Every other month there seems to be another 'write in' lobby about the EU. By 'write in' I mean the practice of sending your MP a preprinted card rather than taking the trouble to send your own letter. Of course I also get lots of thoughtful letters on the subject that constituents have taken the trouble to write themselves. The general thrust of these letters and of the latest 'write in' campaign is that we would be better off out of the EU and that we ought to get on with having a referendum to decide the issue. I am not keen on a such a referendum: I still remember being on the losing side during the last one in 1975 when, as a young man of 18, I campaigned to withdraw from what was then the Common Market.
I get a bit irritated when people accost me at public meetings insisting “we was robbed” because when they voted to stay in the Common Market back in 1975 they were never warned about the expanding competence of what has now become the EU and its consequent impact on our own national freedom of action, including a deluge of unwelcome and costly regulation from Brussels. Well, I remember that referendum campaign very well and I have just been refreshing my memory with the help of a newly published two volume analysis acquired by the House of Commons Library. My answer to them is this “we did warn you, we spelled out exactly what would happen. You chose to discount that warning, and the rest is history”.
We live, however, in a free country where nothing is irreversible: no parliament can bind its successor. I have a son who is approaching voting age. His generation have every right review the decision that mine made over thirty years ago. So, why do I not share the enthusiasm of the 'write ins' to get on with it and have another referendum?
I have two reasons. First, there is no particular issue to focus the public mind, an imperative to give the question urgency. A referendum held in the present climate would, I suggest, beg the question of “why now?” and would run the risk of a very low turnout. It is one thing to tell a pollster that you are anti EU but a very different thing to go out and vote on it.
Second, because I have hopes that the EU can be fundamentally reformed into something that might suit us rather better. There is no doubt that the EU as currently constituted is stuck in the past. It reflects the preoccupations of the immediate post war Europe when it was created and when political and economic integration through shared institutions was seen as the panacea for all Europe's ills.
The new members of the EU have a quite different mindset having experienced the stifling regime of a supra national entity in the form of the Soviet Union and its clients. Like us, they want an open and flexible outward looking Europe that rejoices in diversity rather than promoting stifling conformity. I think there is a debt of honour owed to countries like Poland and the Czech Republic, to stay in the fight to reform the EU rather than to just surrender, go home and leave them to it.
I have no doubt that Europe could act collectively in the world to the common good where, as individual nations our influence will be much diminished. There are issues where collective action is essential to be effective in a changed world.
Can a reform of the EU be achieved or is it a lost cause? I don't want a referendum yet because the jury is still out. Pursuing that metaphor, actually, the jury is not so much out as the trial is still in progress. I see the creation of a free trading, flexible, open Europe as the great quest of the next decade and the agenda of the next Conservative government together with Movement for European reform.
If there is a key test for any reform I suggest it is this: making the decision making process of the EU so flexible as to be reversible. The most pernicious doctrine at the heart of the EU is the 'acquis communautaire' which holds that once a power or competence has been given to the EU by member states it can be never given back. Such a doctrine is a dagger at the heart of national sovereignty and real democracy. Doing away with it would be a key issue as to how I might vote in any future referendum, but the important thing is to give a fair crack of the whip to reform movement before we contemplate such a referendum.
I know that EU membership imposes enormous costs and unwelcome constraints upon us but I think my correspondents delude themselves if they imagine that any process of withdrawal from the EU would be anything but costly, unpleasant and drawn out.
What I do find very odd in all this, however, is the vehemence with which the United Kingdom Independence Party attack not the EU, but the Tory party. A visit to their web site will show how their campaigns are designed to undermine the eurosceptic Conservative Party rather than Labour or the Liberal Democrats who are relatively enthusiastic about the pace of European reform and were in favour of the EU constitution. I just don't understand it. I just put it down as one of those mysteries in life together with how they write inside your payslip without opening it. |
