Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
It was, I seem to recall, a Tuesday evening and I was sat at my
desk in the EP. Nikki Sinclaire was in the adjoining office.
Some time earlier we had been talking about the government’s
offer to debate matters in parliament if 100,000 citizens would
present a request by petition. There was no mechanism in
place at that time, nor did there appear to be any real hurry to
put one in place. Nikki had identified this as an opportunity to
call for a referendum on our country’s continued membership of
the EU.Nikki suggested some words, I put them down and sent them
through to her, she e-mailed me back some changes, I finished
it off. It didn’t look bad at all….“We the undersigned call for a binding national referendum to
decide whether Her Majesty’s Government should invoke
Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to negociate the United
Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union….”The campaign was launched at a meeting in Torquay on
September 3rd 2010, and so we set out to find 100,000 signatures.There was uncertainty as to whether 10 Downing Street would
accept the petition. They accepted it, in fact they took in over
200,000 signatures.There was uncertainty as to whether the Commons Backbench
Business Committee would debate the matter. They debated it,
and we saw the biggest backbench revolt the government had
experienced up to that point.The idea of a referendum was voted down, but the matter
would not go away. Nikki’s polling proved that the people
wanted to have their say.This coming Friday, Nov 8th, we will see the Commons review
the European Union (Referendum) Bill.—————————————————————What impressed me was the level of cross-party support for the
petition. Only UKIP failed to support us. Indeed, a UKIP member
who had asked if he should support the petition kindly
forwarded to me a letter he had received from the UKIP leader’s
office. Here is a short extract: “Petitions, I may say, are useful
for publicising issues and recruiting activists; but, where such a
fundamental policy as rejecting the EU is concerned, there is no
prospect whatever of a pro-EU government’s acceding to a
petition.”However, once it became clear that we were winning the battle,
the referendum suddenly became UKIP’s ‘greatest achievement’.As recently as last month, a journalist in Strasbourg reported to
me that two UKIP MEPs had told him that they were opposed to a
referendum on this matter.————————————————————–Of course, this is not an isolated case. During the 2010 General
Election campaign, HS2 was the main issue on the doorstep.
This is a project that will have serious implications for West
Midlanders and indeed many people in the UK.UKIP’s manifesto for that election included the party’s desire to:
‘introduce three high-speed lines linking London to the Midlands,
northern England and Birmingham.’ That reads to me like an
approval of HS2!Now that opposition to HS2 has become a major dynamic,
guess what? UKIP is now ‘the only party that has consistently
opposed HS2?.There have been attempts to airbrush the 2010 manifesto out of
existence, but you can find all you need to know HERE.
Ukip-vs-EUkip 
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