May 1997: Labour government comes to power. Shortly afterwards, the UK’s Katrina and the Waves win the Eurovision song contest with ‘Love Shine a Light’.
May 2010: Tory-Lib Dem government comes to power. Shortly afterwards, the UK’s Josh Dubovie comes last in the Eurovision song contest with ‘That Sounds Good to Me’.
Showing posts with label europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label europe. Show all posts
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Cameron must be relieved that Lisbon will pass
Czech President and Lisbon treaty holdout Vaclav Klaus has more or less run up the white flag, pretty much guaranteeing that the treaty will come into force before the next UK election.
David Cameron, who opposes the treaty and had promised a referendum should it be unratified by the time he comes to power – a referendum that he would certainly have won - must be delighted.
Eh?
Imagine you’re him. You know from your party’s experience (especially that of your shadow foreign secretary, William Hague) that while your Euroscepticism may technically have majority support in opinion polls, most people don’t regard the EU as a big issue and in fact have long found the Tories’ obsession with Europe off-putting. You’ve spent years trying to focus the party on other issues. Even now, one of your weaker PR points is your party’s position in Europe.
Then imagine you come to power next May and find yourself manifesto-bound to spend your first couple of months focusing very publicly not on the deficit, not on unemployment, not on reform of public services and not on cleaning up Parliament but on the pros and cons of the Lisbon treaty.
Much better to be able to say, regretfully, that the treaty is now a fait accompli and that you’ll certainly want to look at the matter in some vague way at some vague point in the future.
David Cameron, who opposes the treaty and had promised a referendum should it be unratified by the time he comes to power – a referendum that he would certainly have won - must be delighted.
Eh?
Imagine you’re him. You know from your party’s experience (especially that of your shadow foreign secretary, William Hague) that while your Euroscepticism may technically have majority support in opinion polls, most people don’t regard the EU as a big issue and in fact have long found the Tories’ obsession with Europe off-putting. You’ve spent years trying to focus the party on other issues. Even now, one of your weaker PR points is your party’s position in Europe.
Then imagine you come to power next May and find yourself manifesto-bound to spend your first couple of months focusing very publicly not on the deficit, not on unemployment, not on reform of public services and not on cleaning up Parliament but on the pros and cons of the Lisbon treaty.
Much better to be able to say, regretfully, that the treaty is now a fait accompli and that you’ll certainly want to look at the matter in some vague way at some vague point in the future.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
BNP man goes native in Brussels
We’ve seen it so many times before – a political outsider with a reforming mission gets elected, only to succumb to the perks of office and the cosiness of the mainstream consensus.
It’s taken Nick Griffin precisely one month as an MEP to convert to the idea of a European superstate:
So there you have it. While all reasonable people can surely agree on the merits of drowning darkies, it is sheer madness to suggest that the Royal Navy – trouncers of the Armada, victors of Trafalgar and Waterloo, sinkers of the Bismarck and the Belgrano – should be merged into a Single European Navy and tasked with guarding the Italian coastline.
The Tom Says: We have our own borders to protect, Mr Griffin – as well as our own sovereignty, history and pride. The sooner you and your new euro-chums remember that, the better.
It’s taken Nick Griffin precisely one month as an MEP to convert to the idea of a European superstate:
The EU should sink boats carrying illegal immigrants to prevent them entering Europe, British National Party leader Nick Griffin has told the BBC.
The MEP for the North-West of England said the EU had to get "very tough" with migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. Pressed on what should happen to those on board, he said: "Throw them a life raft and they can go back to Libya".
…
"If there's measures to set up some kind of force or to help, say the Italians, set up a force which actually blocks the Mediterranean then we'd support that."
So there you have it. While all reasonable people can surely agree on the merits of drowning darkies, it is sheer madness to suggest that the Royal Navy – trouncers of the Armada, victors of Trafalgar and Waterloo, sinkers of the Bismarck and the Belgrano – should be merged into a Single European Navy and tasked with guarding the Italian coastline.
The Tom Says: We have our own borders to protect, Mr Griffin – as well as our own sovereignty, history and pride. The sooner you and your new euro-chums remember that, the better.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Follow the money (all over the place, if it’s in euros)
Jeremy Warner on the idea of unifying financial regulation at the EU level:
He’s right – although it’s also true that, as finance is one of the most thoroughly globalised and systemically vital sectors of the economy, there’s a good case for better-coordinated international regulation.
One of the tricky aspects of the European Economic and Monetary Union is that its name is wrong: it’s certainly a monetary union, but it’s well short of being an economic one.
The interactions between the UK Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority are less than ideal. But the institutional jumble that is the European Central Bank, the European Commission, the 16 national governments and their respective regulatory agencies makes decisive and coherent economic policymaking pretty hard.
The kind of central fiscal authority that Warner mentions seems a very distant possibility. So the advice to Woodward and Bernstein – “follow the money” – will keep leading those interested in eurozone governance all over the place.
so long as individual sovereign nations remain financially liable for underwriting their own banking systems, you are never going to see taxpayers ceding regulatory responsibility to a non-sovereign organisation. Until there is a centralised European treasury function with the capacity to bail out failed banks, it's just not practical.
He’s right – although it’s also true that, as finance is one of the most thoroughly globalised and systemically vital sectors of the economy, there’s a good case for better-coordinated international regulation.
