New European treaties have always been occasions for disagreement in British politics but never before, as far as I'm aware, a pretext for civil disobedience. Those who climbed a crane in Parliament Square early yesterday morning to demand a referendum on the Lisbon treaty can therefore be credited with a first. Suffragettes chained themselves to railings to demand votes for women and a committed few went to prison for resisting the poll tax, but no one has flouted authority to stop the march of qualified majority voting or preserve the EU's rotating presidency. MPs voting on a referendum tomorrow have been warned.
With all due respect, this is unlikely to find a home in the pantheon of political protest. Great acts of civil disobedience are carried out in defence of huge moral principles arousing strong public sympathy. Anti-treaty campaigners claim all of this, but are wrong to do so. They point to an unofficial ballot organised in 10 constituencies that indicates 88% support for a referendum as well as other surveys showing large majorities in favour. But when have opinion polls ever shown the public rejecting the offer of a referendum on any subject? What counts is the intensity of feeling, and the ballot's turnout of 36% hardly suggests a mood of deep public disquiet.
For months, Britain's rightwing tabloids have been attempting to whip up hysteria about the treaty, but all they have done is to make themselves seem obsessive and out of touch. Protests have been low-key and people have reacted with a mixture of resignation and indifference. If they accepted the argument put forward by the Sun, that Lisbon will be the end of Britain, they would have taken to the street in large numbers. The fact that they have not suggests that they recognise the treaty for the minimalist offering that it is.
Efforts to generate outrage at the government's refusal to carry over the promise it made to hold a referendum on Lisbon's ill-fated precursor, the EU constitution, have also fallen flat. Ministers are correct to argue that Lisbon is a weaker treaty - not that they should be proud of the fact. The real mistake was to have offered a referendum at all, for the constitution was also a minimalist document and should have been dealt with as such. Unfortunately, Tony Blair lacked the backbone to tell Rupert Murdoch to mind his own business. On that score, at least, Gordon Brown can be judged an improvement.
The effect of Blair's error of weakness has been to allow anti-Europeans to trespass on the democratic high ground. What could be wrong with giving the people a say? Surely the government has only changed its mind because it thinks it will lose? In fact, there is nothing democratic about allowing one or two members of a club of 27 to block change wanted by the rest. What opponents of Lisbon are asking for is not democracy at all, but the right of a single-country veto to frustrate the will of the majority. It is understandable that they should do so because they know that any properly democratic system would have approved the old constitution, never mind Lisbon.
Even so, this debate has highlighted a real weakness in the way decisions are taken in the EU. Without giving credence to the bogus democratic arguments put forward by proponents of a national referendum, pro-Europeans ought to feel some degree of embarrassment at the way the Lisbon treaty is being railroaded through to ratification. What started as an effort to involve European citizens in a more open process of treaty change, including a European convention, has ended with a return to decision-making by the elite. It may be expedient, but it is still a retrograde step.
The problem is one of trust, or lack of it. Many European leaders are now reluctant to take the risk of holding a referendum on the EU because they don't trust voters to judge the issues on their merits, or even consider the issues at all. As with the failed referendums on the constitution in France and the Netherlands, there is a feeling that people tend to see a vote on Europe as a cost-free opportunity to lash out at unpopular national governments or express some other generalised frustration at the state of the world. It is the fact that EU treaties appear so remote to the concerns of voters, rather than the idea that they pose any great threat, that tends to produce negative outcomes. The result is democracy without responsibility.
This is a structural problem the EU will need to address if it is to have a successful future. The need for further treaty change will not go away just because ministers in the UK and other member states find it politically inconvenient. There is something bizarre in hearing those who urge the EU to face up to a permanent revolution in the organisation of its economy suggest that its political structures can somehow stand still. Just as it has always done, the EU will need to adapt its institutions and procedures in the face of evolving policy challenges and the accession of new members.
There is a way for the EU to make the necessary changes while answering the democratic criticisms levelled against it, but it involves an element of risk-taking that doesn't come naturally to most European politicians. The answer would be to put future treaties before voters in EU-wide referendums. The interests of member states would be accounted for because the texts would still have to be agreed unanimously through inter-governmental negotiation. Any country that felt unable to accept a positive result in a pan-European ballot would then be entitled to hold a national referendum on whether it wished to remain an EU member under the new rules. For those wishing to walk away, the Lisbon treaty rather handily provides a new exit procedure.
There is always the possibility that one or two countries could decide to exercise this option, and the UK would certainly be high on the list of potential candidates. But faced with a democratic vote that had real consequences, it is more likely that people would opt for the benefits of continued membership. Opinion polls suggest that would be the case even here in the UK. Either way, the need for change is real, because the greatest risk for Europe is surely the choice between political sclerosis and collapsing democratic legitimacy currently on offer. The lesson of Lisbon must be that we can't go on like this.
David Clark, a former government adviser.