
There were similar commitments in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat manifestos. Referendums were actually held, and the treaty defeated, in France and the Netherlands, but no referendum was ever held in Britain, on the ground that the treaty was dead.
It was not dead, it had merely gone underground.
The constitutional treaty was subsequently reconstructed and became the Lisbon treaty, which contains more than 95 per cent of the same material. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a former President of France, described the process: “Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly . . . all the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.” That is what actually was done.
The Government soon recognised that this process had not succeeded in deceiving public opinion. Opinion polls showed that a referendum on the Lisbon treaty would be defeated. The Government therefore decided to break the referendum commitment that had helped it to win the election.'
SO. DO YOU TRUST YOUR GOVERNMENT? DO YOU TRUST THE EU?
LINK:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article3517155.ece