30 January 2012 3:46 PM
The Lost Veto
Two weeks before Christmas, Britain’s conservative media went into a collective swoon of admiration for David Cameron. He had ‘stood up to the EU’. He had ‘wielded the veto’. Suddenly, after years of rather embarrassing temporising, wriggling and retreating, and of shattering ‘cast-iron’ guarantees on referendums, the Mere Leader had become a new Thatcher. Not of course that Lady Thatcher was really ever the great champion of British independence that her worshippers believe her to have been. But let that pass.
I did try to point out here on 12th December (‘David Cameron’s Phoney War’) and again on 17th December (‘Don’t forget they cheered Chamberlain’s ‘Victory’ too’) that the triumph was not as advertised.
Unwelcome as these facts were, I explained that Mr Cameron had not wielded the veto, not least because there had been nothing to veto. I also pointed out that his action was greeted as a blessing by a senior aide of President Sarkozy, and didn’t much displease Berlin either.
But there’s no swoon like a media swoon. Perhaps it’s my Marxist-Leninist background in mass manipulation, but I have several times found myself (usually at party conferences) alone, or almost alone in the press room, being unhypnotised by some ‘great’ speech. Neil Kinnock’s attack on ‘Militant’, all Anthony Blair’s supposedly ‘superb’ speeches,(yuk) David Cameron’s ‘brilliant’ speech at the Tory conference in Blackpool, (can anyone remember what he said?) all left me yawning and unimpressed. The only really great speech of my lifetime was, I think, Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ oration, crammed with the thrilling cadences of the Authorised Version of the Bible and delivered by a master of the art of preaching. By comparison with that, these measly offerings were just straw.
Oddly enough, one of the few others who was immune to the Blair magic was Matthew Parris, and it was because we would sometimes exchange haggard looks of dismay at the mass adulation around us that I once invited him to lunch, in an attempt to form a small Club of the Undeceived. Alas, the relationship failed to blossom, as history records. Mr Parris (the moment reminded me of ‘The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers’ as modern Britain so often does) turned up one day looking exactly as before, but mysteriously converted into a loyal Cameroon. Maybe they’ll get me in the end, too. Don’t be fooled, if they do.
But once the line has been fixed (and see Peter Oborne’s bravely self-critical and revelatory remarks on this in my book ‘the Cameron Delusion’) it is almost impossible to resist.
And so, when the alleged ‘veto’ shrivelled into a yellowing heap of dust and bones, like ‘She Who Must be Obeyed’ when she steps for the second time into the flame in Rider Haggard’s wonderful book ( was it in ‘She’ or ‘Ayesha’, can anyone recall?), it was barely noticed. Gosh the European Court of Justice can after all be used to enforce limits on state spending. Gosh , the institutions of the EU can after all be used in this cause. This was the very thing Mr Cameron was said to have ‘vetoed’. In fact, last week he telephoned Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the EU Commission, to say that the United Kingdom will *not* block the plan. That is to say, there is no veto. There never was a veto, and now there certainly isn’t. We were told that in some mysterious way the Luxembourg Court’s powers (which apply to this country) have been watered down.
Well, any reader of Christopher Booker and Richard North’s ‘The Great Deception’ ( and anyone who hasn’t read it isn’t qualified to take part in discussions about the EU at all) will know what that sort of safeguard is worth. (NB I originally mistakenly posted the title as 'The Great Delusion', which is, as a contributor pointed out, mistaken. Aplogiesnto those oooking for the book, and to the authors).
And this colossal retreat (well, it was colossal if the veto was as big a deal as was originally claimed) was blamed, as all Mr Cameron’s liberal actions are, on the Liberal Democrats. ‘Nick Clegg Made Me Do It’ has become the Useless Tory Party’s equivalent of ‘The Dog Ate My Homework’.
Who really believes that Mr Cameron couldn’t simply say (if he wanted to to) to Mr Clegg ‘What are you going to do about it? Resign and break the coalition? Have an election?’ Mr Clegg would lose his own seat, his party would all but disappear and he would miss the chance of becoming Britain’s next EU Commissioner (a post I predict for him, soon after he leads his party out of the Coalition, in a supposedly bitter but in fact planned split that miraculously does not cause the government to fall, or lead to an election, in 2014).
The excuse is pitiful and unbelievable, so why does anyone believe it? As for the fabled ‘Tory Eurosceptic Right’ what are they going to do about it? Well, what do you think?
Why do people believe all this stuff? Why, because they choose to and want to (the reason people always believe things, as I keep saying).
Oh and by the way, another mention of the ‘Sunday Times’. In my edition of it, there’s a very curious event on page two. There’s a news item about the NHS. There’s a news item about bankers, carried over from page one. There’s a (very small) news item about Mr Cameron’s climbdown on the EU. There’s a news item about tax-cuts.
And in the middle of all these, without any accompanying text or headline that I can see, is a full-colour (though quite small) bar chart of the paper’s latest YouGov opinion poll, sitting there on its own, a bit like a weather chart.
I have never seen a poll displayed in this way. In my long-ago days as an industrial reporter Page Two was regarded as the place where good stories went to die, as they were unlikely to be followed up, or noticed by any but the most diligent readers. It was irreverently referred to as ‘The Elephants’ Graveyard’.
Oh, you’ll want to know what the poll said. It gave Labour(at 40%) a one-point lead over the Tories, put the Liberal Democrats at 8% and others at 13% . This isn’t significant in itself . But it does clash a bit with the accepted media belief that Mr Cameron has achieved a lead over Labour thanks to his ‘toughness’ over the EU etc. It is true that there were three other (rather unsurprising) surveys about people’s opinion on taxation. But the neighbouring story , on tax cuts, does not refer to them.
