EU referendum: feeding frenzy
Sunday 12 May 2013
 Particularly prominent in this low-grade game are the two Sunday "heavies", the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph, both of which offer front-page headlines relating to Tory "revolts" or "civil war". The latest development in this saga is Michael Gove declaring that he would vote for Britain to exit Europe if there was a referendum tomorrow. Fortunately, there won't be a referendum tomorrow. The Times YouGov poll earlier this week (published Wednesday) had 35 percent wanting to stay in the EU, with 46 percent leaving and 20 percent "don't knows". This isn't anything like a big enough margin to ensure victory. The big problem with all the hyperventilation, though, is that it is not leading to any better appreciation of the problems of leaving the EU, and nor is it leading to any change in Tory strategy, which remains one of attempting to renegotiate the treaties. Thus, to have 100 or so Tory "rebels" calling for a referendum, without the first idea of how they are going to win it (assuming they do want to leave the EU), is not exactly helpful. Neither is the official Tory response, which is to have "strategy" chief Lyton Crosby calling for the date of an EU referendum to be brought forward a year early from the planned 2017. This simply means leaping over the edge of the cliff a year earlier than anticipated, as we confront a referendum that is difficult to win and which risks serious damage to the eurosceptic cause. On the other hand, we have Ed Miliband who is taking on the mantle of a rock of stability, refusing to countenance a referendum, and maintaining a staunch pro-EU position. If the Kellner view is accepted, and we are likely to lose a referendum which gives the choice between a "renegotiated" settlement and leaving, then the best option for avoiding electoral defeat is increasingly looking to be Labour. Those who can't go that far should simply vote UKIP – especially in Tory-Labour marginals - as the next best thing. Completely oblivious to the adverse effect of his manoeuvring, however, John Baron still pursues the idea of "paving legislation", to convince the electorate that Mr Cameron is serious in his intention to hold a referendum. But thereby, he misses the point. The referendum is just a means to an end, and if it is to be manipulated by a Conservative prime minister – should the party gain office – there is no real point in having one. It most certainly will not convince the hard-core "outers" that they should vote Conservative. Sadly, therefore, with the aid of the media, all be are getting is a huge confusion between activity and outcome. The referendum soap opera may keep the hacks entertained, as they indulge in their feeding frenzy, but withdrawal from the EU is no closer than it has ever been. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 12/05/2013 |
EU referendum: the only way out
Sunday 12 May 2013
 In the very limited sense that it is theoretically possible, Mr Cameron is right. But in practical terms, it is absurd to believe that the UK can steer the EU away from its founding objective of "ever closer union" and, therefore, that we are going to be able seek changes to our "relationship". Thus does Booker write to tell us that the only solution to our "EU mess" is Article 50. In all the brouhaha over a Euro-referendum unleashed in the wake of that surge in the polls by UKIP, he writes, it is hard to know who is talking the emptiest fluff. We really are paying the price for all those years when our politicians and media were so keen to bury our European system of government out of sight that they have little idea of the harsh realities of the situation in which we find ourselves. We have Tory MPs piling in to demand an in-out referendum before 2015, which they are not going to get. We have former political heavyweights such as Lord Lawson, Denis Healey and Norman Lamont queuing up to say that if there were such a referendum they would vote to leave. We've even got Nick Clegg and those poor little BBC presenters locked in a 13-year-old time warp, trying to tell us that, if we did leave, 3.5 million British jobs would vanish because our trade with our European neighbours would somehow dry up overnight. None of this bears any more relation to where we actually are, as one of the 27 fully signed-up members of the EU, than David Cameron's threefold dollop of wishful thinking that, if only we re-elect him in 2015, and if only he can somehow persuade his EU colleagues to hand back a few unspecified powers of government –– in breach of the most basic principle on which the EU was founded – he can somehow lead the " yes" campaign in 2017 to a referendum vote for Britain to stay in. It is true we may one day by law have to have a referendum, whichever party is in power, because sooner or later the drive to give Brussels even more powers in its efforts to save the doomed euro will require a new treaty. But in the meantime Mr Cameron is terrified that, unless we stay in the EU, we will lose the right to trade freely with its single market. Lord Lawson, in his own muddled way, seems equally to think that, by leaving, we would indeed be excluded from the single market, but that this would be OK because it would somehow bring us "a positive economic advantage". The truth is that there is only one way we can get what they, and most people, seem to want, but none of them, except occasionally Nigel Farage, ever mentions it – and even then he barely gives it any emphasis. The only way we can compel our EU partners to negotiate a new relationship which would still give us access to the single market is by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. Only thus can we negotiate precisely the kind of relationship already enjoyed, in their different ways, by the two most prosperous countries in Europe, Norway and Switzerland, which trade as freely with the EU as we do, but without the rest of that political baggage that inspires such growing resentment not just in Britain, but in many other EU member states. This, of course, catches out Mr Cameron, because Article 50 can only be invoked by a country announcing its wish to leave the EU. He flatly refuses to recognise that it is perfectly possible to continue trading freely with the EU without belonging to it. Lord Lawson falls into the opposite trap by also imagining that leaving the EU means being excluded from the single market, although he seems to think this could be an advantage because we could somehow make up for it by increasing our trade with the rest of the world. But both these men, like countless others, are living in cloud-cuckoo land. They will not bring their thinking back to earth by looking hard-headedly at the rules of the game. The only way we can now face up to the reality of the plight we are in is by putting Article 50 at the very centre of the national debate. It is the only way we can get the best of both worlds that so many people say they want. Unless we do so, we are doomed to wander on in a fog of wishful thinking that can only continue to leave us with the worst of all worlds – ruled by a dysfunctional system of government that we increasingly resent, but refuse to understand, Booker says. In the words of Lady Thatcher, which he has quoted before, from her book Statecraft, that we should ever have become absorbed into this "European superstate" will one day be seen as "a political error of the first magnitude". If we really wish to remedy that error, the only practical way that can be brought about is by invoking Article 50. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 12/05/2013 |
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