No Halfway House
After being securely airborne for thirty years or more, a
gigantic, stinking and hideous political chicken is coming
home to roost at terrifying speed. It has yet to settle in
the henhouse, but the monstrous creature beats its wings
with ever increasing threat to clear its chosen roost. The
chicken is Eurofanaticism, the roost is Britain, the henhouse
is Europe. Left undisturbed it will lay the eggs of EMU and
universal majority voting. Their progeny will be a
Superstate destined within a generation to drive the whole of
Europe to the very continental war which the emotionally
obtuse supporters of full political federation urge us to
believe such a state will prevent. For those unwilling to
purchase the Europhiles' supranational fantasy there is but
one important question, how may a sane political fox be
placed in the henhouse to devour the megalomaniac bird?
For the first time in a generation our ruling class is
sufficiently riven on Europe to give serious hope that their
long prevailing Europhilia may be overthrown. It is true
that a majority of our politicians still emit pro-EU noises
of one volume or another. But as ministers strut with an
ever more absurd and impotent bombast over BSE, our
fisheries and the working time directive, our parliament is
speedily reduced to a democratic fig leaf designed to cover
the naked ambitions of the Eurofederalists and a foreign
court persistently breaches British sovereignty with
politically inspired abandon, not only the politicians but
all Europhiles, whether convinced or expedient, know in
their hearts that the Eurofederalist game is up if only we,
as a nation, have the courage to gainsay the received
political wisdom of the past twenty five years, namely that
Britain can only prosper, indeed for the most disturbed
Eurofanatics, only survive within the EU.
This gainsaying is a matter of great urgency. Even the most
shamelessly cynical Eurofederalist or utterly credulous
moderate Europhile - "we must support Europe, but no further
moves to federalism should be made" - has ceased to trill the
tune of "no essential sovereignty has been surrendered". Such
nonsense stopped after the Maastricht debate. The question
is not about whether we are moving too far or fast towards a
federal Europe, but whether we should be in the Union. That
is our starkly simple choice. Anyone who seriously believes
that perpetually limited federalism is possible flies in the
face of all historical experience, including that of the EU
to date, which has moved inexorably from economic cooperation
to an already considerable usurpation of national political
authority. Let us call such people the Eurogullibles or
Eurogulls for short.
The outright federalists have now largely broken cover and
are a clear enemy which may be fought on open ground. More
problematical (and dangerous) are those who argue that the EU
could be reformed to allow for members of widely differing
status. This has a specious attraction for the many who
through timidity are attracted to any compromise simply
because it is a compromise. (Such people should note that a
compromise is by definition always second best.) The strength
and utility (for the federalists) of this particular
emotional barrier to political sanity should not be
underestimated, but the practicality of a "variable
geometry" EU can objectively be given short shrift.
An EU of differing memberships would go against the
intensely federalist and statist culture of both the
elected politicians and, even more vitally, the
bureaucrats who effectively control the EU whilst displaying
a stupid disdain for the mass of their peoples which would
have done service for nobles of the ancien regime. The
political conviction of these Eurofederalists is
quasi-religious and consequently beyond the touch of reason
or refutation. Worse, they have persuaded themselves that
their ends are the ultimate moral and political good and
may be obtained by any means. Nothing less than a political
revolution will prise them peaceably from their positions of
power and influence.
Underpinning this emotional commitment to the European
"ideal" are the basic human attributes of ambition,
self-aggrandisement and personal enrichment. These require no
elaboration. Beyond them stand the legal and administrative
structures of the EU.
The existence of a large, long established, well-paid and
lavishly funded bureaucracy is of itself a massive bulwark
against change. The reality of the EU is that it is
profoundly undemocratic. Those with experience of the British
civil service will recognise the power which civil servants
can wield through a mixture of duplicity and the incapacity
of politicians. But British civil servants, for all their
other faults, are not overtly political appointments.
