Writing for the Financial Times, Michael Portillo (a leading light in the Conservative Party back in the day) analyzes the tricky topic of Britain’s unhappy relationship with the EU, neatly summarizing the misunderstanding that lies at its core:
Since before Britain entered the common market, and ever since, distinguished opponents of our membership have cited the loss of both sovereignty and democratic control as insuperable problems. Tony Benn and Enoch Powell pointed out that the ambition of the founding fathers of the EU was not a free-trade zone but a political union, requiring power to be centralised at a supranational level. The British disregarded the warnings and believed that they were joining a club, whereas the EU is a process. Our anxieties have grown every few years with treaty changes that carry Europe towards ever closer union.
But then Portillo turns his eyes to the referendum on continued British membership of the EU that the Conservatives have promised for 2017 should they be reelected, a referendum that he believes would be very risky indeed:
That is not because of the danger that Britain would leave the EU. We could bear that. Switzerland, Norway, China and the US trade successfully with the EU without being members, and so could Britain. It is the consequences of a vote to stay in that we should fear.
David Cameron, Ms Merkel and Nigel Farage all believe that if the Conservatives win an overall majority and hold a referendum, it will result in a vote to remain in the EU. That is why the prime minister is happy to talk of holding one, why the German chancellor need make no concessions to Britain, and why the Ukip leader wants to prevent a Conservative majority
A vote to remain in would be a game changer. The great British establishment, shamed and silenced during the euro fiasco, would re-emerge to claim that Britain had asserted its European destiny. The pro-EU bastions of the BBC, The Economist, the Confederation of British Industry and the Foreign Office [I note that Portillo is too tactful to include the Financial Times in this list of shame] would tell us that the time had come to join the heart of Europe, and its currency too.
So let sleeping dogs lie. Life as the best performing economy in the EU is not too bad and further treaty changes are unlikely, if only because the EU does not want to trigger referendums in member states. If David Cameron emerges as prime minister after the election, but with no majority, he must use that as the excuse to wriggle off the referendum hook.
Portillo is, I think, right that, as things currently stand, a referendum will go the pro-EU way. Assuming that Cameron wins a majority, he will (despite what Portillo says) extract a minor concession or two from Britain’s EU ‘partners’, and repackage them as a new British deal with Europe. That won’t be true, but most Britons will want to believe him (despite their lack of enthusiasm for Brussels, they are clearly uneasy about what life would be like ‘outside’) and, with the establishment cheering them on, they will vote accordingly, with the consequences that Portillo describes.
Where Portillo is wrong is to be so sanguine about the position in which Britain finds itself now. The country may be outside the euro zone, but even outside it the process of ‘ever closer union’ grinds on, albeit at a slower pace, with consequences that are bad for Britain’s economy, worse for its sovereignty and highly corrosive of its politics. There is no comfortable status quo. To believe that there is is one of the most dangerous illusions of all. Time is not on the euroskeptics’ side (a glance at the generally more europhile instincts of younger voters only underlines that point).
So what to do? We don’t yet know whether there will be a referendum on the timetable that Cameron is proposing (I doubt it, primarily because I think the Conservatives will not be in government after the election), but whether or not there is, euroskeptics have to start doing far more to explain in detail how a British exit (via Article 50 of the Treaty) would be structured and the basis on which the country would exist outside. Simply saying ‘like Norway’ or ‘like Switzerland’ is not enough. This is difficult stuff, technical stuff, dry stuff (EUReferendum’s Richard North has written plenty on the topic), but a successful euroskeptic campaign that rests on flag and hope alone will not succeed.
And there’s also something else. As I am not the first to observe, the chances of a euroskeptic victory would be greatly enhanced if the Conservative Party were to make clear that its euroskepticism is designed to take Britain to the exit door. That’s what the membership wants, but the leadership does not. The result has been to sustain the myth of ‘renegotiation’, the myth that is one of Brussels’ most useful accomplices. What euroskeptics need to do now is to explain, again and again, that the logic and the law of European integration make any meaningful renegotiation of the British position a legal and a political impossibility. And they need to establish that point before next year’s general election.
A long shot? You bet.
And there’s one other thing. As pessimistic as I am (and I am) about the chances of Britain ever quitting the EU, it would be foolish not to recognize that the political and economic malaise that still envelops the euro zone may evolve into an even greater crisis. And out of that crisis could come opportunity if Britain’s leadership could be persuaded to take it.
And what do I mean by that? Well this remark by Ray Kroc gives a hint:
If any of my competitors were drowning, I’d stick a hose in their mouth and turn on the water.