On Sunday night, here in Brighton, I went to an event — a “rally” — organised by Labour’s new centre-left ginger group, Compass, and its ancient left-wing paper, Tribune. For some reason those responsible failed to notice that a clue to the purpose of the gathering lay in the name — and that a rally is supposed to rally. On which basis they should have billed it as a Depressing Whinge, and I left after 70 minutes to go and watch Waking the Dead, where at least the corpses are entertaining.
By yesterday, however, a form of constructive unreality had taken hold in the conference hall as Lord Mandelson promised that Britain would remain a manufacturing nation “as long as I and the Government remain in our jobs!”, which gives industries just over seven months to relocate to Malaysia.
However, if there was little basis in His Lordship’s optimism, there was some truth in his punchy critique of the party that will almost inevitably supplant him. It has seemed irrelevant to interrogate Conservative policies for avoiding the banking crisis and then a possible slump, because they were in no position (thank goodness) to carry them out. In opposition, the Conservatives can’t do things.
But this week something will probably happen that does require them to make a clear choice, and how David Cameron handles making this choice will tell us much not about whether he will be the next Prime Minister (he will be), but whether he ought to be. The event is the rerun Irish referendum on the Lisbon treaty, in which it looks likely that the “no” side will fail to prevail, and one big hope of Tory leaders — that someone else will deliver them from an EU row — will fade.
But oh, how they have clung to the idea! Go to the Conservative website, riffle through the news from Europe, and discover — in almost the most recent posting — how the German constitutional court has valiantly delayed ratification back in the summer. And look in vain for an update from last week in which — three days before the German election, and to the expressed pleasure of Angela Merkel — the German President, Horst Köhler, signed the treaty. Now slim hope rests with 17 Czech senators delaying the process until after our own elections in the spring.
In reality, there is a significant chance that by December — with all 27 member states having ratified Lisbon — the EU could be discussing candidates for president and foreign affairs chief. And here is the formal position of Her Majesty’s Opposition: if, by the general election, the treaty is in force, it “would lack democratic legitimacy in this country and we would not let matters rest there”.
So the question — if the Irish Republic votes yes just in time for the Tory conference in Manchester — is what on earth “we would not let matters rest there” actually means. If scrutiny of the Opposition is any part of the modern journalist’s trade, it is the question that will be asked and reasked until it is answered. What “matters” will not rest?
William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, has given no clue as to what that state of matters-not- restingness might consist of. Instead, he has reassured his party that he means business and, as evidence of this, he cited how he and Mr Cameron had gone ahead with their 2005 pledge to pull the Tories out of the centre-right European People’s Party grouping in Europe, and create a new group — the European Conservatives and Reformists.
It is hard to imagine, except for the most blinkered Little Englander, a more catastrophic precedent. The EPP has people like Angela Merkel in it, the ECR has the Latvian Fatherland and Freedom Party (earning a rebuke from the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation because of its support for an annual parade by Latvian SS veterans), the EPP has President Sarkozy’s party, the ECR has, as chairman, the Polish member of the Law and Justice Party, Michal Kaminski, who has described homosexuals on air as “faggots” and demanded that Jews apologise to Poles for supposed “mass collaboration” with Soviet invaders.
Only press apathy and the destruction of Tory Euro moderates have prevented the scale of this disaster from becoming clear. One MEP, Edward McMillan-Scott, exactly the sort of brave whip-defying parliamentarian that so many profess to admire, was slung out of the party in the summer with nary a susurration from the Bold Englander Brigade.
So what do Mr C and Mr H have in mind? Some will demand a referendum after May, even though Parliament has already ratified the treaty. It will amount to a demand for a retrospective renegotiation, and it seems inconceivable that, should such a referendum go against ratification, the other 26 nations will agree to do the whole thing again.
Our own William Rees-Mogg spelt out a fortnight ago — a tad blithely you might think — that “if Britain were to withdraw from the Lisbon treaty because the British electorate had voted against it, that would be a healthy challenge to Europe. It is possible that the EU would then break up, but it is unlikely.”
It would be simpler, surely, to bypass Britain than to break up and, unsurprisingly, other Eurosceptics are less relaxed about it. The pressure group Open Europe suggests that the new government should indeed hold a referendum not on Lisbon, but on something else — a “reform package” — threatening to veto the EU budget if we don’t get our way. Presumably Britain would be offered a yes or no to this “reform package”.
One wonders if the Tories have quite understood how the world has changed since colossi such as Norman Lamont and John Redwood last thundered along the corridors of power. There is, to be sure, a huge issue of accountability and another of devolution of power.
But these are radically offset by the nature of interdependence, caused by globalisation, demographic change, the possibility of environmental catastrophe, security and future energy demands. Lisbon represents the minimum that needs to be done to allow the 27 EU states properly to co-ordinate their policies and approaches to these questions. If the new government wastes its time in counterproductive (but sceptic- pleasing) manoeuvres that jeopardise rather than enhance these objectives, it will sell Britain’s interests short.
There is no progressive agenda, Mr Cameron, that isn’t internationalist. And although leadership is certainly about taking the plaudits when you are about to win, it is far more about telling the truth to your own party, however reluctant some are to hear it.
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David Aaronovitch is a writer, broadcaster and commentator on international politics and the media. He writes for The Times Comment page on Tuesdays. He has previously written for The Guardian, The Observer and The Independent, winning numerous accolades, including Columnist of the Year 2003 and the 2001 Orwell prize for journalism. He has appeared on the satirical TV current affairs programme Have I Got News For You and made radio broadcasts on historical topics
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