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Also in today's papers: Foreign Secretary Jack Straw as much as admits that there will be no poll on Euro entry before the next election - then puts the boot into Tory leader Ian Duncan Smith; France goes CAP in hand to Brussels; A veteran journalist bemoans the lack of debate on the European Constitution.
As EURSOC reported yesterday, these are dark days for Euro-enthusiasts. Supporters of the single currency hoped that Tony Blair would call for a referendum on British entry next year; indeed, Blair himself hoped this was the case, opening his campaign with a pro-Euro speech in Japan. Unfortunately for the prime minister, the day he chose to launch his campaign was the day Dr David Kelly chose to take his own life.
Since then, any talk of a referendum has been on the back burner - if anything, there are whispers that Blair may prove a liability for Euro-enthusiasts, and perhaps it is time for him to go.
Jack Straw may not yet be calling for Blair's scalp, but he as much as admitted that there would be no referendum on Euro entry in the forthcoming parliamentary session. Speaking yesterday, he paid scant attention to the currency, in contrast to bullish government speeches before the summer recess. Instead, he launched an attack on the Conservative party, and particularly its leader Ian Duncan Smith, who Labour has belatedly noticed may yet be a threat.
Straw's attack, however, makes IDS (as his supporters have taken to calling him) seem a reasonable fellow. While conceding that Duncan Smith does not plan to withdraw Britain from the EU, he claims that,
"Mr Duncan Smith's argument that the EU should not have 'supremacy over our national laws' is extraordinary from someone who claims to be in favour of British membership of the EU."
Is Straw admitting that membership of the EU and setting laws at a national level are incompatible?
Not that there will be much debate over this, at least not according to veteran political correspondent Noel Malcolm. Guesting in the Spectator's politics column for the first time since 1991, he complains that Euro-enthusiasts are still avoiding serious debate.
Malcolm gives an interesting overview of events since his last column, noting that Euro-enthusiasts are still using the same arguments:
"The replies they gave could usually be reduced to one or other (or, curiously, both) of the following: either ‘Don’t be silly, nothing like that is going to happen’, or ‘It’s going to happen anyway, so don’t try to stop it.’"
He warns that these responses have been successful in the past - and it's worth noting that they're not unlike the current government's response to debate on the proposed constitution.
Finally, France. It is clear that the Eurozone's stability pact is going the same way as Britain's referendum on Euro entry (See Stability Pact Doomed, below). President Jacques Chirac and his finance ministry have been pushing the case for reform rather aggressively, much to the dismay of France's co-signatories. However, now Chirac's fall guy prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has been sent to Brussels to plead humbly for more flexibility in the pact.
Raffarin, spooked by reports that France's deficit may prove even larger than the 3.6 percent predicted, has asked the EU to show some understanding, and has promised to do what he can to correct the imbalance - within reason. It is worth pointing out that reason is not a characteristic of the forces that oppose Raffarin in French political life: The big unions will fiercely resist any spending cuts or reform. Their intransigence may provide Raffarin with a get-out clause.
The French PM also warned Brussels that France expected cash from the EU's Solidarity Fund to help it cope with the drought, forest fires and crop damage caused by the summer heatwave. The fund was set up after flooding devasted much of Germany last summer.
France's farmers, among the probable beneficiaries of such a pay-out, already recieve the lion's share of EU funds through the Common Agricultural Policy.
