British Prime Minister Gordon Brown faced mounting pressure from within Labour ranks Friday over his rejection of demands for a referendum on the new EU treaty. Leading eurosceptic MP Ian Davidson called on the prime minister to demand a rethink from fellow EU leaders on the controversial reform proposals. He was reported by the Daily Telegraph newspaper to have the backing of at least 40 backbench colleagues for an effective ultimatum on the issue: get the treaty changed or put it to the people."This new government has been willing to re-examine a number of areas of policy and has encouraged debate and discussion in a number of fields," Davidson later told BBC Radio. "We want to contribute to that and we're quite clear that there are a number of areas of reform that we would like to see that we think would make Europe more popular and make it work better and we want the prime minister to consider these." The UK government insists the new treaty is not the same as a proposed constitution, eventually scuppered by French and Dutch voters, on which Labour had promised a referendum.
Brown insisted again this week that parliament alone should make the decision, pointing to changes secured by the UK to protect national interests. But critics claim the treaty is almost identical to the abandoned treaty and the campaign for a public vote gathered pace this week with the support of major trade unions.
Davidson said he believed it would be possible to force further changes to the deal agreed by Brown's predecessor Tony Blair shortly before he left office in June.
The final version of the deal is now being drafted, with the aim of agreement between EU leaders this October and ratification - by referendum or national parliament - by June next year at the latest.
Speaking after Downing Street talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last Wednesday, the prime minister said, "If we can achieve, as we have done so far, our negotiating objectives, then I believe the proper way of considering this is through detailed consideration in parliament itself. We are determined that when the detail of the amending treaty becomes available and when the discussions of the Intergovernmental Conference happen, that we will achieve in detail all these negotiating objectives that we believe are guaranteed by the signatories in the European Council a few weeks ago."
But Davidson said, "Any time you have a meeting of European Union heads of government, there's the opportunity for discussion and debate. A group of us have come together saying we are interested in formulating proposals for change in the EU. The drawing up of this new constitution, or constitutional treaty as they are describing it, does give us the opportunity for a number of positive changes."