Observer –Europe – 11 December 2011
When Hugh Gaitskell sat down after making his “end of a thousand years of history” speech against joining Europe at the Labour Conference of 1962, he turned to his wife and said “Look how many are clapping, dear!” She replied “Yes dear. But it’s the wrong people who are clapping”.
This week-end, it’s the Euro-sceptics who are clapping. Many British newspapers are clapping Mr Cameron for “standing up for Britain” – at last. French ones are clapping M. Sarkozy for sticking it up “Albion perfide” – at last. Those who see Britain as Norway without the oil or Switzerland with nuclear weapons are clapping. But those of us who believe our island’s greatness has been about taking the risks of engagement rather than the false security of isolation, feel bereft, sad and depressed.
It’s important to understand how we got here.
It wasn’t because Mr Cameron’s demands were immodest – in fact they had been negotiated down within the coalition to very little indeed (and preceded by dozens of European phone calls from Nick Clegg to smooth the way). No demands for repatriation; almost nothing which was unique for Britain except the right to have stronger regulation for the City. Mr Cameron’s “asks” were rejected, not because they were too great – but because it was he who made them. No other British Prime Minister of recent years would have had difficulty getting this package through. This was Gallic pay back time for all that unwise Cameron lecturing – and sometimes worse – from the side-lines these last months. I suspect that if he had asked for a cup of tea, M. Sarkozy would not have lost the opportunity to refuse it. Not a statesmanlike reaction from M. Sarkozy to be sure; but a human one nevertheless. But beneath the tragedy of last Wednesday night, lies a deeper and more disturbing fact than M. Sarkozy’s personal pique. Long years of anti-European prejudice from the Tory Euro-sceptics, laced with downright insults from their supporting press, has now generated a growing anti-British prejudice in many European capitals, not just Paris.
Some say, to paraphrase Lewis Carrol’s Lobster Quadrille, never mind; “the further we from Paris be, the closer are to Washington”. Not so. Washington was there last Thursday; in the margins; willing Europe to come together. They are now going to be much more interested in those inside, than the one nation who is out.
So what happens next?
Perhaps it will all fail, we comfort ourselves – just as we did when the whole European process began back in 1957.
It may indeed not work. The views of the Euro-zone’s democracies still have to be dealt with. And the markets still have to be reassured through some process of mutualising debt. But the Germans were never going to stump up for that, until they had proper financial controls. And that happened on Thursday morning.
But, here’s the rub. If the Franco-German plan doesn’t work, things will not be better for Britain they will be much, much worse as our main trading zone collapses. Yet we have rejected being in, helping to prevent collapse, in favour of being out, hoping for the best.
Even if our European colleagues cannot make this work at the level of seventeen, they will make it work at a core level and then build back later. The difference between Britain as an “out” and all the other “outs” is that, over time they went to get in – we want to get even further out. How does that increase our leverage?
There are domestic consequences, too. The Euro-sceptics are now in control of the referendum agenda. And Mr Cameron has given them a much more powerful argument; if being in results in such isolation, then why not be out?
Mr Salmond, too has been given an uncovenanted gift. If England is to be out of Europe, why should Scotland not be in?
Will the Coalition survive? It must and we must find ways to make it so. But the Coalition is as disliked amongst the Euro-sceptics, as Brussels. Having won one victory over a hated enemy, why not a second? Those who worry that it’s now the eighty-one Euro-sceptics who run the Prime Minster, not the other way round are right to wonder; if he has given them this, what will he resist?
And so we have used the veto – but stopped nothing. In the name of “protecting the City”, we have made it more vulnerable. At a time of economic crisis, it is now more attractive for investors to go to northern Europe than to isolated Britain. We have tipped 40 years of British foreign policy down the drain in a single night. We have handed the referendum agenda over to the Euro-sceptics. We have strengthened the arguments of those who would break the Union. We have isolated ourselves from Europe and diminished ourselves in Washington.
Not bad, for a policy aimed at “standing up for Britain”!
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