Posts
1) "[The poll] gave Labour(at 40%) a one-point lead over the Tories, put the Liberal Democrats at 8% and others at 13%"
As Peter Hitchens is fond of saying, polls are used to shape opinion, not to reflect it. It might be worth noting that the president of YouGov is married to Baroness Ashton, the EU's overall foreign minister. That maybe why Ukip's figures (whatever you think of the party) are not separated out from "others", even if - and probably especially if - they prove rather healthier than the Lib Dems'.
2) You've elided the title of one of your books with that Booker and North's "The Great Deception". But you're right, it is excellent. (If anyone would like a free anti-EU book, they will find a pdf of the very good "Europe on 387m Euros A Day" at the website of its publisher, St Edward's Press.)
3) "Not of course that Lady Thatcher was really ever the great champion of British independence that her worshippers believe her to have been. But let that pass."
Why let it pass? It's important that people don't think that the Tories ever stood up to the EEC/EC/EU. Thatcher had many qualities but euroscepticism cannot be included among them. With a torrent of lies but without a manifesto pledge, the Tories led this nation into the EEC in 1973. Under a new leader, they campaigned for a yes to stay in the EEC in the 1975 referendum. The blessed Margaret - for it was she in the EEC-flags jumper who had urged that vote for continued serfdom - then guillotined debate on the Single European Act, the first half of two treaties that created the monstrous EU, a decade later. In 1990 she took us into the euro's equally idiotic forerunner, the ERM.
Dave is very low in most people's opinion but he hasn't yet done half as much EU-related damage in six years as Tory leader as she managed in 15. But it looks as if he's really trying. As Gaitskell said in 1962, "The Tories have been indulging in their usual double talk. When they go to Brussels they show the greatest enthusiasm for political union. When they speak in the House of Commons they are most anxious to aver that there is no commitment whatever to any political union." Has anything changed in 50 years?
We know he's not that stupid - by Richard... Tuesday, January 31, 2012
David and his amazing technicolour veto
After several attempts, a reader has finally extracted from the government on "full details of the Treaty which was vetoed by the Prime Minister at the European Council meeting on 9 December 2011".
The Keeper of the Answers is Roger Smethurst, Head of Knowledge and Information Management at the Cabinet Office, a deity who must enjoy the cocktail circuit where, one presumes, lesser mortals fall to their knees in awe, stunned that such a Grand Personage should exist.
Howsoever, the Mighty Smethurst tells us that the European Council (not a "summit", you will note) was considering a suggestion made at the meeting to amend the European Union Treaties to create reinforced fiscal and economic rules for the members of the Eurozone.
This, of course, we knew, but The Smethurst is just setting the scene. The Mighty One goes on to tell us that the Prime Minister (in capitals) "would not agree to this process without certain safeguards for Britain", and that "these safeguards were not agreed by others".
And now comes not The Knowledge but The Holy Spin. Since all Member States have to agree to any changes to the European Union Treaties, intones The Mighty Smethurst, "this amounted to a veto". As a result, we are told, Eurozone countries and others "are now making separate arrangements for coordinating their budgets through a separate Treaty".
Thus we are dutifully informed by The Smethurst that: "There was therefore no text of a Treaty which was vetoed; it was rather the process of amending the European Union Treaties to this end which was vetoed".
In response, one might say that "dishonest" is perhaps the mildest epithet we could use, but it sounds more restrained and sober than dismissing The Mighty Smethurst as a liar. But that he is, as the treaty itself (which he calls in aid) makes him out to be. Smethurst actually refers to the Treaty of the European Union, Article 48, the relevant part of which states:
Thus, the process of amending a Treaty is the convening of a "Convention" or an Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), with the decision made in each case by a simple majority vote of the European Council. In other words, there is no veto on the process of amending a treaty … the process is determined by majority vote. It was not amenable to a veto and Cameron could not therefore have vetoed it.
Thus, never perhaps in history have we seen a press corps so completely and utterly mislead itself, showing its profound lack of knowledge of EU procedures, and its complete inability to learn.
But, as we see from Your Freedom and Ours and Witterings from Witney, the process of self-delusion continues, its latest contributor being Iain Martin in the Sunday Failygraph. There, oblivious to the reality, he asks: "Is David Cameron about to water down his famous EU veto?", a fatuous question but one which confronts an interesting development.
To appreciate this fully, we must step back to the night of 8/9 December, when The Boy was confronted with his dilemma, and having told the "colleagues" that he was minded to block any treaty revisions (which he could do once the treaty had been drafted, but hadn't been then), they decided to do what they had always intended to do in the first place – to go for a veto-proof "International Treaty".
This, however, still left The Boy with something of a card to play in what was a very weak hand – a block on the use of the EU institutions to administer and enforce aspects of the new treaty, something that the blathering Tory Boy Blog was terribly keen for him to do, otherwise, in their terms, the "veto" was pointless.
That brings us back to Iain Martin, who perceives that The Boy is to remove his objections to the use of the institutions. This is no great discovery as it was flagged up in The Guardian last Friday, amounting in this paper's terms to a major U-turn.
The effect, to the dismay of The Tory Boys is to make the "non-veto" even nonner than before, but since The Boy had such a weak hand – even despite the intervention of The Mighty Smethurst - there was perhaps little else he could do.
Sadly for him, as the "colleagues" run rings round him, all that is left to The Boy is to dream of his amazing technicolour veto, the veto that never was. And even in the minds of his most enthusiastic fans, it is also ceasing to be.
It was fun while it lasted.