Related: Women A referendum was expected to take place in the United Kingdom in 2006 to decide whether the country should ratify the proposed Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe.
As negotiations finalising the text of the proposed constitution drew to a close in early 2004, Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had consistently denied the need for a referendum on its ratification.
[1] However, on 20 April 2004, he announced in the House of Commons that a referendum would in fact be held in due course assuming the treaty was accepted by the European Council.
They suggested that the Labour Party would seek to minimise the impact of the issue of Europe on the election campaign by saying "we can discuss that at the referendum".
In the days after the announcement of the vote, government policy was not immediately clear on this issue: it initially said[citation needed] that the UK would then be in the same position as Ireland was after it rejected the Nice treaty.
[5] On 26 January 2005 the government announced that the question asked in the referendum would be: "Should the United Kingdom approve the treaty establishing a constitution for the European Union?
[citation needed] ICM asked 1,000 voters in the third week of May 2005: "If there were a referendum tomorrow, would you vote for Britain to sign up to the European Constitution or not?”: 57% said no, 24% said yes, and 19% said that they did not know.
[citation needed] Following the French and Dutch rejection of the treaty, Jack Straw announced on 6 June 2005, to the House of Commons, that the plans for the referendum in early 2006 had been shelved.