The new politics is about reconnecting voters. Or so Tony Blair tells us. How strange it is then that New Labour should be so Old Labour when it comes to making genuine contact with the people once again?

The Government’s apparent pigheadedness, in its point blank refusal to allow voters a say on the new European constitution, flies in the face of all the warm words Downing Street’s spinners have been busily crafting as of late. Referendums were once a key part of the new politics, and Labour was at the heart of this new agenda.

The record speaks for itself. Labour has been the party of the referendum. There have been 38 referendums over the past 30 years. Only one of these was called by the Tories, and that on a minor border change between Northern Ireland and the Republic in 1973.

Demanding that voters do as they are told, by the political elite, is an essential part of yesterday’s scene. In came referendums on whether to establish the Scottish Parliament. The Welsh were given their say in establishing a Welsh Assembly. Voters in London decided on whether or not to elect a mayor. Even voters in Hartlepool were given a choice, as it turned out, on whether to elect a monkey as mayor.

But then the ugly sister from Europe arrived on the political scene. New Labour took fright. Labour storm troopers, who had risen effortlessly by reciting whatever inane mantra the spin doctors wrote, jumped out of their skin and starting reciting the old political slogans.

It is important to remember how deep the old prejudices are in the Labour Movement against trusting the people. They were there at the birth of our party. Fabian founder, Bernard Shaw, was up front enough to caution against handing the country over to ‘the riffraff’, adding that the ‘riffraff can neither govern nor let anyone else govern except the highest bidder of bread and circuses’.

When I began the campaign for one person one vote the same prejudice against trusting the people re-emerged with a vengeance. It is all too easy to forget what was said against enfranchising party workers. The vast majority of the party hierarchy fought like rats in a sack against the one person, one vote principle in choosing parliamentary candidates. The ordinary party members had to be excluded as they simply lacked the knowledge to vote on such key issues – so we were told.

The same refrain was heard in the campaign for a referendum on the Euro. Now nobody questions that a vote by the people is the right way to decide this issue. Nor that people are not acting as an effective sounding board in the preliminary skirmishes of this campaign. Yet when it comes to deciding the future of Europe, and our part in that future, senior Labour politicians are frantically pumping out the same old tired message. Either there is no issue to decide, or that it is too complicated for voters to make a judgement.

But we voters know different. The future of Europe has to be bound up in our country’s future. And here there is, I guess, a real division amongst voters.

Some will see that our country’s best interest is to become part of a new European State. Others believe we will be better off remaining a separate country, but closely bound up with our European partners.

Other people, largely politicians I have to say, assert that we are getting excited over nothing in particular. The new European constitution is nothing but a spring clean aimed at tarting up the European house which has many rooms.

These politicians miss the point. The question is not whether the first ever constitution for Europe is nothing in particular, or whether it is the most fundamental of changes. Today’s debate about the European convention is essentially about the new politics.

Voters have had enough of the old political game whereby politicians let them out of the political cage once every four or five years to vote. Even then, voters are limited to a take it or leave it menu. They have to buy a single party’s total programme, even if they think the other side has some good ideas.

The new politics rejected this line. Voters were seen as grown up enough to decide the big issues. They were also grown up enough to decide whether it was a big issue or not.

Here is the rub. The democratic spirit enshrines a belief that public debate is the best way to decide fundamental issues. It also believes that public debate may decide that what was once thought of as a fundamental issue might be nothing of the kind.

History has taught us that the safest way to make the big decisions is for the nation to concentrate its mind over a few weeks to decide the best way forward. Those of us who fear, as I do, that the new constitution will be deeply damaging to democracy, have got to be prepared to have our arguments tested to the limit. The same applies to those who argue that the new constitution is simply a little tidying up matter.

It doesn’t matter now what side we are on. What is at stake is whether the Government is prepared to test its beliefs on the anvil of the new politics it has created. Or whether, deep down, the Government knows that its argument won’t hold up to intense voter scrutiny and, to win the decision, it has to lock voters back into the politics of yesteryear.