WHERE ARE WE NOW? WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
notes written in mid-December 2011
Members’ Views on the News
It was enormously heartening to receive members’ replies to my emails. The European Flag is still flying high in Surrey! We are keeping the faith! In fact, there is a note of angry resolution creeping in. As the braying from the back benches escalates, so our own passions are aroused. Despair may often be our lot, but at the present time, a steely indignation is taking hold.
It has been a roller-coaster of emotion. Lib Dem HQ was inundated with irate emails on the Friday morning after the summit when Nick Clegg appeared to be accepting the veto. [Mine was one of them!] He then got his act together on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday and some faith was restored. Then David Cameron gave an emollient Statement to the Commons on Monday and said many of the right things from our point of view in answering questions. However, huge question-marks remain. The future pattern of events could not be more uncertain, but we certainly seem to have taken a big step backwards in our relations with the EU.
Judy Brewis agrees that Nick Clegg spoke well on Sunday, but Ben Marlow has resigned his membership of the Lib Dems on the basis of “Nick Clegg’s powerlessness to stop what happened”. One can sympathise with that but is there “a better ’ole to go to” as Old Bill said in the 1st WW trench cartoon?
David Cameron’s tactics and negotiating abilities have been called into question even in some Eurosceptic quarters. Surely we did not plan to be in a minority of one? Though there was apparently very little lobbying done beforehand, what was done would surely have given some inkling of the outcome. In any case, tabling a proposal on a complicated subject, irrelevant to the main issue on delegates’ minds, at the last minute and in the middle of the night, could only make sense if it was designed to be rejected. No other country tried to get a bit of pork. Then to wield a veto on the whole treaty put the kybosh on any sense whatsoever of communitaire. The issue of safeguards for the City, if that is what we really want, could easily have come in the next few months of detailed discussion, as John Warner points out.
I myself am beginning to think that whole shemozzle was choreographed by Hague and Osborne. These two are crafty, clever, and pretty ruthless characters. Their Euroscepticism goes back a long way, but, as Robert Trotman has said, one was beginning to think that they were taking a more pragmatic stance, now they are in government. After the events of the last week that seems a forlorn hope. I think they managed to stitch up both Cameron and Clegg. Well, at least Clegg. Ben Marlow doesn’t exonerate David Cameron. “In my view, Cameron is playing a very clever game, whereby he is getting the coalition to sleepwalk towards an eventual exit. It is a crying shame that Clegg cannot see this. History will judge the Lib Dem inaction harshly.” Ben could well be right: Cameron is clever enough and confident enough, it could be argued, not to have wielded the veto at that particular time unless he really did not mind the consequences. He could have only had the prospect of facing his backbenchers in view. Every voice should be raised against the lunacy of the far right of the Conservative party, says Nancy Bonney.
Members are very concerned that we have walked away. Judy Brewis, echoing Jonathan Friedland in the Guardian, says “even Margaret Thatcher never used her veto. Lord Kerr insisted ‘she always said we had to be in the room. We had to be there.’ As another commentator has said: If you are not at the table you on the menu. Jamie Sharpley reckons “it is the worst strategic decision to be taken by a British government since Suez” while David Woodhead thinks “the appropriate analogy is Dunkirk: a defeat claimed as a victory – but a defeat nonetheless. Cameron might have walked away with a bulldog smirk on his face, but Sarkozy has the last bark.”
What now? Klaus Loewenstein “would not be at all surprised if the financial centre will now gradually move from London to Frankfurt and many firms now in London will follow”. Jamie Sharpley recounts the surprising fact, which recently emerged, that Deutsche Bank employs more people than any other bank in London. That could easily end. Brenda de Bruin thinks joint developments, such as Airbus, will now move to the continent “and our employment will suffer grossly.” Nicholas Soames, Michael Heseltine, CBI’s John Cridland and others have voiced similar concerns.
The political fall-out has already been significant. The coalition has just about held, but harsh words have been said by Lib Dems in the Lords, as Graham Tope emailed. Graham recommends catching up with what Shirley Williams, Paddy Ashdown and others said in Hansard. These criticisms from on high allowed Lib Dems in the Commons to be more circumspect and pragmatic and play their part in ensuring that the coalition continues. Tory whips played their part by discouraging triumphalism on their back benches and, altogether, the atmosphere in the House on Monday, when David Cameron reported on the Brussels meeting, was remarkably measured on the government side.
What can give us pro-Europeans some satisfaction perhaps is that David Cameron repeatedly confirmed we are in the EU and, seemingly, there to stay. “Our membership of the EU is vital to the national interest.” “We are in the European Union and we want to be.” And again: “I am absolutely clear that it is possible to be a full, committed and influential member of the European Union and to stay out of arrangements where we cannot protect our interests.” That’s what the man said.
We are left with a wagonload of uncertainties. Can we take it that David Cameron will now take on his backbenchers wanting an eventual exit from the EU? Perhaps not! What exactly are Hague and Osborne plotting? Can we now hope that Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems will be more wary of Eurosceptic machinations? A really big question: where will the Labour Party go? Ed Milliband gave an effective rebuttal of Cameron’s position on Monday, but there were Eurosceptic voices on his backbenches too, and he has not yet established sufficient strength in his party to give a strong pro-EU lead.
From all members’ comments I think we might agree that David Cameron, for the time being at least, holds the key to the future of the UK’s role in Europe and yet none of us quite knows where exactly he stands today or in which direction he might go in the future. Ben Marlow thinks Cameron is playing a very clever game. Claude Kauffmann thinks “Cameron’s arrogance and bully tactics will possibly (hopefully?) speed up the disintegration of the Tory Party”. Another point of view suggests that he has no strong opinions himself and so there is a danger he will be manipulated by Hague and Osborne. He veers towards a pragmatic outlook and likes being in power and genuinely appreciates Nick Clegg and the coalition that keeps him in power. Nick Clegg therefore also has a key to the future. Is this being too optimistic?
Reactions in the European Parliament since the summit show we have caused an enormous wall of resentment. We have diluted the impact of the measures they took to tackle the Eurozone crisis by our grandstanding. While Dick Hazelwood rightly says “The issue now is to mitigate the alienation and to maintain the single market benefits as far as possible”, this is going to be difficult. How can David Cameron say to our partners we want to be “a full, committed and influential member of the European Union” when he vetoes a treaty of vital importance to all members, including us? How can he say it without taking on those in his own party who want to leave the EU?
The events of the past week have aroused strong passions among pro-Europeans in the UK. The forces against us have ratcheted up the pressure and our own resources seem small. Our confrères across the Channel are struggling with existential threats without support from Britain. Even at the meanest level of human endeavour - “our national interest” - surely this cannot be right.
Keith Tunstall