One of the tricky aspects of the European Economic and Monetary Union is that its name is wrong: it’s certainly a monetary union, but it’s well short of being an economic one.
The interactions between the UK Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority are less than ideal. But the institutional jumble that is the European Central Bank, the European Commission, the 16 national governments and their respective regulatory agencies makes decisive and coherent economic policymaking pretty hard.
The kind of central fiscal authority that Warner mentions seems a very distant possibility. So the advice to Woodward and Bernstein – “follow the money” – will keep leading those interested in eurozone governance all over the place.
Friday, January 02, 2009
‘No after-dinner speaker can bind himself’
William Hague has promised that the Tories will defend the pound for all eternity:
This amuses me. Being a political anorak, I remember Hague – as party leader during the 2001 election campaign – doing interview after interview in which he awkwardly dodged making exactly this commitment, not wanting to upset the Europhiles in his party. His stock phrase was “no Parliament can bind its successor”. Here he is being Paxmanned:
The fact that this charade is now over shows that, barring the occasional rumble of Ken Clarke’s stomach, the Europhile wing of the party is pretty much dead.
(Actually, I happen to think that the above interview – which ranged across several topics – was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Paxman managed to be both half-hearted and tenacious in his attempts to trip Hague up and thus generate a headline. There was barely any attempt to challenge him on policy or to elicit new information for the viewing voters, beyond an opening effort to draw him into a ‘compare and contrast’ exercise on every slogan he’d used over the previous few years. Also featured were a tedious string of questions along the lines of ‘you’re not going to win, are you?’ and a deeply odd set about his wife’s role in the campaign. Never, before or since, has my heart gone out to Hague.)
We would never join the euro. The jobs and businesses of this country are too important ever to sign away our right to do our utmost to defend them.
This amuses me. Being a political anorak, I remember Hague – as party leader during the 2001 election campaign – doing interview after interview in which he awkwardly dodged making exactly this commitment, not wanting to upset the Europhiles in his party. His stock phrase was “no Parliament can bind its successor”. Here he is being Paxmanned:
JEREMY PAXMAN: Would a party led by you ever vote in favour of the euro?
WILLIAM HAGUE: It will not do so in the next Parliament in the next Government. I set the policy for the next Government. You were accusing me a few minutes ago of changing policies.
JP: You might change your policy on this?
WH: I have been very clear from the beginning of the current Parliament that our approach is for the next Parliament because no Parliament can bind its successor. I am against euro, for keeping the pound. Our policies are for this Parliament.
JP: OK, would you personally ever vote in favour of the euro?
WH: My position is indistinguishable from the party. I am the leader, I set the policy, that is the same question as the previous question.
JP: No it is not.
WH: It is the same.
JP: I am asking a matter of personal conviction here. I understand all this business about a manifesto and you saying you cannot look beyond the next Parliament, but can you personally ever envisage yourself voting for the euro, ever?
WH: I am the leader of the Conservative Party. And it is...
JP: You have a personal view?
WH: The policy is set by the leader.
JP: You don't think more than five years ahead?
WH: I am against the euro and for keeping the pound.
JP: For ever?
WH: One Parliament at a time. Therefore the policy apples to the next Parliament.
JP: You are asking us to believe that after the next Parliament you might vote in favour of the euro?
WH: I am asking people to believe that the future of the pound is at stake. If Labour win they will be hell bent on doing away with it. And if we win we will keep the pound.
JP: Is it you don't know what your view is or you will not tell us?
WH: I will not allow us to be side tracked from a clear policy for this forthcoming Parliament by abstract questions about differing lengths of time.
JP: With the greatest of respect is this is not an abstract question, it is a matter of principle. You have said I oppose the European single currency in principle.
WH: It is an abstract question. Each party sets their policy, the policy of the Labour party is to hold a referendum.
JP: I am not asking about policy for the next Parliament. I am asking about your personal conviction. You are telling me your personal conviction is so easily swayed that you might at some stage vote in favour of the Euro.
WH: My personal conviction is against the euro and for keeping the pound. I am campaigning for keeping the pound and policy of the party which is indistinguishable from my own view, is set one Parliament at a time. And we have pledged to keep the pound in the coming Parliament.
JP: You have conceded that your party comprises many people who have personally strongly-held convictions, your feeling about the euro is not one of those?
WH: Of course it is anybody who sees me campaigning around the country campaigning to keep the pound knows I believe we should keep the pound. But our policy is clear, set at one Parliament at a time. We will keep the pound. The coming Conservative Government elected next week will keep the pound. You cannot get straighter than that.
JP: Let's support that, let's suppose that you lose this election, that there is a referendum, you may say it is a rigged question, let's say we go into the euro, you could find yourself leading a party which would support leadership of the euro, you can imagine that can you?
WH: If there was a referendum under a Labour Government of course we would campaign for a no-vote in that referendum.
JP: You can imagine yourself leading a party which supports the euro?
WH: I am setting the policy for this election.
JP: Your conviction does not set beyond the next Parliament?
WH: We are not having the election of 2005, we are having this election.
JP: Do you understand why some people find this incredible?
WH: I understand why people who are used to the fact that you could pick up the Conservative Party for being divided about Europe at the last election try to draw us in this election to draw us into saying different things from our policy.
