Report comment

Mr Ball, I think ST means that "nobody was given any say" in Britain. After all, it is Britain we are concerned with, is it not? True, there was a referendum here in 1975, but that was on the issue of continued membership of something which the people were assured - by all the political parties and all the Press and media - was a mere trade association. Even I, at the age of 19, could see that that was a lie and therefore voted "Leave". But most people swallowed the bait. The Danish people rejected Maastricht in 1992 and were simply told to vote again, as many in the Establishment are trying to force the British to do now (in vain, let us hope). The Danes were ultimately bullied, bribed and deluded into reversing their verdict. The same thing happened in the Republic of Ireland some years later. The French actually did reject a "European constitution" in a referendum in the early years of the present century. That majority was far smaller than the Brexit majority in June 2016 (I think about 0.5 per cent) yet, such is the importance of France in the EU scheme of things, that no one ever thought of insulting the French intelligence by proposing to reverse it. Instead "Europe" immediately went to work in a different way and sought the same result without the need for consulting the people. This is what I meant by referring to the "ratchet" effect. It's also worth noting that any referenda on EU membership have been held under the constitutional provisions of independent nation states. We may be sure that the EU constitution. when we get it, will include no such provision.