Will the Tories change their EU referendum policy?

The Czech court just decided that the Lisbon Treaty is in line with Czech law. A signature from the Czechs on the Lisbon Treaty is now expected “very soon.”

The Czech government gave assurances to EU partners at Brussels last week that there would be no more delay.

A Conservative announcement of a change in policy is now expected very soon too. The Daily Telegraph parked its tanks on David Cameron’s lawn this morning in a pre-emptive strike.

It does not like the fact that there will be no retrospective referendum on Europe. Mr Cameron thinks his new policy has enough Euro scepticism in it to avoid the threatened exodus to UKIP.

If he won the general election, he would launch an attempt in Europe to get powers repatriated to the UK – a mighty task given treaty-fatigue in the EU.

Perhaps more important though, in the great scheme of things, is the policy already announced in October 2007 but likely to be re-announced in the coming hours or days: the plan to make the UK, like Ireland and some other EU countries, a state that can only ratify an EU treaty after a referendum.

It’s hard to imagine how any treaty in the last 20 years would’ve got through a referendum in the UK. Could even a treaty that repatriated powers be sure of support in a referendum?

Irish referenda show how these popular votes can become hijacked by all sorts of unexpected or unrelated issues.

The move in Tory policy to a “compulsory referendum before ratification” country was unveiled at the 2007 Conference by William Hague but many eyes were elsewhere on the day – on the possible early election that hadn’t been ruled out.

A lot of the newspapers made it an inside page story…it doesn’t feel like an inside page story now.

As for the post-Lisbon process, EU governments expect a special one-off EU summit to be held in Brussels on Thursday 12th November, at which the member states will carve up the jobs of President, Lord High Executioner for Foreign Affairs and the EU Commission.

Tony Blair is expected to talk to Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy this week to see if there’s life in his candidacy for the presidency.

If it fails, few around Westminster believe that David Miliband can really have dismissed the High Rep job out of hand. He may yet have a long night with close friends talking it through.