eurealist.co.uk

Britain is the only country in the world which has legislation which controls the spending of participants in a referendum.

In the North East assembly referendum there was a designated “Yes campaign” and a designated “No campaign”, the selections were made by the supposedly independent Electorial Commision. There are many questions still to be answered about the conduct of this commision during that campaign, however we will assume for the sake of argument that the Commision acted independently and in good faith and was not swayed into making the decisions it did by the government.

Each designated side in the referendum on the EU Constitution is going to be allowed to spend £5 million for a period of up to six months. The intention behind limiting the expenditure by each side is to ensure that the referendum will be fair and the result will be a fair representation of the free choice made by the British people. If each side is limited there can be no question of an unfair advantage given to either side, and one side cannot buy more air time or produce more leaflets or bombard us with TV adverts.

Now the parameters have been clearly set out, there will be, to borrow a phrase, a level playing field, we can all look forward to a free and fair referendum on the EU Constitution.

Err.. Well not quite, because we do have to include the British Government in the picture and if the NE Referendum is anything to go by the Labour Party as well and of course this is not to mention the EU itself which feels it has a duty to “inform” its citizens.

We can ignore the political parties because they should balance themselves or would if Labour and Lib-Dems were not on the same side, because they are then we can assume that the Conservative and UKIP would balance any spending done for the yes side. They would also be limited to their expenditure in any case. Always assuming the political parties have any money left after the Election.

The Government on the other hand has no cap put its own spending, it can spend as much of our money as it likes, on putting forward the argument for a “YES” vote that is until 28 days before the date of the referendum.

The Neill Committee on standards in public life stated that

“The government of the day in future referendums should, as a government, remain neutral and should not distribute at public expense literature, even purportedly ‘factual’ literature, setting out or otherwise promoting its case”.

Although the government has accepted the recommendations on capping both sides in a referendum, it has refused to accept any curbs on its own expenditure and has rejected the view of the Neil committee and has made it clear that it believes it has “a right and a duty” to promote its case using public money. Denis MacShane has said that the government plans to spend “serious money” promoting the EU Constitution.

In other EU member states there have been examples of very heavy Government spending on advertising, leading to a very one-sided debate. For example, during the 1994 referendum on EU accession in Austria, the government spent £2.4 million promoting membership. The Austrian government later acknowledged that very heavy spending had made a significant difference to the result. In Ireland, during the second Nice referendum the Government-backed “yes” side outspent the “no” side by a ratio of 20 to 1. In the British Referendum the yes side outspent the no side by 10 to 1. So we can see that the referendum will be a one sided affair with “serious money” being spent by the government to convince us of the benefits of the Constitution. On top of this the EU will also be spending even more serious money on the yes side. So, on the yes side we will see the official designated Yes Campaign, Britain in Europe, all the EU backed Monnet University professors, all the EU backed organisations, the BBC, Channel 4 if the output I have seen is anything to go by, the Government and the European Union all spending serious tax payer’s money. Set this against a possible 6 million for the no side, we will be lucky if we come out of this with less than 20 to 1 spending in favour of the yes vote and that is extremely serious money.

On top of that again if the NE Referendum is any guide we can expect each and every government minister to be ignoring the 28 day period before the referendum and campaigning in their private capacity as members of the Labour Party, that will be fine unless they also use official transport, police protection and their position in government to gain headlines, at what point does the Prime Minster become ordinary T Blair, and as such unimportant to the media. We can also expect the heavy weights in the EU to be wading in with their own form of information.

On top of all this the likely official No Campaign and the Conservatives will be giving a confused message Yes to Europe No the Constitution.