Britain must decide in a referendum whether to stay in the European Union or seize the moment to throw off the “shackles” imposed by Brussels, Lord Owen says in The Times today.
The Labour Foreign Secretary from 1977-79 says that voters must be asked whether Britain would be better off leaving the EU to join a new, wider single market stretching from Iceland to Turkey.
Urgent action is needed because German plans to save the eurozone are forcing the European Union closer to a “single country called Europe”, he says. That risks undermining Britain’s ability to remain a self-governing nation.
The Owen plan comes after a day of fast-moving developments across Europe in which:
· Markets rose on the news that European Union and German officials are talking to Spain about ways to bail out stricken Spanish banks;
Advertisement
· David Cameron flew to Norway for meetings with Jens Stoltenberg, the Prime Minister. He meets Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, today in Berlin.
Lord Owen is the most senior political figure to embrace the idea of a referendum. His warnings, in a new e-book, Europe Restructured, published today, carry force from one of the most ardent supporters of Britain’s entry into the European club.
By drawing up two specific questions he puts pressure on David Cameron and Ed Miliband to address the issue at the heart of Britain’s dilemma with Europe. The peer believes that both the Conservative and Labour leaders will have to promise a referendum between now and 2016.
Lord Owen envisages that the “European Union” is likely to morph into an inner core of nations that share the euro as their currency and have, “to all intents and purposes, though not in name, a single government”.
Meanwhile, Britain would be part of a reformed “European Community”, an expanded and reinvigorated single market. Membership would be given to all EU and European Free Trade Association members, as well as Turkey.
Advertisement
Exit from the European Union would mean returning to Westminster control over key areas that have passed to Brussels, including agricultural, fishing and industrial policy, as well as social, foreign and security policies, a move that would delight many Tory MPs. Writing in The Times, Lord Owen says that the eurozone crisis has exposed the incompatibility of the British and German visions for Europe.
“The EU is reaching the point, because of the eurozone crisis, when it cannot continue to be ambivalent about these two models,” he says.
“In the UK, but also in some other countries, there are growing public demands for a principled and consistent position to resist any further merging of the two models, because the people in these countries want to remain self-governing, in that they are determined to retain their own currency and remain in control of foreign, defence and fiscal policies.
“Yet these same countries see the argument for greater integration within the eurozone to help resolve its continued crisis. The way these issues can be resolved Europe-wide is to enable those countries within the eurozone who wish to integrate further to do so and to allow those countries who do not ever envisage becoming part of the eurozone to remain in a restructured single market.”
Under Lord Owen’s vision, up to five countries, including Greece and Spain, could leave the eurozone because they are unable or unwilling to comply with its new requirements. He believes that, in Britain, a referendum on continued membership is now inevitable.
Advertisement
“At the very least UKIP will be the lever for forcing a Conservative government to concede a referendum on Europe . . . Labour will be forced to concede as well,” he writes. However, he warns that a straight referendum on British membership of the European Union would be lost “if the only option is ever greater integration within the EU”.
He recomends two questions. The first being: Do you want to be part of the single market in a wider European Community? With a Yes/No answer. The second: Do you want to remain in the European Union, keeping open the option of joining the more integrated eurozone? Again with a Yes/No answer.
Lord Owen resigned from the Labour front bench in 1972 along with Roy Jenkins over Labour’s opposition to membership of the European Economic Community. He resigned again from the Shadow Cabinet in 1981 because of Labour’s pledge to pull out of the EEC, this time forming the Social Democratic Party. He later became disillusioned by the push for European integration, helping to found the “New Europe” group to keep Britain out of the euro.