the emerald elephant in the conference-hall at #cpc09
The Conservatives are winning the popularity contest, but they have an electoral mountain to climb. They’d like this week at Manchester to concentrate on cutting spending and getting people off benefit. However, the emerald elephant in the conference-hall is a referendum on the Lisbon-treaty. This morning on BBC-television, Andrew Marr and Jon Sopel rightly pressed David Cameron and Eric Pickles on their policy. Both stuck to the line that the Conservatives basically won’t say what they’d do if Poland and the Czech republic ratified before the election. (Mr Cameron said the Czechs may not ratify for three to six months, but Mr Brown can hold on for almost eight and now almost certainly will.)
Even if the treaty is still in limbo when the Tories come to power, and even if there’s time to hold a referendum before the Czechs and Poles approve it, the UK has already ratified.
The bold, vote-getting thing for Mr Cameron to do would be to say this week that a Conservative government would hold a popular vote on Lisbon willy nilly. In a way, it’s easy to say that the public finances are wrecked and something must be done. Even Labour’s doing that, albeit reluctantly. It’s easy also to say, after more than a decade of opposition, that you’re the party of change. What would be truly audacious would be to tap-in to Britons’ visceral distrust of the EU and come out of the Eurosceptic closet. Losing Ken Clarke to the LibDems would be a shame, but he’d still be a good parliamentary turn and, more important, an anti-EU stance could get the Tories the electorally seismic shift they need.
The party-conference story so far:
- Liberals promise savage cuts (good) and mansion-tax (bad) and then have to backtrack on both
- Labour has to admit it must cut but (unlike the Tories) will do so reluctantly; D Miliband launches leadership-campaign from the conference-floor
- Conservatives mustn’t mention the war.