JP: I am just asking you your personal conviction?
WH: Keep the pound.
JP: Forever?
WH: I set the policy one Parliament at a time.
JP: Why won't you will be explicit in principle terms. After all, all the polling evidence suggests that the vast majority of people share your beliefs?
WH: They do share my beliefs. Included among those people are some people who think we shouldn't ever join the single currency and some people who think we shouldn't join it now. All of those people are on the same side in supporting my policy.
JP: Which one are you?
WH: I am for keeping the pound.
JP: Forever?
WH: And the policy is set one Parliament at a time.
The fact that this charade is now over shows that, barring the occasional rumble of Ken Clarke’s stomach, the Europhile wing of the party is pretty much dead.
(Actually, I happen to think that the above interview – which ranged across several topics – was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Paxman managed to be both half-hearted and tenacious in his attempts to trip Hague up and thus generate a headline. There was barely any attempt to challenge him on policy or to elicit new information for the viewing voters, beyond an opening effort to draw him into a ‘compare and contrast’ exercise on every slogan he’d used over the previous few years. Also featured were a tedious string of questions along the lines of ‘you’re not going to win, are you?’ and a deeply odd set about his wife’s role in the campaign. Never, before or since, has my heart gone out to Hague.)
Friday, February 01, 2008
Nous allons aux chiens – mais je vais bien, Jacques
The think-tank Demos has put out an interesting-looking pamphlet based on its newly devised ‘Everyday Democracy Index’, comparing European countries:
I might blog about it next week, after I’ve had a chance to read it, but one finding caught my eye.
People across the EU were asked whether they expected their personal situation to improve or get worse in the course of the next five years. In the UK, the figure of those expecting improvement minus those expecting worsening was +43%. People were also asked whether they thought things were going in the right or wrong direction in their country; the UK net figure was –7%. This gives the UK an ‘optimism gap’ of 50% – Brits are, on average, much more positive about their own prospects than those of the country as a whole.
Is this a more general phenomenon? Yes: most EU populations have the same bias, although mostly not as much as we do. Here’s the (cliché alert) league table – a higher number indicates personal optimism and collective pessimism, and a negative number indicates the opposite:
Make of that what you will. Only five or six countries show a decent connection between personal and national expectations, and hardly any are more positive collectively than individually. The gaps may be to do with misperceptions of how other people are doing, perhaps owing to media negativity; the strength of personal overconfidence may vary between countries; there may be differences in the extent to which people see the national condition as the sum of everyone’s personal conditions. There are probably a lot of factors at work.
I’m not surprised that people in the UK so strongly think ‘the country’s going to the dogs’ but ‘I’m all right, Jack’. I am surprised, though, that the French beat us by a mile. I don’t know why this should be.
The survey was conducted during May to July 2006, and towards the end of that period France lost the World Cup final after Zinedine Zidane was sent off for headbutting an Italian player. Despite the national defeat, he was cheered for defending his honour and that of his family. But that can’t be it, can it?
The EDI is a tool for assessing the democratic health of European countries across many different dimensions. That includes not just formal dimensions of democracy but also more everyday features of democracy – how important democratic principles and practices are to the cultures of workplaces, to people’s community life, to the way they interact with public services, and even to the way they talk to their friends and family.
…
The results…show that countries which have done the best job of empowering individuals in these everyday domains are much more likely to maintain a vibrant democracy in traditional political settings.
I might blog about it next week, after I’ve had a chance to read it, but one finding caught my eye.
People across the EU were asked whether they expected their personal situation to improve or get worse in the course of the next five years. In the UK, the figure of those expecting improvement minus those expecting worsening was +43%. People were also asked whether they thought things were going in the right or wrong direction in their country; the UK net figure was –7%. This gives the UK an ‘optimism gap’ of 50% – Brits are, on average, much more positive about their own prospects than those of the country as a whole.
Is this a more general phenomenon? Yes: most EU populations have the same bias, although mostly not as much as we do. Here’s the (cliché alert) league table – a higher number indicates personal optimism and collective pessimism, and a negative number indicates the opposite:
Lithuania –7
Czech Republic –1
Ireland 0
Slovenia +1
Germany +5
Luxembourg +10
Greece +12
Denmark +13
Cyprus +15
Austria +23
Latvia +23
Netherlands +26
Belgium +27
Malta +29
Poland +29
Spain +29
Finland +34
Slovakia +36
Sweden +40
Italy +44
Estonia +47
Hungary +48
Portugal +49
UK +50
France +75
Make of that what you will. Only five or six countries show a decent connection between personal and national expectations, and hardly any are more positive collectively than individually. The gaps may be to do with misperceptions of how other people are doing, perhaps owing to media negativity; the strength of personal overconfidence may vary between countries; there may be differences in the extent to which people see the national condition as the sum of everyone’s personal conditions. There are probably a lot of factors at work.
I’m not surprised that people in the UK so strongly think ‘the country’s going to the dogs’ but ‘I’m all right, Jack’. I am surprised, though, that the French beat us by a mile. I don’t know why this should be.
The survey was conducted during May to July 2006, and towards the end of that period France lost the World Cup final after Zinedine Zidane was sent off for headbutting an Italian player. Despite the national defeat, he was cheered for defending his honour and that of his family. But that can’t be it, can it?
