Britannia Radio

TELEGRAPH 28.10.08
We can never be part of a federal Europe
By Norman Tebbit

The speech of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing at The Global Vision and Daily
Telegraph conference last month was a startling recognition by the
French establishment that, whether or not Britain would be "better
off out", the advance of the ever closer union of the Euro Republic
would be easier without Britain slowing the pace.

Like de Gaulle half a century ago, Giscard has recognised that
Britain would no more fit into the 21st-century European state than
it would have fitted into the European empires of the 16th, 19th or
20th centuries. His proposal that Britain (and possibly some others)
might be left marking time where we are today while the others
advance at the double, would indeed open the way to the ever closer
union of most members - but would hardly be a lasting political
structure.

When, 15 years ago, I suggested to him that it was time to get the
British dog out of the federalist manger, he seemed fearful that
would leave France "alone with the Germans". Perhaps France now feels
that in the expanded EU it would be less lonely without us.

More recently, the global financial crisis has emphasised that the EU
cannot continue as it is. The retreat of countries within the
eurozone into unilateral protectionism to save their own banks has
illuminated the fatal weakness of the euro. It is a currency with 15
finance ministers - and no currency can survive in the long term
without not only a single central bank, but a single Treasury, a
single finance minister and a single tax system.

The collapse of the euro itself is neither likely in the near future
nor necessarily in British interests. It is more likely that
nationalism of the kind we have recently seen by Germany and Iceland,
or economic pressures on countries such as Italy, will force some
countries to withdraw.

In any case, it is difficult to see that anything could provide the
glue to bind together nations as different as Finland and Portugal,
Ireland and Romania or Spain and Belgium. Giscard may well find the
EU more likely to unravel into a new West European Republic of six or
10 states willing to sacrifice their identities to gain the undoubted
advantages that the United Kingdom has enjoyed in its own union of
England, Scotland, Ulster and Wales, and 15 or 20 still sovereign
states in a new treaty relationship.

Perhaps when Margaret Thatcher set out, in her Bruges speech 20 years
ago, her vision of a European Economic Community of "willing and
active co-operation between independent sovereign states", she was a
quarter of a century ahead of her time.

It was a vision so different from that of the political establishment
in Brussels that the euro-fanatics within the Conservative Party
concluded she would have to go. Her departure opened the way to the
successive treaties of Maastricht, Antwerp, Nice and Lisbon hustling
the EEC into the EC and now the EU; but for the obstinate refusal of
the Irish to be railroaded into the constitution, we would by now be
faced with a European Republic.

Since Thatcher, most British politicians have simply pretended that
there was no plan for a European state. Jacques Delors turned to the
TUC with his vision of a corporate state in which the European unions
would be at the top table with the employers and politicians, just
like the old days of Wilson's government, and the TUC turned Labour
more European than the Liberals. British euro-sceptics were
marginalised and mocked. In the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock, once the
firebrand scourge of Brussels, took the Commission's shilling and
became another compliant Commissioner.

The task for the Tory leadership, the euro-sceptics, the "Better Off
Out" supporters and Ukip is to crystalise the vision of Mrs
Thatcher's Bruges speech into the architecture of a new European
treaty, one that would constitute a framework within which sovereign
states would co-operate with a European Republic formed of those
nations willing to enter a complete political union of their own -
what we might call their 1707 moment. And if those states are wise,
they would see that the 1707 Act of Union brought mutual benefit for
three centuries, although devolution has edged the UK close to the
cliff edge of break-up within a decade.

In 1988, Mrs Thatcher's "guiding principles for the future" of Europe
were simple.

First, that "willing and active co-operation between independent
sovereign states is the best way to a successful community".
Secondly, that "community policies must tackle present problems in a
practical way". Thirdly, she saw a place for "policies that encourage
enterprise" and, lastly, that the "most fundamental issue" was the
European countries' role in defence.

Those principles still hold good. What has changed is the recognition
by Giscard that total union of all member states is unattainable, and
that the New Europe must accommodate both the United European States
of those willing to unite and the sovereign national states wishing
to remain independent.

The financial crisis has exposed that the present system of monetary
union without political union is unsustainable, just as Giscard has
exposed the present European architecture - even with the
constitution in place - as unsustainable, too.

It is time for the euro-sceptics of all kinds to design the
architecture of a European home in which there is a place for states
seeking ever closer union as well as for those upholding national
sovereignty.