Moreover, they are not politicians in their own right. The EU
employs as a matter of course politicians in its highest
bureaucratic posts and even the European Court of Justice has
a fair sprinkling of politicos. The consequences of such a
politicised bureaucracy are profound. Even if a majority of
elected EU politicians wished to change course towards a
less intrusive confederation, they would experience immense
difficulty in overcoming the deliberate bureaucratic
subversion which would follow as night follows day. In fact,
the only means of preventing such subversion would be to sack
every EU civil servant, a practical impossibility if the EU
was to continue in any form.
The primary engine of federalism to date is the 'Single
Market'. It is so because it exists not merely as a
facilitator of free trade (of itself a powerful agent for
undermining national power), but as a tool of social and
political change (free movement in search of work,
equalisation of working practices etc.) Without the 'Single
Market' the opportunities for EU interference and, even more
importantly, for the employment of bureaucrats would be
much reduced. (The latter is important because no bureaucrats
equals no bureaucratic action). Moreover, the 'Single Market'
is used as a lever towards other forms of integration which
have serious economic consequences but which cannot be
reasonably considered as part of the necessary measures to
ensure a "Single Market". Prime examples of this practice
are Health and Safety measures which can include, as Britain
has just discovered to her great cost and immense
Conservative dismay, restrictions on one of the primary
terms of employment, namely hours worked.
The question is, as Lenin asked in not altogether different
general political circumstances (for the EU read the Tsarist
Empire), what is to be done? A referendum is not the answer
to our dilemma. I am not opposed to referenda as a matter of
principle, indeed I believe them to be a necessary mechanism
of democracy. But democracy also requires that no decision
made by an electorate be irreversible, either in principle
or practice. Make irreversible decisions and the opportunity
for democratic action no longer exists. There is no formal
mechanism within the Treaty of Rome which provides for a
country to leave the EU. That is democratic reason enough
for disengagement.
There is also a first rate practical reason why irreversible
political decisions should not be made. There is something
inherently dangerous in the idea that a people at one moment
in time can make a decision which shall be binding for all
time, because material circumstances and political opinions
can change utterly and with immense speed. The epitome of
this in the EU debate may be found in Margaret Thatcher, who
supported our initial membership and argued against
withdrawal during the 1975 referendum.
To these objections may be added two others. The first is the
impossibility in present circumstances of any referendum on
Europe being conducted with a semblance of fairness. The
front benches of both major parties are committed to arguing
a particular line during any referendum. If the referendum is
on EMU, both will almost certainly support entry. If it is on
our continued membership, both will support our continued
membership. Add to that the overwhelming pro-EU bias within
the media - no national newspaper has as yet taken our
withdrawal from the EU as its editorial stance - the finance
available through big business to the pro-EU lobby and the
political Europhile control of what question would go on the
ballot paper, and any vote becomes more or less a formality
for continued EU membership.
But even if a referendum decision was for withdrawal,
profound political damage would be done because it would
give a spurious legitimacy to the idea that referenda can
permanently alienate sovereignty. The use of a referendum
would not, of course, make the concept of permanently
alienated sovereignty constitutionally right or practically
possible, but it would provide a strong emotional argument
for any party wishing in the future to either defend a loss
of sovereignty already sustained or propose a further loss of
sovereignty.
The constitutional position on perpetual alienation of
sovereignty is clear. No parliament has the power to
alienate in perpetuity Britain's sovereignty, for if the
British Constitution has one overriding principle it is that
no parliament can bind another. That is but a commonplace.
More fundamentally, such an alienation cannot logically or
practically be made whilst free national elections exist.
This is so because in such circumstances nothing can
prevent a party standing on a platform calling for the
amendment or complete repudiation of the Treaty of Rome,
however amended that document may be. In fact, no statute,
treaty or institution can be sacrosanct under an elective
system of government, not even where there is a written
constitution and an interpretative constitutional court, for
a party may still stand on a platform which states that a
change will be made regardless of what the constitution, laws
and treaties decree, and make of electoral success a
legitimate mandate. By extension, the same argument obtains
for decisions made by referenda.