Friday, November 23, 2007
Shooting the messengers
I argued a while ago that a referendum on the new EU treaty agreed at Lisbon would be a bad way of resolving Britain’s overall relationship with the EU, as the vote would be asking a specific question on a given set of proposals – which sits very uneasily with the supposed aim of settling the more general matter.
My point is borne out by UK media responses to the Danish government’s proposal for a referendum on joining the euro (plus a couple of other areas covered by the country’s Maastricht treaty opt-outs).
The Times spins the story thus:
That’s a weaselly phrase there at the end, deftly blurring the distinction between one EU issue and another.
The Guardian, whose broader attitude to Europe is very different from the Times, takes a similar line on this:
There’s the same phrase about this being on Denmark’s “relationship with Europe”, sweeping the vital details under the carpet to suggest a parity (“a similar referendum”) with the British decision on the Lisbon treaty.
These are two of the country’s quality papers. And this is the mere proposal for a future referendum in another country. Yet still, the muddying of the waters from specific to general to different specific is almost instantaneous.
Trying to separate out different EU issues and have an intelligible referendum campaign on one but not the others would be pretty much impossible in the UK media. They are so used to thinking in political rather than policy terms (where issues are significant only for feeding into broader impressions of parties and individuals), and so set on reporting with a very broad brush, that the necessary focus is beyond them.
My point is borne out by UK media responses to the Danish government’s proposal for a referendum on joining the euro (plus a couple of other areas covered by the country’s Maastricht treaty opt-outs).
The Times spins the story thus:
Britain faced further isolation within the European Union yesterday after Denmark announced that it was giving its citizens the chance to vote in a referendum on its relationship with Europe.
That’s a weaselly phrase there at the end, deftly blurring the distinction between one EU issue and another.
The Guardian, whose broader attitude to Europe is very different from the Times, takes a similar line on this:
Denmark will hold a referendum on the country's relationship with Europe, its prime minister said today. The decision increases the pressure on Gordon Brown to honour the Labour party's 2005 manifesto pledge to hold a similar referendum in Britain.
There’s the same phrase about this being on Denmark’s “relationship with Europe”, sweeping the vital details under the carpet to suggest a parity (“a similar referendum”) with the British decision on the Lisbon treaty.
These are two of the country’s quality papers. And this is the mere proposal for a future referendum in another country. Yet still, the muddying of the waters from specific to general to different specific is almost instantaneous.
Trying to separate out different EU issues and have an intelligible referendum campaign on one but not the others would be pretty much impossible in the UK media. They are so used to thinking in political rather than policy terms (where issues are significant only for feeding into broader impressions of parties and individuals), and so set on reporting with a very broad brush, that the necessary focus is beyond them.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Power and engagement in foreign policy
The Independent once again demonstrates that it’s unable to think about foreign affairs expect through the medium of protesting about the Iraq war.
Its editorial sneers at David Miliband’s speech yesterday on the future of the EU as “strangely belligerent”, and harrumphs: “do we really want to export European values through ‘the hard power of troops’, as he implied? Have our leaders learnt nothing from the disaster in Iraq?”
This is asinine and dishonest. Miliband’s speech was wide-ranging, with much discussion of issues such as trade, enlargement, climate change, international development and cultural diplomacy. The overarching theme was the need for the EU to become more outward-facing than it has been. The passage from which the Independent selectively (mis)quotes actually reads:
He does indeed address the EU’s limited military capability, and argues – in the context of multilateral peacekeeping missions – that “we must… strengthen our ability to respond to crises in a more comprehensive way”.
He mentioned the EU-NATO work in Macedonia and EU peacekeepers in DR Congo (and could have added the deployment of UK troops to Sierra Leone) as examples of how military power can have beneficial humanitarian uses rather than being a tool of ‘neocon’ imperialism. The Independent does not – will not – see this.
The speech sits well alongside Gordon Brown’s earlier in the week, discussing failed states and massive human rights abuses:
Prevention is much better than cure. And he’s utterly right that “the international community should be ready to act with a standby civilian force including police and judiciary who can be deployed to rebuild civic societies”.
And even the shrillest of Blairophobes should detect a readiness to learn from, and move on from, the last few years in this (from Miliband):
But there’s another objection. The Times’s Bronwen Maddox judged that Milband had moved “beyond ambition to delusion” in portraying “the EU as a tool waiting to be deployed in the service of his own favourite causes of climate change and the righting of distant injustice”.
This soars, majestically, past the point: Britain has long been unable to shape the world by whim. Both speeches are therefore wholly infused with the understanding that British foreign policy has to be pursued in partnership with like-minded allies. Splendid isolationism will allow us to have full control over our aims, but usually too little power to achieve them. But if we form alliances and are active in international organisations, we can move things – sometimes a little, sometimes a lot – in the direction we want.
Engagement and cooperation – whether Britain’s in the EU and other institutions, or the EU’s across the world – are the only way to get things done.
Update: There’s another entertaining misrepresentation in the Indy editorial. It concludes:
What Miliband said was that “economically and demographically Europe will be less important…” And given GDP and population growth rates, it’s hard to argue otherwise – and it’s hard to argue that his speech will contribute to this. Or is it?
