EU Cufflinks to Handcuffs

Back in the early 1990s, David Cameron used to wear a set of EU cufflinks. As he was working for a Eurosceptic Tory cabinet minister at the time, journalist Daniel Finkelstein asked him why he made such an unusual gesture:

I don’t think European federalists should have a monopoly on being part of Europe, he replied.

 

A clever answer for someone who must have been in their early twenties at the time? Perhaps the cufflinks were the young Cameron's idea of a provocation, rather like journalist Jeff Randall, who arrived at the BBC sporting Union Jack cufflinks, to be told "you can't do that - it's like the National Front!"

Back then, the Conservatives, though in government, were tearing lumps out of one another over the European Union. John Major had signed the Maastricht Treaty, much to the horror of the party's Eurosceptic wing. Major's inability to contain Tory Euro-feuding damaged his premiership and hastened his party's near-decimation in the 1997 general election. Margaret Thatcher, too, had Euro-enthusiasts gunning for her. Every Tory leader since then has been aware of the party's tendency to self-destruct on Europe, a fact which David Cameron is all-too-keenly aware of.

Fast forward nearly twenty years and it looks like David Cameron will be Britain's next prime minister (the EU cufflinks are long-gone). One can't blame Cameron for wanting to get the issue of Europe out of the way before the general election, rather than have debates over the EU poison his first years in office. Two years ago, he gave Sun readers a "cast-iron guarantee" of a referendum on whatever Treaty emerged from negotiations following the rejection of the EU Constitution. As what is now known as the Lisbon Treaty was finally ratified by the Czech Republic this week, Cameron and his supporters now argue that what he really meant was a referendum if the treaty was still to be ratified. Now it has passed into EU law, they say, there's no point calling a referendum.

Cameron did say, though, that he wouldn't let the matter rest at that. So his statement yesterday on Tory plans for a new relationship with Europe was watched closely, not only by Conservative supporters and the British commentariat, but by fellow European leaders, who are keen to discover what sort of mischief this "Eurosceptic" Tory plans to make for them over the next five years.

We linked to Cameron's speech yesterday; most of our readers will have had time to digest it, and the reaction, by now. A couple of things are evident, though.

First, Cameron probably believes he has had a lucky break. Many newspaper pundits are hostile (The Daily Mail called it "a sorry day for Britain, democracy and the Tories." Yet the Sun gave him space for another open letter to its readers, which it called "Cameron's crusade for British rights." Benedict Brogan in the Telegraph said that Cameron's speech was credible and necessary; the Economist's Bagehot column described it has "moderate and sensible." The fact that a French Europe Minister attacked Cameron following the speech rallies the troops against  of the the tabloids' traditional Euro-enemies.

Eloquent eurosceptic Dan Hannan MEP left his post as legal spokesman and "returned to the back benches" - but Hannan skillfully depicted his resignation as part of a broader campaign to work for referenda, rather than as an attack on Cameron's leadership. Hannan has not joined the UK Independence Party, as many of his commentators demand.

Hannan also noted that Cameron wants to dedicate his office to struggling with the UK's budget deficit. The Conservative leader has talked up the size of the job he faces. He sees Europe as at best a distraction from the historic task at hand, and at worst a threat to his premiership.

This is key. If for some reason the Irish vote was delayed, or the Czech President had been able to prevaricate a little longer, Cameron would have had to honour his pledge and call a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. It is almost certain that the British would have rejected Lisbon, plunging the EU into another round of negotiations. Did Cameron really want this horse-trading to dominate his premiership? Especially given that British Prime Ministers have an undistinguished record of bringing home the goods in EU negotiations - remember Major's opt-outs and Tony Blair's "red lines?" Cameron could have been the next PM to commend a treaty the British public yearns to reject.

Cameron hopes that accepting Lisbon will allow him to kick the ball into the long grass for the next few years.

Whether or not he can get his "moderate and sensible" proposals past the European Union is a different matter. He wants a "Constitutional Court" in Britain to rule on the constitutionality of measures introduced by EU laws - does Britain really need yet another court, given that we have just overturned centuries of tradition by creating a Supreme Court? And will it do any good? Germany's court, which Cameron uses as his model, doesn't seem capable of finding anything unconstitutional about the various EU treaties.

A "referendum lock" on new treaties is a good and overdue idea, but the Lisbon Treaty's notorious "ratchet clause" does away with the need to consult governments or voters on further integration.

As for unpicking the Social Chapter and "returning" those laws to Britain? Cameron said he didn't want to call a vote on Lisbon because it is already law. Yet the Social Chapter is part of Lisbon, which supersedes all previous European Treaties - indeed, legally speaking, it no longer exists.

To repatriate these competences means effectively renegotiating the Lisbon Treaty with 26 other governments. We can just imagine their response should Cameron try this one on. The influential German MEP Elmar Brok said he does not see any chance of passing even the very first step of this process.

Indeed, the French minister we referred to earlier has already dismissed the idea: Speaking in the Guardian, French Europe Minister Pierre Lellouche said,

"It’s not going to happen for a minute. Nobody is going to indulge in rewriting [treaties for] many, many years. Nobody is going to play with the institutions again. It’s going to be take it or leave it and they should be honest and say that (...) Finally we have institutional package, but it took 15 years of looking at our navel and getting everybody bored to death with sterile debate”.

If only our MPs were as honest as this plain-speaking Frenchman! Cameron, meanwhile, tells us that we can't undo Lisbon with a referendum, but believes he can force Europeans to hand over competences which only Lisbon grants them. Madness.

The public response will have to wait for the next opinion polls. Cameron will be hoping his lucky streak continues. British voters rate Europe as one of their most pressing concerns, but have steered away from strongly Eurosceptic parties in the past. A look at the comments sections of the right-leaning newspapers covering the Conservative leader's speech, however, shows raw fury at his response to the Lisbon Treaty. Large numbers of those adding their comments, including many "lifelong Conservative voters", vowed to vote for UKIP in the general election. They number in their hundreds, if not their thousands.

In all the years EURSOC has been watching the comments, we have never seen such anger.

Cameron's lackeys warn that a vote for UKIP could see a hung parliament, or even Labour returned for yet another term. Think of the damage that would do to Britain, they say. Indeed, the prospect of another five years of Labour is chilling. Cameron is banking that the economic crash, the surveillance state, rising violent crime, apparently uncontrolled immigration, an overstretched health service and underperforming schools are going to figure higher on voters list of priorities than obscure arguments about sovereignty and the EU.

He may well be right: Those thousands of readers who pledge to desert him on the websites of the Mail and the Telegraph may well be the only people who feel strongly enough about the EU to vote for UKIP instead of the Tories, even at the risk of putting Gordon Brown in charge for another term. A silent majority of Conservative voters might hate the EU, but are troubled by the prospect of leaving it. They might even see it as a minor issue alongside the unprecedented scale of the financial disaster New Labour has bequeathed to the nation.

In six months we'll know if Cameron's gamble paid off with voters; we don't think his adversaries on the EU are likely to give him as easy a ride.

Comments

[ste]

Theres no such thing as "cant".

[CARLOTTA]

The best analysis of Camerons betrayal I've read to date. Thank you. He will pay for this!