As things now stand a country could practically secede from
the EU by simply declaring its independence. It could leave
because the actual control of all aspects of government is
still within the grasp of the individual nation states,
although it is true that some countries would experience much
greater difficulty than others if they were to leave the EU.
The smaller states would struggle because their economies
are tiny and less economically diversified, and thus more
vulnerable to both relatively small changes in the balance of
trade and structural employment; those states receiving large
net payments from the other EU members would discover that
they are living wildly beyond their natural means, while
countries such as Belgium are so integrated into the
economies of their neighbours that they could experience
something of the difficulties now afflicting the peripheral
constituents of the old Soviet Union. However, none of
these objections applies to Britain which is, in EU terms,
large, economically diversified and with an exceptionally
wide variety of trading partners. We also have as a legacy of
the last World War and our imperial past, unusual
international influence through our membership of the
controlling councils of such bodies as the UN, the World
Bank and the IMF. To these advantages may be added the
general protection given by GATT against the imposition of
unfair trading practices. As things stand Britain could,
prima facie, leave the EU without much difficulty, either in
terms of present practicality or fear of future economic
reprisals.
Conditions might, of course, change radically. It is
conceivable that Britain outside the EU could be faced with a
protectionist EU which formally repudiated all or part of
GATT or which simply refused to abide by either the GATT
rules or GATT judgements. But GATT may in any case fall foul
of a general worldwide revulsion against the effects of low
tariff or no tariff international trade. Moreover, a
Britain within the EU could well find itself part of a
protectionist trading block. In other words, whatever course
we choose has economic dangers. What we do know from our
experience to date and the commitments made at Maastricht,
is that to remain within the EU will result in our ever
greater political subordination, a growing transfer of
British taxpayers' money to subsidise our poorer competitors
in the EU, a continuation of the CAP and CFP and a flood of
costly and irksome regulations.
But if we can remove ourselves practically from the EU now,
the same will not be true in ten, perhaps even five, years
time. The extent to which membership of EMU would bind
Britain into the EU cannot be overstated, for it would
provide the means for others to not only control our
economy, but to bludgeon us by a mixture of carrot and stick
into the acceptance of ever more federalist measures - " Of
course we'll let you run a bigger budget deficit this year.
Now about this question of an EU army."
But even without EMU the future is bleak for those with any
desire to remain living in a nation state. The Maastricht
treaty contains the seeds for supranational decisions on all
the important political matters: currency, taxation,
interest rates, credit controls, defence, policing, foreign
policy, social security, education, commerce/industry and
immigration. It is not fanciful to imagine that in a few
years the EU will be demanding a say in such matters as what
taxes are to be raised and the control of the armed and
police forces.
What is ideally required to save Britain is a two party
system in which both parties are prudently nationalist, that
is they attend to Britain's obvious interests without lapsing
into vulgar chauvinism. (Those who make a distinction between
nationalism and patriotism are simply distinguishing between
aggressive and non-aggressive nationalism). Within such a
general constraint a meaningful party divide could exist
based on those matters which are the eternal truths of
politics: free trade versus protectionism, libertarianism
versus traditional paternalism and traditional international
involvement (mutual defence treaties, bilateral trade
agreements etc) versus neutrality. It does not follow of
course that two neat triads would form with one party
espousing free trade, libertarianism and international
involvement and the other protectionism, paternalism and
neutrality. Nor would it mean that one of the parties could
not be socialist for socialism is only necessarily
internationalist in the Marxist tradition (and scarcely
that since Stalin's time).
More problematical is the question of how such a political
revolution could be achieved. It seems improbable that a
new party with a realistic chance of power could be created
in less than a generation (and that is being optimistic),
unless there is a genuine break in the Tory party with both
considerable numbers of rank and file MPs and ministers and
ex-ministers defecting. Perhaps one hundred such defectors
would give a new party a chance. But even then the whole
electoral system would be grotesquely weighted against them,
from the absence of a party bureaucracy through limited
access to the various mass media to shortage of funds.