Perhaps if too many of us spend our time reading and blogging about Milibandian speechifying, the European economy will collapse. And, if too many of us go around talking about the need to develop a new EU geostrategy, procreation opportunities may be lost to us…
Its editorial sneers at David Miliband’s speech yesterday on the future of the EU as “strangely belligerent”, and harrumphs: “do we really want to export European values through ‘the hard power of troops’, as he implied? Have our leaders learnt nothing from the disaster in Iraq?”
This is asinine and dishonest. Miliband’s speech was wide-ranging, with much discussion of issues such as trade, enlargement, climate change, international development and cultural diplomacy. The overarching theme was the need for the EU to become more outward-facing than it has been. The passage from which the Independent selectively (mis)quotes actually reads:
We can use the power of the EU – the size of our single market, our ability to set global standards, the negotiating clout of 27 members, the attractions of membership, the hard power of sanctions and troops, the power of Europe as an idea and a model – not to substitute for nation states but to do those things to provide security and prosperity for the next generation.
He does indeed address the EU’s limited military capability, and argues – in the context of multilateral peacekeeping missions – that “we must… strengthen our ability to respond to crises in a more comprehensive way”.
He mentioned the EU-NATO work in Macedonia and EU peacekeepers in DR Congo (and could have added the deployment of UK troops to Sierra Leone) as examples of how military power can have beneficial humanitarian uses rather than being a tool of ‘neocon’ imperialism. The Independent does not – will not – see this.
The speech sits well alongside Gordon Brown’s earlier in the week, discussing failed states and massive human rights abuses:
With the systematic use of earlier Security Council action, proper funding of peacekeepers, targeted sanctions - and their ratcheting up to include the real threat of international criminal court actions - we must now set in place the first internationally agreed procedures to prevent breakdowns of states and societies.
But where breakdowns occur, the UN - and regional bodies such as the EU and African Union - must now also agree to systematically combine traditional emergency aid and peacekeeping with stabilisation, reconstruction and development.
Prevention is much better than cure. And he’s utterly right that “the international community should be ready to act with a standby civilian force including police and judiciary who can be deployed to rebuild civic societies”.
And even the shrillest of Blairophobes should detect a readiness to learn from, and move on from, the last few years in this (from Miliband):
There is limited value in securing a town if law and order breaks down as soon as the troops move on. There is limited gain in detaining terrorists and criminals if there is no courthouse to try them in or jailhouse to hold them in.
But there’s another objection. The Times’s Bronwen Maddox judged that Milband had moved “beyond ambition to delusion” in portraying “the EU as a tool waiting to be deployed in the service of his own favourite causes of climate change and the righting of distant injustice”.
This soars, majestically, past the point: Britain has long been unable to shape the world by whim. Both speeches are therefore wholly infused with the understanding that British foreign policy has to be pursued in partnership with like-minded allies. Splendid isolationism will allow us to have full control over our aims, but usually too little power to achieve them. But if we form alliances and are active in international organisations, we can move things – sometimes a little, sometimes a lot – in the direction we want.
Engagement and cooperation – whether Britain’s in the EU and other institutions, or the EU’s across the world – are the only way to get things done.
Update: There’s another entertaining misrepresentation in the Indy editorial. It concludes:
But most disappointing of all was Mr Miliband's desire to diminish the EU. The Foreign Secretary predicted that "Europe will be less important in the world of 2050 than it was in the world of 1950". It certainly will be if all our future foreign secretaries are as lacking in ambition as the present one seems to be.
What Miliband said was that “economically and demographically Europe will be less important…” And given GDP and population growth rates, it’s hard to argue otherwise – and it’s hard to argue that his speech will contribute to this. Or is it?
Perhaps if too many of us spend our time reading and blogging about Milibandian speechifying, the European economy will collapse. And, if too many of us go around talking about the need to develop a new EU geostrategy, procreation opportunities may be lost to us…
Friday, November 02, 2007
Tories accidentally promise EU referendum
While raging against Labour’s refusal to hold a referendum on the EU treaty, they’ve been very cagey about whether they’d hold one if they win the next election – presumably after the treaty has come into force.
Numerous Tory Europhobes are demanding a retrospective vote as a matter of principle, but David Cameron has been deeply reluctant to concede one, knowing that such a move would take his party into the politically very tricky territory of full-blown renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership.
But yesterday the Tories published a poster as what they must have thought was a jolly jape, apologising for the lack of an election that day and promising that all sorts of wondrous improvements to the country would be “delayed until the election of a Conservative Government”.
One of the things the poster says will follow their election is, yes, “A vote on the European Constitution”. Oops.
Well? Is that a commitment or just an aspiration? Or should we not believe their PR at all?
Numerous Tory Europhobes are demanding a retrospective vote as a matter of principle, but David Cameron has been deeply reluctant to concede one, knowing that such a move would take his party into the politically very tricky territory of full-blown renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership.
But yesterday the Tories published a poster as what they must have thought was a jolly jape, apologising for the lack of an election that day and promising that all sorts of wondrous improvements to the country would be “delayed until the election of a Conservative Government”.
One of the things the poster says will follow their election is, yes, “A vote on the European Constitution”. Oops.
Well? Is that a commitment or just an aspiration? Or should we not believe their PR at all?
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
EU referendum? Don’t ask me...
