Barroso has never been the most inspiring Commission President and the old hands in Brussels still miss the days of Jaques Delors. For the third year in a row he delivered his ‘State of the Union’ speech. It is strange, given how much they hate the USA that such mimicry should exist. In my thirteen years sitting in the European Parliament never have I heard the bosses be so open and clear about their intentions: Whilst Barroso’s style may have excited little, his words were very strong. From my close up ringside seat I watched a speech that repulsed me. We must have a Federal Europe, democracy was to be transferred from the nations to the EU level and a stronger European Army was needed. The objective was clear, to be a global power.
I sat thinking, if only every UK voter could see and hear this, we would all say ‘no way, Jose’.
The only real point of contention was whether the structure should be a Federal Europe of Nation States or a Federal Union with the official abolition of states, I found it difficult to stay in the chamber.
Of these great events, including the German Constitutional Court rejecting an application to strike down the Euro rescue fund, the great British public will learn little. The BBC, our state broadcaster, covered events in the chamber in a cursory way, just another story. Our national press, including the eurosceptic ones, gave brief coverage in the foreign pages. I did not see a single British journalist in Strasbourg myself, but am told the BBC have a new chap but he hasn’t bothered to introduce himself. I would have thought that the UKIP leader, whose Party came second in the 2009 European Elections, being personally abused by Barroso might count. Apparently not. It is only newsworthy if I call someone a damp rag, that being a national disgrace. According to Barroso I am an extreme populist and irrelevant to the EU debate. I didn’t know he cared.
I did at least expect a question to David Cameron about one of Barroso’s proposals, the creation of an EU Banking Union. Whilst we have considerable problems with our banks and radical reform is badly needed, the last thing we should want to do is to hand over control of this vital sector. Elsewhere the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, had spoken out strongly against all these ideas. But no, nothing. No challenge to Cameron to demand a veto, clearly speed bumps are what concerns our modern day career MPs.
There is one major consolation though. Through the blogosphere and YouTube the voters will realise that a new European Treaty is on its way and that a referendum will be impossible to ignore. It will all depend now on the question, but I am sure that the majority of us want no more fudges, just a simple choice.