It is possible that some cataclysmic social upheaval, for
example a sudden unmanageable influx of immigrants (from Hong
Kong say), overweening interference by the EU - for example,
conscription for a European army or taxes imposed directly
and overtly by Brussels - or extreme material distress might
loosen the political system sufficiently to catapult a new
nationalist party to power, but that is improbable even in
such extreme circumstances. More likely would be a
fragmentation of political support within the old parties and
the new, or the immediately successful assumption of
particular practical nationalist measures by one of the old
parties without an admission of the need for a generally
nationalist stance. And that assumes no proportional
representation, a dangerous assumption if Labour form the
next government with the aid of the LibDems. With
proportional representation the business of extricating
Britain from the EU might well become impossible.
The best hope is to remake the Tory party. This would not
necessarily be forbiddingly difficult because the Tory Party
has been, and I believe at heart still is, inherently
nationalist. The flirtation with Europe is an aberration.
Whether such a change can be made without the party going
out of power is unlikely. Even if the present leadership was
removed, it is doubtful if the party could be persuaded at
the present time to do more than reject EMU and having done
that there would be, if power was retained, a massive
temptation to say the boat had been rocked enough.
The immediate requirement is for a serious political voice
constantly reminding the public that the EU is not a
necessary or inevitable part of the political landscape and
that both constitutionally and practically, sovereignty
cannot be permanently alienated. An unambiguous anti-European
message also has practical propaganda advantages. The
indeterminate position adopted publicly by all Eurosceptic
MPs places them at a grave disadvantage. The public cannot
identify strongly with people who, on the one hand, extol the
notional virtues of the "single market" and seem to preface
every speech or interview with professions that they are not
anti-European, and on the other, decry Maastricht and the
existing iniquities of the various Community institutions. A
clear rejection of the formal European embrace is necessary
before the political sewage of the past quarter century can
be safely processed.
The other great propaganda lack is the absence of a clear
delineation of the disadvantages which Britain is already
suffering and may suffer in the future. What is required is
an easily accessible booklet to alert the public to the
practical effects and implications of EU membership. It is
especially important to make people realise how their lives
will be altered as power moves away from Westminster. Up to
the present, the EU has not impinged greatly on the life of
the ordinary citizen. Absurd industrial and trade regulations
may not cause widespread discontent. It will be a different
matter if conscription for a European Army is introduced or
really substantial tax and social security contribution
increases occur at the behest of Brussels.
If one EU abomination for is to be singled out for regular
public consumption, let it be the one that every man and
woman in Britain may understand: this year Britain will be
giving, yes giving, approximately 4 billion pounds of
taxpayers money to other EU members, all of which are our
trading competitors. Speaking plainly, this is a tax levied
by Brussels. Would any party be willing to openly stand for
election on such a platform? If this is our treatment when we
still have the legal right to assert our national interests
in most political areas, it is certain that closer federation
will result in much more dramatic measures to disadvantage
Britain.
Our EU membership has shown exactly what Britain may expect
from a federal Europe. Since joining, Britain has incurred
the cost of supporting the CAP, the EU bureaucracy and
parliament, seen our fishing grounds massively infiltrated by
foreigners, allowed foreign politicians, the Commission and
the European Court of Justice to persistently interfere in
British life, adopted disadvantageous EU laws and Commission
edicts without effective protest, been forced to massively
subsidise other EU states and has developed a massive trade
deficit with the EU. In addition, Britain has lost
important trading privileges with the old Dominions and, in
the process, has largely destroyed a valuable sentimental
relationship with those nations. Perhaps most importantly in
the long run, we have effectively lost control of immigration
because of our treaty obligation to free movement within the
EU and the risibly weak frontier controls operated by other
EU members.
