Blair concedes referendum on
EU constitution
19th April 2004 Updated 20th April 2004

Tony Blair has today made a statement in Parliament to confirm that a referendum will be held on the proposed EU Constitution.

In a widely leaked reversal of policy, Tony Blair pledged that once Parliament has debated and decided on the EU Constitution, "let the people have the final say".

Mr Blair stopped short of explaining why he has had such a sudden and complete change of view. Neither did he set out a specific referendum timetable. However, his indication that the final document, expected to be agreed in June, will first be considered by Parliament indicates that the referendum is unlikely before a predicted Spring 2005 general election.

The Prime Minister's spectacular U-turn is a huge victory for the Democracy Movement's 18-month long campaign of lobbying MPs, mass-leafleting and grass-roots campaigning for a referendum in marginal constituencies. It shows that a wide network of support exercising co-ordinated, consistent and targetted people power really can deliver change.

Tony Blair has clearly woken up to what our survey of MPs' views on the issue has been showing for some time: that the cross-party pro-referendum coalition building in Parliament meant that he would have faced a real battle to make the EU Constitution law without first pledging to let the people decide.

Having now achieved our initial objective of forcing the government to back down following a vigorous campaign of targetting MPs in their constituencies, the DM now looks forward to working with other groups as part of a broad-based coalition to secure a 'no' vote in the referendum. We believe it's vital that such a campaign is not dominated by any one party using it for their own narrow party-political objectives.

DM Campaign Director Marc Glendening comments:

The DM has today written to Tony Blair to seek confirmation that the EU constitution will not be completely ratified through Parliament before the referendum is held. For the referendum to be fair, the British people must not be presented with a fait accompli as they were in 1975 when the referendum was held after Britain had signed up to the then EEC.

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