The new reform treaty is not the old constitution. Not quite. We hear a lot of waffle about how the ‘constitutional concept’ has been abandoned, but that’s a technical and symbolic difference only. It concerns simply whether all new and pre-existing provisions are bundled into one single ‘constitution’ or whether the old treaties are left as they are with the new provisions presented as amendments. It also involves dropping mention of symbols such as the EU flag and anthem – a piffling change.
On top of this, there are also some more substantive changes to the new provisions proposed in the treaty versus the constitution (including a British ‘red line’ or two), but the overall effect – let’s not play the percentage game – is much the same.
So: the Government promised a referendum on the constitution at the last election; does that promise still apply, given the changes? Technically not, as the new treaty isn’t the same – but given the large similarity, can we summon up the spirit, rather than the mere letter, of the manifesto pledge?
This involves looking at exactly why Tony Blair promised a referendum. Here things start to get strange. In his 2004 announcement of this policy, he said that there had been a long history of myth-making “designed to distance people's understanding of what Europe is truly about and loosen this country's belief in its place in Europe”. He went on:
The curious thing about this rationale is that it wasn’t actually related to the contents of the constitution. Blair seemed partly to acknowledge this:
This presents a puzzle: if the aims were (a) to debunk euro-myths in open debate and (b) to resolve Britain’s relationship with Europe, then this particular proposal was beside the point. Indeed, such a referendum would have been a deeply flawed means of achieving these ends, as it would have formally focused on a specific set of new proposals rather than the bigger picture.
Aim (a) could be pursued by any programme of public relations; aim (b) might be best addressed by the Lib Dem suggestion of a referendum on EU membership generally (although such a move might well end up inconclusive, with a small ‘yes’ majority on a low turnout).
So, if the old policy was a bad means of achieving its declared aims, and an equivalent new policy would be an equally bad means, is the Government now obliged to hold a reform treaty referendum in order to pursue those aims with as much doomed incompetence as it made a manifesto commitment to do? The mind boggles.
This is largely beside the point, though. Whatever reasons Blair had, the promise was made. And while the treaty is different from the constitution, and the Government may avoid the letter of this promise by slightly more than a technicality, I think it’s near-impossible to argue that the spirit of that pledge can’t transfer over to this new treaty.
Governments are bound by their manifesto commitments. They’re not necessarily bound, though, to implement them robotically.
In a representative democracy, a general election is about choosing people to govern rather than being a composite referendum approving all items in a manifesto. A government must respond to changing events, is entitled to think again, and is obliged to make what it judges to be the best decision at any given time.
But election promises do matter. Those elected to govern are bound either to fulfil their commitments or to give good reasons for abandoning them, in the knowledge that they will later be electorally judged on this. (There’s also the option of calling a snap election to seek a different mandate.)
In this case, no good reasons for the change of policy have been given. And, without a revolution in political candour, none such can be given.
The Government is having a hard time explaining why the new treaty is different from the old constitution in such a way as to obviate a referendum because the original official reason for having a vote bore little relation to what was in the constitution. The real reasons both for promising one then and for avoiding one now are largely political expediency. (Similarly, the Tory position, then and now, has been far less edifying and principled than they like to claim.)
Cassilis, whose post this is partly a response to, interestingly takes a position on the treaty very similar to that of Blair three years ago. He wants a referendum, mainly because it would be a way of cutting through the myths and setting straight where we want to stand vis-à-vis the EU:
There are some very sound points in there (do read the whole thing), and the overall aim – of bringing legitimacy via clarity and openness – is laudable.
But I have to disagree that a referendum on this treaty would be, as he says, “by far the best way” to do this. My earlier response to Blair’s position applies here: this would be asking the voters a specific (and highly complex) question in the hope of answering a much bigger and more general question.
Europe attracts a concoction of misrepresentation, emotion and dogmatism perhaps unique among British political issues. Cassilis takes this as meaning that it’s all the more important for us to take a chance to think it through carefully and arrive at some sort of resolution. That’s right, as far as it goes. But we also have to judge the chances of such an attempt failing or even backfiring. Imagine an all-too-plausible scenario: a nasty campaign, rife with scaremongering and accusations of lying; a low turnout; a close result. This would be more likely to poison the air than to clear it.
There’s a much broader question to ask, though. When, in a representative democracy, should there be a referendum? Given that our normal method of accountability is that the public elect MPs to produce policy outcomes, I’d suggest that a referendum would be justified when a proposal would significantly weaken the link between people and policy by removing significant power from that representative body.
Exceptions might be made when a government had won election on such a proposal; and of course the scope of ‘significant’ will often be subjective. Judgement on that will have to fall to Parliament itself.
Personally, I haven’t seen anything in this treaty to frighten me. The new appointment procedure and term length for the Council President are reasonable, as is the merging of the two foreign affairs commission posts into one (who will act when directed to unanimously by heads of member governments). The UK’s exemptions from justice/home affairs legislation and legal implications of the charter of fundamental rights are certainly suboptimal in their operation, but our ability to put our foot down is there. The new areas of qualified majority voting are largely technical and/or amenable to opt-outs – and in any case, for every veto we ‘lose’, we also lose 26 other vetoes potentially blocking our way.
