Constitution or amending treaty?

8.20.03am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 19th Oct 2007

With the European Council meeting going on in Lisbon at the moment the debate continues to rage over whether or not the amending treaty under discussion is really still the old Constitution. The fact is that the two are very similar. What has been abandoned is the idea of replacing all the previous treaties with a new one and some of the symbols of statehood. However regardless of this it does remain true that this is one of the most minor amending treaties in the history of the EU so should we have a referendum on it?

Simon James said, "The problem with referendums is getting people to answer the question. If you have very infrequent referenda then very often the question actually answered is "do you like the government?" If you take Switzerland's approach to this and have referenda on everything then people do focus on the matter in hand and actually vote on the issue so that works well. But that really would be a major constitutional change for the UK.

"There's obviously a political dimension to this too, indeed it is mostly being used as a political football by the media and even more so by the Tories. Cameron tries to tell us it's a moral imperative when his party forced through the Single European Act and the Maastricht and Nice Treaties without a referendum (the latter while he was advising the government). There is also the fact that UK governments repeatedly make changes to our constitution themselves without any suggestion of a referendum. Why is the EU a special case? Its total hypocrisy from the Tories. "