Some In UK Call For Conservatives To Rejoin EPP
The Conservatives are not in a good place right now. No-one of right mind doubts that the term ‘democratic deficit’ severely understates the EU’s democratic commitment.
It is like describing a corpse as having a ‘living deficit’. And the refusal to honour the manifesto promise to hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty was one of the more shameful acts of a peculiarly shameful government.
However, the problem for any Tory leader is that he or she has to triangulate between the eurosceptic right, British voters (who are generally eurosceptic but are not really bothered by such arcane issues) and the needs of any government to retain influence with those over whom it has no power (specifically in this case, other European governments). This is a terribly difficult task, but David Cameron has not done it well.
Now that the treaty has come into effect, Cameron was absolutely right to withdraw his promise of a referendum. It would be a useless political stunt that could only backfire. The problem is that this has infuriated the eurosceptics while making no headway elsewhere, because Cameron had already backed himself into a corner with his defection from the European Peoples Party.
The EPP certainly has a strong federalist bias, but it does contain the most serious politicians on the right, and now that the Tories have pulled out its bias is ipso facto more powerful. The Tories now have no influence at the very heart of Europe.
This is not a surprise. In 2007 I wrote about what was then only a promise in my book, After Blair.
[The Federalist] vision is of course anathema to conservatives, to Tories and in general to most sides of British politics. However, it is not obvious that leaving the EPP was a wise move, since on continental Europe, right wingers who are opposed to the deepening of intra-EU relations are a loony lot on the whole, and many enjoyed the spectacle of the über-fragrant Mr Cameron rubbing metaphorical shoulders with the ghastly Jean-Marie le Pen, the weird and not-so-wonderful Kaczyński twins and a certain Robert Kilroy-Silk. … In the end, Mr Cameron had to climb down; the new grouping was put back to 2009, though he still remained bullish about its prospects and critical of the EPP when announcing this climb-down. No party, certainly not the Tories, functions well when it is out on a political limb. Mr Cameron has kicked this issue into the long grass, and anyone who wishes the Tories well must hope that that is where it stays.
I was wrong about exactly who the Tories’ bedfellows would be, but right in essence: the proposal should have remained in the long grass. The result is that Mr Cameron has alienated the eurosceptics (notwithstanding his obvious euroscepticism) and failed to enthuse voters. Meanwhile in Europe itself, those who would normally be Cameron’s natural allies are openly contemptuous, while the Tories’ political influence is now restricted to the Latvian weirdo vote.
Face of course has to be preserved, but this dreadful mistake has to be rectified after a decent interval, maybe after the General Election. The best option for a Conservative government committed (rightly) to stopping the flow of power from Westminster to Brussels is to rejoin the EPP.
Topics: Britain, Conservative Party, conservatives, David Cameron, democratic deficit, EU, EU Democratic Government, European Governments, European Union, Governance, politics, UK, United Kingdom
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