People's Pledge

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The People's Pledge was a political campaign to secure a referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union. It aimed to achieve this by asking voters to sign a pledge that they would use their vote to help secure a majority of Members of Parliament (MPs) in support of an in-out referendum on EU membership. The 1975 European Communities membership referendum was the last time such a vote had occurred in Britain.

The campaign did not take a view on whether the UK should stay in, or leave, the EU; simply that the expansion of the EU's powers and influence over government since the 1975 'common market' referendum merited people being consulted again on continued membership. According to the Labour Party MP Kelvin Hopkins: "While those who initiated the People's Pledge campaign are primarily Eurosceptic, it has support from those who take a different, pro-EU view, but who wish to see the issue properly resolved by a vote of the British people."^[1]

Directed at its launch by Mark Seddon, with cross-party support from MPs including the Labour party's head of policy Jon Cruddas MP^[2][3] and other politicians including then Mayor of London Boris Johnson,^[4] it aimed in particular to focus pressure on MPs in marginal seats using the tactic of holding independently scrutinised constituency referendums. By early 2012, more than 128,000 voters and 87 MPs^[5][6] had signed up to the campaign. In September 2012, the People's Pledge was appointed as the secretariat to a new APPG for an EU referendum, with Conservative MP John Baron acting as the group's chair and Labour MP and former government minister Keith Vaz as vice chair.^[7]

The campaign is credited with having had a key role in bringing about the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, held in June 2016. Prominent Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan wrote in his 2016 book What Next? that "The People's Pledge was the most effective popular campaign I have ever been involved with, and must be reckoned one of the most successful pressure groups in British history."^[8] James Forsyth, writing in The Spectator, said that the campaign's recruitment of Boris Johnson as a supporter had made an EU referendum almost certain: "Boris Johnson's decision while campaigning last month to sign up to the campaign for an in/out referendum on EU membership could be a key moment in the history of the Conservative party – the moment when the party's balance of power tipped decisively in favour of a referendum."^[9] Along with Forsyth, Paul Goodman of ConservativeHome and Leo McKinstry of the Daily Express have cited the success of the campaign as a main reason why a referendum became a possibility.^[10][11]