David Cameron's position on Europe is yet to fully reveal itself but his party is not short of Eurosceptics, writes TONY KINSELLA
ALTHOUGH ANGELA Merkel argues that history does not in fact repeat itself, it sometimes seems to come remarkably close.
Last Friday week as Britain’s Conservatives were preparing for their annual conference in Manchester, Irish votes altered reality and exposed an unaddressed weakness in their party’s preparations for power in the UK.
Political party annual conferences have long ceased to determine major policies, mutating instead into mere marketing opportunities and slogans.
Rarely can the basic policy assumptions of a country have faced such a cocktail of urgent and profound questions as does today’s United Kingdom. Its fundamental economic choice has revealed serious flaws, the foundation of its foreign policy has crumbled, and global realities challenge its antipathy to consistent long-term planning.
Successive British governments have favoured the development of financial services over support for manufacturing industry. Just over a year ago the seemingly inexorable growth of financial services as the dominant sector of our global economy stumbled - and would have collapsed were it not for the co-ordinated intervention of governments.
While the final scope and duration of these interventions remains to be determined, it is clear to all who care to look that tomorrows financial markets cannot be allowed to overly resemble yesterdays. To put it simply, nobody is going to expensively recreate something which failed.
During and after the second World War Washington became the primary, almost the exclusive, focus of Britains foreign policy. British politicians talked warmly, sometimes smugly, of their country’s “special relationship” with the United States. Although Washington has sometimes reciprocated the warmth, it tends to view the relationship with its former colonial power through more pragmatic lenses.
The US, like most countries, acts in what it perceives to be its self-interest. The harsh reality which London finds difficult to grasp is that the UK is not a key element in assisting the US in its pursuit of such interests. When it comes to US relations with China, India, Brazil, Russia, the Middle East, Africa or Europe, London is no longer crucial.
Britain remains sceptical of her European neighbours and instinctively hostile to the EU. Tony Blair once described the four phases of his countrys normal European approach as academic interest, followed by ridicule, then disbelief, ending with reluctant and awkward participation.
The UK was one of the original participants in the discussions which led to the 1957 Treaty of Rome and the founding of what has become our EU. It then withdrew from what it saw as an unworkable dream. Disbelief followed as the Common Market developed and flourished. In 1973 the UK finally became a member of a body where many of the ground rules had, in the meantime, been determined without any British input. It is a pattern which will be perfectly duplicated the day the UK adopts the euro.
Facing the challenge of climate change and weaning our societies off their carbon-laden addiction to fossil fuels requires the type of long-term planning and investment that has been the antithesis of Britain’s approach to infrastructure. Her adversarial politics have often led governments to cancel projects initiated by their predecessors.
As recently as last August the Conservative shadow treasury chief secretary, Philip Hammond, cast doubt over funding for the crossrail project which will link London’s disparate rail termini. This despite the fact that construction finally began this year on a project first mooted by Robert Stephenson in 1836.
Little of this was in evidence, much less debated, at the different party conferences. The Conservative event possibly set a record for ultra cautiousness as they endeavoured not to rock their fragile skiff just short of its long-awaited arrival in the harbour of power.
If opinion polls show them hovering on the brink of a convincing majority, the same polls show that 68 per cent of British voters remain to be convinced that Cameron’s party has really changed since the days of the now unmentioned Margaret Thatcher. Labour may be losing but the Tories are far from assured of, and arguably far from prepared for, victory. The wilderness of opposition is where political parties can detoxify themselves by resolving long-avoided debates: Labour eventually dropping its clause 4 commitment to nationalising the commanding heights of the economy, or Sinn Féin’s long struggle with abstentionism, are prime examples.
If one issue fractured the 1990-97 John Major Conservative governments it was the question of his party’s attitude to the EU. Sectarian in-fighting over Maastricht would lead the publicly mild-mannered prime minister to memorably refer to three Eurosceptic members of his cabinet as “bastards” in 1993.
The Conservatives failed to grasp their European nettle when they could afford to do so, and Irish voters have now reinforced its sting with a vengeance. Cameron may have thought that his engagement to withdraw from the EPP centre-right grouping a small price to pay for support from Eurosceptic MPs. The presence in Manchester of Latvian allies who venerate the role of their country’s association with Hitler’s Waffen SS divisions would seem to suggest otherwise.
Tory conference planning left them unprepared to handle either possible result of the long-planned Irish referendum on Lisbon. If a rejection would have catapulted Cameron into a distinctly hot seat, the overwhelming approval obliges him to mutely contemplate how to be prime minister of an EU member state. Europe shone by its absence from his leader’s address.
In the late 19th century Conservatives convinced themselves that by refusing Irish voters’ endorsements of Home Rule they would somehow preserve the union and the empire. Today’s Tories seem equally determined to convince themselves that the rest of the world will change to suit their fantasies.
It’s not a great recipe for an opposition, but it’s a real “bastard” of a one for a government.