I’m not sure ‘Fresh Start’ is quite the right name for a
group of Tory MPs who are busy re-hashing what is by now a pretty hackneyed
message within the Tory party. The
self-proclaimed group is publishing a report calling for the repatriation of
significant powers from the EU to Britain. So the same call that has been made by Tory MPs since
Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech – a fresh start indeed.
Yet, of course, the group’s report remains newsworthy
because David Cameron is himself entering the European maelstrom with a speech
due on Friday that advance spin suggests will be redefining the British
relationship with Europe and calling for a referendum on the terms of our
membership. Mr. Cameron is going
to complete the work that John Major began with Maastricht it seems, although
Mr. Major himself had rather assumed that the Maastricht agreement was an end
in itself, requiring no further finesse.
The problem for Mr. Cameron is that of the few policy
positions he does hold, a vague but clear Euro-scepticism is amongst them. This is a Prime Minister held in deep
suspicion by the majority right-wing of his parliamentary party, and he
undoubtedly sees a new Euro-scepticism as just the sort of red meat to throw
their way in order to keep them off his back over other things. He should beware. There is no beast so utterly
single-minded and determined as the Euro-sceptic Tory MP, and they will not be
appeased by some vague ideas about renegotiation. Neither will they be too happy about what must seem a far
distant prospect of a referendum on Europe under a majority Tory
administration, especially given the unlikelihood of such an event. Hatred towards Europe has become an
unthinking element in the DNA of most Tory MPs, to the extent that any rational
debate about it is virtually impossible, and what used to be the Tory Party’s
will to power has been all but negated by the willingness of Eurosceptics to
drive the party into a kamikaze approach that receives carefully expressed opprobrium
from all but its own members.
Take the Obama administration. After successful visits each way between Barack Obama and
David Cameron you could be forgiven for thinking that this was a transatlantic
relationship built on the strongest of foundations. A harkening back to the glory days of Reagan and
Thatcher. Well, in the sense that
Reagan consistently belied his own rhetoric by following a US self-interest
that usually denied Britain its own requirements, I suppose it is. For all the bonhomie of Cameron and
Obama, the administration has not been slow in making it very clearly known
that it regards Mr. Cameron’s European manouevres as unwise and potentially
disastrous. A Britain isolated
from Europe will not be able to rely on any special relationship with the
United States. Their realpolitic views a single European unit
as the most useful form of European ally.
Any country standing outside of that – including Britain – will be a
marginalised minnow.
And the US attitudes are nothing compared to those of
powerful European countries such as Germany. Gunther Krichbaum, a key CDU ally
of Chancellor Angela Merkel, warned of economic disaster for Britain is she
stood outside the single market.
Just as British Tory euro-sceptics are vigorous and single-minded in
their call for ‘renegotiation’, so most European players are equally determined
that Britain cannot keep treating the EU as an a la carte menu to be picked
from at will.
David Cameron is more euro-sceptic than his predecessor John
Major. He also appears to be a
less effective diplomat however.
Andrew Rawnsley, in a thoughtful piece for the Observer on Sunday,
recalled the tenacious and canny diplomacy of Mr. Major (“a gentleman”
according to one of his European adversaries, Ruud Lubbers) which eventually
yielded the opt-outs in the Maastricht Treaty. But, as Mr. Rawnsley reminded his readers, such opt-outs
benefited Mr. Major not a whit, as he watched his 1992 election triumph
dissolve into the ashes of a disastrous party war which doomed it to never,
thus far, winning a majority on its own terms in parliament again.
David Cameron is not, as I’ve noted before, a leader with
any deep roots in the Conservative Party.
It is one of the factors that makes him such an isolated leader. But it would be foolhardy of him to
think that he can ride the euro-sceptic bandwagon. Europe wins few votes amongst the British electorate to whom
Mr. Cameron is answerable, but a perception that Britain is an isolated, marginal
figure in world affairs does have an impact, and in appeasing his unthinking
right Mr. Cameron is clearly heading in that direction. He should leave Europe alone, and look
again at reinvigorating a domestic One Nation Tory policy that would have a
real chance of reversing the decades long Tory electoral decline.
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