People's Pledge

People's Pledge

File:People's Pledge logo.png
Formation	13 March 2011
Type	Political movement
Purpose	The holding of a referendum on Britain's continued membership of the European Union
Region served	United Kingdom
Director	Mark Seddon
Website	www.peoplespledge.org

People's Pledge is a British political campaign attempting to secure a referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union. It aims to achieve this by getting voters to sign a pledge not to vote for any prospective Member of Parliament (MP) standing in the next general election unless they commit to supporting such a referendum and voting for it in Parliament. There has not been a popular vote on the issue in Britain since the 1975 European Communities membership referendum. Directed by Mark Seddon and with cross-party support from sitting MPs, it aims to put particular pressure on marginal seats.

History

Further information: [[:Enlargement of the European Union]]

The modern day European Union (EU) had its origins in the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952. The United Kingdom was not a founder member, and did not join the subsequent process of enlargement until the 1970s. On 1 January 1973, on its third application, Britain was accepted into what was by then known as the European Economic Community (EEC). In what would become the last public referendum on the membership issue, the 1975 European Communities membership referendum was held as a post-legislative exercise in gaining public approval for Britain's continued membership of the EEC, following a change in government from the Conservatives under Edward Heath who had led the application process, to the minority Labour government of Harold Wilson, who had made a referendum an election promise. The referendum found 67% to be in favour, on a 65% turnout. All subsequent treaties leading to the development of the modern day EU were signed into law without recourse to a referendum.

According to the campaign, all three major British political parties withdrew promises of a referendum on the last major European treaty, which proposed the creation of a European Constitution, after it was re-drafted as the Treaty of Lisbon, and subsequently ratified by the UK on 19 June 2008 by the Labour Government of Gordon Brown. The subsequent 2010 general election unusually produced a hung parliament, leading to a Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition government bound by an agreement that there would be "no further transfer of sovereignty or powers over the course of the next Parliament", and to cover for future terms, proposed the introduction of the European Union Bill 2010, which sought to "amend the 1972 European Communities Act so that any proposed future treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences, would be subject to a referendum on that treaty". The coalition did not however commit to holding a referendum on the status of the existing membership.

On the basis that the public still wanted a referendum on the issue of the existing membership, the People's Pledge campaign was officially launched in Westminster on 15 March 2011. The campaign website had been launched two days earlier. The campaign claimed that over 6,000 people had already signed the pledge before the official launch, and 30,000 people had signed by 17 March.

Organisation

Mark Seddon, a former editor of Tribune and member of the Labour NEC, is the campaign's director, alongside co-founders Christopher Bruni-Lowe, Stuart Coster and Marc-Henri Glendening. It also has a number of MPs and other figures listed as part of an 'Advisory Council'. Under the chairmanship of John Mills of the Labour Euro Safeguards Campaign and the JML Group, the council comprises the Labour MPs, Austin Mitchell, Kelvin Hopkins, John Cryer and Kate Hoey, the Conservative MPs Zac Goldsmith and Douglas Carswell, the other politicians Daniel Hannan (Conservative MEP), Marta Andreasen (UKIP MEP) and Jenny Jones (Green AM), as well as Bryan Gould, Ruth Lea, Brian Denny, John King, Virginia Ironside, Dele Ogun, and Robert Hiscox, from the fields of politics, journalism, economics business and law. Also listed were Fay Weldon, John Stevens, Bob Crow, Iain Dale and Caroline Lucas as other supporters of the campaign.

Campaign strategy

The People's Pledge is a cross-party political campaign to bring about a binding yes or no referendum in the United Kingdom on the issue of Britain's continued membership of the European Union. It aims to achieve this by making sure that only prospective candidates or sitting MPs standing for election to the House of Commons in the next United Kingdom general election who promise to support the holding of such a referendum, are elected. Specifically, it asks voters to sign up to a pledge via the campaign's website to only support such candidates. In addition to showing the total number of signatories, the campaign would also present those figures broken down by constituency. The campaign claimed this breakdown would be particularly effective in swaying the outcome in the 100 most marginal seats. In addition, the campaign sought to make available to all who signed the pledge, the voting record of their local MP on European issues.

The pledge that voters are urged to sign is worded as follows:

I will only vote at the next election for a candidate who publicly promises to support a binding referendum on our EU membership and to vote for it in the House of Commons.

Campaign position

Upon its launch, the campaign cited five key reasons why a referendum was needed: that nobody under the age of 54 had ever been given the chance to vote on the issue (i.e. those aged 18 or over in 1975), that the EU now made the majority of laws of the United Kingdom, that the ministers and parliamentarians making those laws were not accountable to British voters, that the cost of the EU to the British taxpayer was rising, and that the European Commission was aiming for further powers of economic governance. Accompanying the launch, campaign director Mark Sneddon wrote a piece for the The Daily Telegraph titled A referendum on Europe is long overdue.

Polling

A YouGov poll held in September 2010 of 1,948 adults in the UK found that if there was a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU, 47% would vote to leave, compared to 33% who would want to remain.

Another YouGov poll commissioned by the campaign ahead of its launch found that, of 2,436 voters, 61% supported the idea of holding a referendum, with 25% opposing.

Reactions

While Seddon claimed on its launch that what differentiated this new campaign was that the initiative had come from the left, the leader of the Labour party Ed Miliband told the Daily Express the same day that "It seems to me that we made a decision on Europe in 1975. I think it was the right decision."

The campaign launch was accompanied by a front page headline 'New Hope to Get Out of EU' in support, from the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Express, who themselves had recently handed in a petition to Number 10 calling for a referendum, under the Express 'Crusade' banner 'Get Britain Out of the EU'.

The day before the official launch, Peter Hoskin writing for the political magazine The Spectator stated that, while there had been many previous campaigns for such a referendum, it cited the timing of the People's Pledge campaign as slightly more resonant, given the recent positions of the two parties that went on to form the governing coalition in 2010, and that polling suggested 54% of people would prefer to have a referendum on issue of the EU, instead of the 2011 referendum on the Alternative Vote brought about as part of the coalition agreement and scheduled for 5 May 2011, the first UK referendum since the 1975 EU membership referendum. Of the campaign's outcome, he stated that "at the very least, it might persuade some candidates to face up to, and meet, the tide of public opinion on Europe.", claiming that public support for leaving the EU had been steadily rising, and even a large number of non-Eurosceptics have wanted such a referendum for some time.

See also

• List of MPs elected in the United Kingdom general election, 2010

External links

• Official website