John Humphys asks : Will David Cameron's policy on Europe be successful?
According to the polls Europe is one of the issues of least interest to the British public. But you’d never guess that from listening to politicians. Some of them seem to talk about little else. And there’s going to be a great deal more of it as we approach the European Parliament elections in the spring. David Cameron has a strategy to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the European Union which, he hopes, will see off his political opponents and stop the issue from tearing his party apart. But many think the strategy is unravelling. Is it? And what should Britain’s relationship with the EU actually be?
Mr Cameron has faced a series of interlocking problems over Europe since he became prime minister. In the first place, no matter who was in Number Ten, Britain’s relationship with the EU could not just be left to carry on as it was - for one very simple reason. By not joining the euro (and showing all the signs of not doing so for the foreseeable future) Britain has to find a way of dealing with the fact that other EU members that are part of the eurozone seem bound to deepen their economic and political integration simply in order to make the euro work. But greater integration is just what British governments of all stripes have resisted. So the issue is how (or even whether Britain can stay in the EU while remaining outside the eurozone.
But David Cameron, as the leader of the Conservative Party, also has other factors to consider. Most of his party has become increasingly eurosceptic in the sense of believing that ‘Brussels’ already has far too much power and that that power should be returned to member states. An unknown number of Tory MPs has become so eurosceptic that in their hearts they’d prefer Britain to leave the EU altogether.
In addition the Tory Party faces an ever more threatening electoral challenge from a party that is explicit in wanting Britain to leave: the United Kingdom Independence Party. In recent months UKIP has cleverly used the immigration issue (which polls show to be the second most important issue, after the economy in voters’ minds) to boost its support, a lot of it at Tory expense. This pulls Mr Cameron in a Eurosceptic direction.
But he also has to take two other factors into account. First, big business and the City of London, although keen for changes in the terms of British membership of the EU, express deep alarm at any suggestion that Britain might pull out. And secondly, Mr Cameron does not govern alone. He is in coalition with the most Europhile party in Britain, the Liberal Democrats, many of whose leading members strongly advocated ten years ago that Britain should join the euro.
So how should the Prime Minister handle these conflicting forces? This time last year he thought he’d come up with the solution. He announced that after the election, a majority Tory government (ie one that had been able to shed the LibDems) would set about a full-scale renegotiation of the terms of British membership and then put the new terms to the British people in a referendum in 2017. The tone of the speech was extremely pro-EU, in the sense that he made clear he hoped the negotiations would be successful so that Britain would be able to stay in. But he left little doubt that if the other EU members didn’t play ball, he’d be prepared to lead Britain out.
Through this strategy he hoped to deal with all his problems. He thought it would defuse the UKIP threat by promising the referendum that, until then, only UKIP was offering. He thought it would appease the eurosceptics in his party so dissipating the threat to party unity. And he thought it would provide a means of dealing with the underlying problem of how Britain could stay in the EU while remaining outside the eurozone.
But now, a year later, it does not seem to be working on any front. UKIP continues to threaten the Tory vote: a YouGov poll this week showed it likely to come second to Labour in the European Parliament elections and many commentators believe it will top the poll. As for Tory Party unity, far from going to ground, ninety-five backbench Conservative MPs wrote (anonymously) to the Prime Minister last week demanding a law be passed allowing the British Parliament to override laws coming from the EU. That idea had to be immediately rebuffed by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, on the grounds that it would be fundamentally incompatible with what the EU is all about.
With regard to the renegotiations themselves there is little sign of much enthusiasm among our EU partners. None seems ready to make Britain a special case. But even though Mr Cameron has stressed all along that Europe as a whole, not just Britain, needs reform of the way the EU is run, there is deep alarm at the prospect among many of the other countries. That’s because substantial changes to the way the EU operates would require changes to the treaties and in many countries that could be achieved only by submitting the new terms to voters in a referendum. Many governments are terrified of referendums because they believe that voters use them not so much to address the issue at hand but in order to express their views about whichever government happens to be in power. They can easily go ‘the wrong way’.
This week the Chancellor, George Osborne, repeated the Prime Minister’s view that the existing EU rules are not ‘fit for purpose’ and that the EU needs fundamental reform if it is to compete in the world. But many commentators believe that the government has made the task of renegotiation much more difficult for itself by alienating many of the countries that ought to be our allies. Poland, for example, which in many respects sees things in a similar way, has been outraged by Mr Cameron’s declared wish to restrict the benefits that Polish workers in Britain can send back to their families in Poland. And the Romanian and Bulgarian governments deeply resent the way they have been represented in Britain as countries full of benefit scroungers.
In his speech Mr Osborne was blunt about what could happen if Britain’s demand for a new relationship with its European partners was not met. He said: “If we can’t protect the collective interests of non-eurozone member states then they will have to choose between joining the euro – which the UK will not do – or leaving the EU … I believe it is in no one’s interests for Britain to come to face a choice between joining the euro or leaving the EU.”
While it may be too soon to write off the Prime Minister’s strategy entirely, many people think we are heading precisely to this choice.
But what about the other parties? Nick Clegg, the LibDem deputy prime minister, poured scorn on what he called “an unholy bidding war between the Conservative Party and UKIP about who can sound more breathless in their condemnation of all things European”, while admitting that his party faced a “real uphill struggle” in the forthcoming European election.
As for Labour, Ed Miliband has so far resisted the call to commit his party to hold a referendum on Europe if it wins the next election, though some observers think he will be forced to before the campaign begins. But even if he doesn’t and manages to win that election without such a pledge, he as the new prime minister will face the same underlying problem of how Britain can secure its interests in the EU while remaining outside the eurozone. Any solution he finds to that he’ll very probably have to put to the public in a referendum in which, in all likelihood, a newly elected, highly e Tory opposition leader will campaign on the ‘No’ side. That would not be an easy referendum to win.
The problem of Europe, in other words, is not just Mr Cameron’s.
- Will his strategy work?
- What should Labour’s strategy be?
- And, in the end, what would be the best outcome for Britain from the renegotiations that any British government is going to have to engage in?
