For the government to concede this, however, would be to sacrifice, as they believe, control. They will not do it. Mirroring the public's lack of trust in government is ministers' lack of trust in the people. They prefer to tough it out on the basis of their own power, rather than delegate decisions to another power, even when that power might be the people themselves.
The case for a referendum on the future European constitution exposes the same pattern of behavior. The government rejects it.
I've argued before that this will be a serious political error. On political grounds alone, the coming stage of constitutional reform offers a perfect opportunity to confront British, or rather English, voters with the choice that has to be made: do they want to be in the EU as about to be roughly shaped, or not? The changes put on the table by the Giscard d'Estaing convention are a clever, moderate and acceptable mix. This is the moment and the method to decide whether the Europhobia that wants to set the clock back several decades will continue to corrode our relations and undermine our ambitions for the indefinite future, or not.
But there's another reason to favour a referendum. It would be a surrender of political power to popular power. It would say: we the political class are failing you, we have not listened enough, we have not been interested in your voices except once every four years, we face a rather desperate need to find new routes to public trust. So we are letting go. We acknowledge that this change in the shape of the EU is indeed constitutional, does mark something pretty big, and merits the thumbprint of the nation to endorse it.
This would be a risky thing to do. The disease of the political class may have reached so far into the nation's bloodstream that when the dominant set of politicians argues for a verdict, that will be enough to send the people the other way. Certainly Blair has far to travel if he is ever to become once again an asset rather than a liability to any of the European causes in which he undoubtedly believes. Whether the referendum were on the euro or the constitution, he would have reason to view it with special trepidation - as, no doubt, he would the judge set loose to examine who told the truth about the case for war against Iraq.
But the alternative is to watch the political class sink further in public esteem. High among the counts against it, some of them exhibited over both Iraq and Europe, are its capacity for twisting evidence, its relentless indulgence in casuistry (viz that Europe is not a constitutional issue, or that the September dossier was in no way souped up), its inability to admit any but the least offensive errors (viz that the February dossier was copied off the web), and its ironclad defensiveness in all circumstances.
I write as one who is not an enemy of politicians, and does not believe their motives are invariably suspect. But the class has a lot to be defensive about. It has come to be seen by many voters if not yet as a public enemy then certainly as suspect number one in the debauching of public life. The Brits' pride in their public standards, compared with those of other countries, lies in ruins. The people offer one road back -- if Blair can bear to trust anyone but himself.
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