In terms of the transfer of powers away from Westminster, this treaty doesn’t seem broader in scope from, say, Maastricht or the Single European Act. Furthermore, as Bill Jones notes, we do always have the right to leave. Opponents talk about the ‘surrender’ or ‘loss’ of sovereignty; supporters often speak of ‘pooling’ or the ‘shared exercise’ of sovereignty. My own take is that we’ve invested some sovereignty in the EU, which involves forgoing some legal freedoms in return for the enhanced power that comes from being part of this group. If, one day, we decide we’re not getting a good return on our investment, then we’re free to cash in and walk away. As such, ultimate sovereign power remains at Westminster.
I don’t see that the case for this treaty’s necessitating a referendum is very strong (although it’s not negligible).
There’s a related issue here, as well, which is that of when a referendum is effectively workable (as opposed to in principle desirable). The answer is to do with simplicity. A referendum requires a referendum campaign, and it requires ordinary members of the public to be able to form a reasonably clear opinion of what it is that they’re voting on. If this is not so, then votes will be cast on all sorts of grounds: the overall popularity of the government; previous or possible future policies in this general policy areas; one or two prominent but perhaps minor provisions in the matter at hand.
I think this treaty’s likelihood of being reasonably well understood by the public during a campaign would compare badly with other policies where referendums have been held or suggested. The multitude of policy areas its provisions touch on make it less readily comprehensible. (I can personally attest - as a fairly alert political anorak - that it is hard to get one’s head round the detail.)
Referendums work best when they are on single measures that can be, at least in rough outline, easily grasped. Naturally, issues such as devolution or electoral reform or even euro membership have all sorts of complex practical details and implications; but such matters are, at heart, about one single big idea. This treaty (and its predecessors) is quite a different beast: indeed, it’s a vast menagerie of policy measures, of varying size, in a myriad of areas. It would be tremendously hard to untangle in the public eye all these measures from others previously agreed and not up for debate, and also from hypothetical measures that may have been mooted but not actually included.
So, if I were an MP not bound by a manifesto commitment then I’d not support a referendum. However, had I been elected on such a promise, I expect I’d feel reluctantly obliged to apply it to this treaty. If I were prime minister, I might seriously consider calling a new election to refresh my mandate on this. But then again, I wouldn’t have promised one in the first place.
What a pretty pickle our political class has contrived to get us into.
On top of this, there are also some more substantive changes to the new provisions proposed in the treaty versus the constitution (including a British ‘red line’ or two), but the overall effect – let’s not play the percentage game – is much the same.
So: the Government promised a referendum on the constitution at the last election; does that promise still apply, given the changes? Technically not, as the new treaty isn’t the same – but given the large similarity, can we summon up the spirit, rather than the mere letter, of the manifesto pledge?
This involves looking at exactly why Tony Blair promised a referendum. Here things start to get strange. In his 2004 announcement of this policy, he said that there had been a long history of myth-making “designed to distance people's understanding of what Europe is truly about and loosen this country's belief in its place in Europe”. He went on:
It has been an unrelenting, but, I have to accept, at least partly successful campaign to persuade Britain that Europe is a conspiracy aimed at us, rather than a partnership designed for us and others to pursue our national interest properly in a modern, interdependent world.
It is right to confront this campaign head on. … Once [the treaty is] agreed… Parliament should debate it in detail and decide upon it. Then, let the people have the final say.
The curious thing about this rationale is that it wasn’t actually related to the contents of the constitution. Blair seemed partly to acknowledge this:
The question will be on the treaty, but the implications go far wider – as I believe we all know. It is time to resolve once and for all whether this country, Britain, wants to be at the centre and heart of European decision making or not; time to decide whether our destiny lies as a leading partner and ally of Europe or on its margins.
This presents a puzzle: if the aims were (a) to debunk euro-myths in open debate and (b) to resolve Britain’s relationship with Europe, then this particular proposal was beside the point. Indeed, such a referendum would have been a deeply flawed means of achieving these ends, as it would have formally focused on a specific set of new proposals rather than the bigger picture.
Aim (a) could be pursued by any programme of public relations; aim (b) might be best addressed by the Lib Dem suggestion of a referendum on EU membership generally (although such a move might well end up inconclusive, with a small ‘yes’ majority on a low turnout).
So, if the old policy was a bad means of achieving its declared aims, and an equivalent new policy would be an equally bad means, is the Government now obliged to hold a reform treaty referendum in order to pursue those aims with as much doomed incompetence as it made a manifesto commitment to do? The mind boggles.
This is largely beside the point, though. Whatever reasons Blair had, the promise was made. And while the treaty is different from the constitution, and the Government may avoid the letter of this promise by slightly more than a technicality, I think it’s near-impossible to argue that the spirit of that pledge can’t transfer over to this new treaty.
Governments are bound by their manifesto commitments. They’re not necessarily bound, though, to implement them robotically.
In a representative democracy, a general election is about choosing people to govern rather than being a composite referendum approving all items in a manifesto. A government must respond to changing events, is entitled to think again, and is obliged to make what it judges to be the best decision at any given time.
But election promises do matter. Those elected to govern are bound either to fulfil their commitments or to give good reasons for abandoning them, in the knowledge that they will later be electorally judged on this. (There’s also the option of calling a snap election to seek a different mandate.)
