IWR in the news

But, since the fiasco of the non-election, Mr Brown – for all his talk of courage – is beginning to look as though he's only interested in consulting the public if he thinks he can get the answer he wants.

Take the revised EU Constitution – the finer points of which the Prime Minister is negotiating at an EU summit in Portugal today.

In 2005, the Government decided there should be a national referendum on the constitution, rightly promising to let the people have the final say on whether they wanted to transfer more powers to the EU. This pledge was in the 2005 Labour Party manifesto on which all Labour MPs were elected.

Shortly afterwards, French and Dutch voters rejected the constitution in referendums in their own countries. But, instead of listening to the people, EU leaders decided to bring the constitution back in a repackaged form – which Gordon Brown now says will not be put to a referendum in the UK. He claims that the new text is so different to the original that there is no need to honour his manifesto pledge.

But he is wrong. Virtually every other EU leader has admitted that the so-called "EU Reform Treaty" is almost exactly the same as the old Constitution. And an independent committee of MPs – made up mostly of Labour MPs – has recently said the same after careful examination of the two texts.

As the author of the Constitution, former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, has admitted: "All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way." There has been a deliberate attempt
in Brussels to dupe the public into thinking this is a different text – the idea being to avoid any more "dangerous" referendums at all costs.

Why does it matter?

Because many people feel that the EU already has a powerful and almost uncontrollable influence on our everyday lives, and the Constitutional Treaty would give the EU even more control – on issues as fundamental as crime, immigration and public services.

More and more decisions would be taken by unelected politicians in Brussels. The UK would lose its right to veto in 60 areas of policy, and our power to block laws we disagree with would be cut by 30 per cent.

This would inevitably result in even more legislation from Brussels. This is hardly welcome news for businesses: a recent poll of 1,000 British chief executives showed that 54 per cent believe the burdens of EU regulation are outweighing the benefits of the Single Market, and 60 per cent want to take back powers from the EU.

The European Court of Justice would gain substantial new powers, which could lead to them making decisions on important issues such as how long our most dangerous criminals should stay in prison, and decisions on the rights of migrants. Do voters really want more rulings like the recent Chindamo case, in which EU law prevented the Government from deporting the murderer of school headmaster Philip Lawrence?

The Treaty would create a permanent EU President, a powerful EU Foreign Minister in all but name and an EU Diplomatic Service. The EU's police force, Europol, would be able to initiate investigations on British soil for the first time.

The Government argues there is no need for a referendum because of its so-called "red-lines", or UK-specific safeguards. But the "red lines" are essentially the same now as they were for the original constitution – on which the Government promised there would be a referendum in the first place.

In addition, there are serious doubts about whether these safeguards will actually work – the chair of the Commons Committee charged with investigating this question last week said the UK safeguards "will not be sustainable" and would "leak like a sieve". The reality is that the "red lines" are a ploy to distract attention from what is really being given up.

But, more fundamentally, the referendum debate goes to the heart of the way we are governed: it is a question of whether decisions should be made by elected representatives close to the people they affect, or by unaccountable, distant institutions, then they should ask us first.

It is also a question of trust. Mr Brown has a job to do if he is going to regain his political credibility. Keeping his promise and calling a referendum on the EU treaty is an opportunity for him to turn things around and prove he is serious when he talks about listening to people and restoring trust in politics.

But, if we are going to persuade the Premier to change his mind on a referendum, then we have a job to do as well. That is why, on October 29, we are launching our Yorkshire for a Referendum campaign which will be working hard to help Yorkshire voters have their say. We have to make that voice heard.