Whatever it says on the ballot paper, the real question will be "Do you want to be in the EU or not?" and Blair knows it, writes Timothy Garton Ash
At last, the Battle of Europe begins. For 15 years, if not 50, the people of Britain have lived in a stinking fog of myths and lies about the European project. For nearly seven long years in office, Tony Blair has never quite dared to start the battle that he has always known should be fought. Now, with the promise of a referendum on the constitution, he must and will.
Last week ended with Blair at his worst, soft-soaping George Bush over a change in policy towards Israel and the Palestinians that cried out for public criticism. This week begins with him at his best, displaying, finally, the political courage over Europe that he has previously shown in a much worse cause, over Iraq.
Since the early 1990s, the Eurosceptic press, led by the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, has dictated to the elected Prime Minister what he can and cannot do in Europe. And Blair, like John Major before him, has appeased them. By committing to a referendum he now compels himself to take them on, and to make his case directly to the people.
British voters should not be fooled by Jesuitical Eurosceptics or nervous Europhiles, both of whom will insist this referendum is just about one EU treaty and not about the country's membership in the EU. Whatever it says on the ballot paper, the real question will be "Do you want to be in the EU or not?" For this constitutional treaty, when and if it is agreed by European leaders, will be the new, authoritative description of what the EU is to be for some time to come. Anyone who votes No must be prepared to get out of the EU altogether.
It may not come to that in the end, should several other countries reject the treaty, but everyone who campaigns honestly for a No vote must be prepared to follow through to that logical consequence. This means that Michael Howard and Co will be campaigning dishonestly (surprise). Which in turn means that the part of evasive squirmer switches, at a stroke, from Blair to Howard.
Here is the basic reason why both Hugo Young and I originally urged in the Guardian's pages, nearly a year ago, that Blair should hold a referendum on the constitution. Plainly, the 1975 referendum did not resolve the British people's deep ambiguity about the whole project of European integration, which we call in shorthand "Europe". Now we should make the choice for a generation.
This is also better ground to fight on than the euro. The euro zone, with its one-size-fits-all interest rate, is not doing well. You can plausibly say "I'm against the euro but for the EU". But if you say, "I'm for the EU but against the treaty codifying what the EU is", you have to be a Jesuit, a fool, a hypocrite or Michael Howard. Like the Battle of Britain, this will be an uphill struggle. By contrast with most other European countries, the default setting for most Britons is suspicion whenever they hear the word "Europe"" in a political context - though not where it refers to holidays, wine, food, fashion, second homes or brilliant football.
We also live with an anachronistic, semi-mythical account of our national past, which our current national curriculum does little to combat. Above all, some 22 million newspaper readers pick up a dose of Euroscepticism every day, compared with about eight million readers of papers broadly favourable to the European project. The so-called news pages of Eurosceptic papers are full of systematically distorted coverage, like the front-page piece in the Sun three weeks ago headlined "Waterloon".
This informed its readers that "Tony Blair is set to surrender Britain to the EU" by signing the constitutional treaty on the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.
At a supposedly more elevated level, I turned on BBC News 24 last weekend to find Janet Daley of the Daily Telegraph explaining that signing this EU constitution would mean slamming the door shut behind us, since there would then be no way out.
This is the opposite of the truth, since the new treaty contains, for the first time, an article explicitly providing for a member-state to withdraw from the union. In the world of the Eurosceptic media, black is white.
In such a hostile climate, Mr Blair will be well advised to take his time with the referendum campaign. If the opposition has chosen the ground for this battle, the government should choose the date.
The procedural timetable, for a treaty which has still to be agreed by European leaders, and then to go through both British houses of parliament, suggests a date after the next general election. So does political wisdom. It will take more than a few months to undo the prejudices of 50 years.
Timothy Garton Ash is a historian. His new book, Free World: Why a Crisis of the West reveals the Opportunity of Our Time, will be published by Penguin on July 1st.