In this case, no good reasons for the change of policy have been given. And, without a revolution in political candour, none such can be given.
The Government is having a hard time explaining why the new treaty is different from the old constitution in such a way as to obviate a referendum because the original official reason for having a vote bore little relation to what was in the constitution. The real reasons both for promising one then and for avoiding one now are largely political expediency. (Similarly, the Tory position, then and now, has been far less edifying and principled than they like to claim.)
Cassilis, whose post this is partly a response to, interestingly takes a position on the treaty very similar to that of Blair three years ago. He wants a referendum, mainly because it would be a way of cutting through the myths and setting straight where we want to stand vis-à-vis the EU:
Most people, if they’re honest, simply don’t know enough about Europe and the way it’s governed. If they discard everything they’ve ‘learned’ from their favoured politicians or their paper of choice… they would most likely draw a blank… Whatever fears either side has about opening up this debate (and there are many valid ones, particularly on the ‘pro’ side) it’s been in effective hibernation for the last 50 years and until we remedy that our continued participation in the EU is based on a fiction. …the whole issue of the part we play in Europe’s future needs to be thrust to the fore and resolved for good or for ill.
There are some very sound points in there (do read the whole thing), and the overall aim – of bringing legitimacy via clarity and openness – is laudable.
But I have to disagree that a referendum on this treaty would be, as he says, “by far the best way” to do this. My earlier response to Blair’s position applies here: this would be asking the voters a specific (and highly complex) question in the hope of answering a much bigger and more general question.
Europe attracts a concoction of misrepresentation, emotion and dogmatism perhaps unique among British political issues. Cassilis takes this as meaning that it’s all the more important for us to take a chance to think it through carefully and arrive at some sort of resolution. That’s right, as far as it goes. But we also have to judge the chances of such an attempt failing or even backfiring. Imagine an all-too-plausible scenario: a nasty campaign, rife with scaremongering and accusations of lying; a low turnout; a close result. This would be more likely to poison the air than to clear it.
There’s a much broader question to ask, though. When, in a representative democracy, should there be a referendum? Given that our normal method of accountability is that the public elect MPs to produce policy outcomes, I’d suggest that a referendum would be justified when a proposal would significantly weaken the link between people and policy by removing significant power from that representative body.
Exceptions might be made when a government had won election on such a proposal; and of course the scope of ‘significant’ will often be subjective. Judgement on that will have to fall to Parliament itself.
Personally, I haven’t seen anything in this treaty to frighten me. The new appointment procedure and term length for the Council President are reasonable, as is the merging of the two foreign affairs commission posts into one (who will act when directed to unanimously by heads of member governments). The UK’s exemptions from justice/home affairs legislation and legal implications of the charter of fundamental rights are certainly suboptimal in their operation, but our ability to put our foot down is there. The new areas of qualified majority voting are largely technical and/or amenable to opt-outs – and in any case, for every veto we ‘lose’, we also lose 26 other vetoes potentially blocking our way.
In terms of the transfer of powers away from Westminster, this treaty doesn’t seem broader in scope from, say, Maastricht or the Single European Act. Furthermore, as Bill Jones notes, we do always have the right to leave. Opponents talk about the ‘surrender’ or ‘loss’ of sovereignty; supporters often speak of ‘pooling’ or the ‘shared exercise’ of sovereignty. My own take is that we’ve invested some sovereignty in the EU, which involves forgoing some legal freedoms in return for the enhanced power that comes from being part of this group. If, one day, we decide we’re not getting a good return on our investment, then we’re free to cash in and walk away. As such, ultimate sovereign power remains at Westminster.
I don’t see that the case for this treaty’s necessitating a referendum is very strong (although it’s not negligible).
There’s a related issue here, as well, which is that of when a referendum is effectively workable (as opposed to in principle desirable). The answer is to do with simplicity. A referendum requires a referendum campaign, and it requires ordinary members of the public to be able to form a reasonably clear opinion of what it is that they’re voting on. If this is not so, then votes will be cast on all sorts of grounds: the overall popularity of the government; previous or possible future policies in this general policy areas; one or two prominent but perhaps minor provisions in the matter at hand.
I think this treaty’s likelihood of being reasonably well understood by the public during a campaign would compare badly with other policies where referendums have been held or suggested. The multitude of policy areas its provisions touch on make it less readily comprehensible. (I can personally attest - as a fairly alert political anorak - that it is hard to get one’s head round the detail.)
Referendums work best when they are on single measures that can be, at least in rough outline, easily grasped. Naturally, issues such as devolution or electoral reform or even euro membership have all sorts of complex practical details and implications; but such matters are, at heart, about one single big idea. This treaty (and its predecessors) is quite a different beast: indeed, it’s a vast menagerie of policy measures, of varying size, in a myriad of areas. It would be tremendously hard to untangle in the public eye all these measures from others previously agreed and not up for debate, and also from hypothetical measures that may have been mooted but not actually included.
So, if I were an MP not bound by a manifesto commitment then I’d not support a referendum. However, had I been elected on such a promise, I expect I’d feel reluctantly obliged to apply it to this treaty. If I were prime minister, I might seriously consider calling a new election to refresh my mandate on this. But then again, I wouldn’t have promised one in the first place.
What a pretty pickle our political class has contrived to get us into.
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