Of all political truisms the most certain is that power is
never willingly ceded. This is so because politics like
economics has a natural tendency to monopoly. There is a
single political commodity: power, which is the political
equivalent of money. Politicians of all stamps seek to
corner power, because only by doing so can a political agenda
be perfectly executed. This is true whether or not an agenda
is for more or less state control, because to ensure either
it is necessary to be in government, that is to monopolise
power. The bleak truth is that for as long as the EU exists,
one might as well try to stop an inflowing tide with a
colander as prevent the movement to a federal Europe, and
that applies regardless of whether Maastricht is fully
implemented by 1999. Maastricht merely quickened the
sociological process.
It is vitally important to realise why Britain is utterly
unsuited to the EU. The frequent arguments between Britain
and the other EU members are commonly attributed by
Europhiles to cultural differences and varying historical
experiences. These arguments will not wash because in both
matters the continental EU members differ as much from one
another as they do from Britain. There are two more
plausible primary causes, Britain's singular history and what
is tantamount to bribery, namely the payment of massive
subsidies to nations such as Ireland and Greece.
Because of our history, all EU members, at least at the
level of the political class, have strong historical reasons
to wish Britain harm. The French, Spanish and Dutch harbour
very old and profound historical resentments against Britain,
not the least of which is the thwarting of their own plans
for political and commercial supremacy in Europe, the
Germans bear the pain of the loss of two world wars and all
but Sweden, Spain and Portugal suffered defeat and occupation
during or after the last world war and resent the fact that
Britain did not. The Irish position needs no elaboration.
Britain, on the other hand, has been generally victorious in
the past three hundred years and, moreover, enjoyed a
century or more of commercial, industrial and imperial
supremacy. The result of such disparate pasts is a general
resentment of past English and British successes, coupled
with a sense of shame at specific national humiliations,
whether inflicted by Britain or not. This is surely one of
the primary reasons for Britain's remarkably consistent
failure to obtain support within the EU, whether it be in the
Council of Ministers, the Commission or the European Court of
Justice.
That we should have placed ourselves into the hands of people
with such profound grudges is barely credible. Indeed, on
that ground alone it is difficult to see how British
politicians could ever have rationally concluded that the
country would not suffer gravely from her membership. When we
add the open buying of support, through direct subsidies and
trading advantages such as the CFP, for policies which
penalise Britain, our membership becomes truly fantastic.
Cynics might object that because Britain is one of the two
biggest net contributors, she could use her money to buy
support. However, this argument does not carry much weight
since the Single European Act and Maastricht because so much
is now done outside the British veto. Most importantly, the
largest EU states invariably produce a majority against the
British interest. Germany and France work together as a
matter of course, while Spain and Italy both do very nicely
out of EU subsidies. Britain could, of course, refuse to pay
subsidies, but that would breach our treaty obligations. Our
present subordination does not of course excuse the failure
of British governments before the Single European Act to
fight for British interests or the acceptance of either that
Act or Maastricht. Nor, it must be said, has the British veto
been used recently when it might have been.
The Eurofederalist cause will succeed only if their immediate
agenda is completed soon, that is the joining of a single
currency followed shortly by British agreement to wholesale
majority voting in all the most vital matters of nationhood.
If they fail to achieve these aims within the next five years
Britain will not become enmeshed in a federal Europe because
not merely public opinion, but the opinion of our Political
Class is turning against the EU as the realities of not being
one's own national master become daily more apparent. If we
act now the danger can be averted. But before we can act we
must smoke out of the psychological hobgoblins lurking in
the Eurofederalist shadows, the demons of ignorance,
deference and timidity of character. Many Britons simply do
not know what to believe about Britain's prospects outside
the EU and as a consequence operate on the principle of
'hold tight to nurse for fear of something worse'. Others
honour the age old practice of "aping their betters" and
assume Europhile clothes simply because their ruling elite
flaunts the outrageous garb. It is utterly necessary that
those politicians not entwined within the Eurofanatic coils
give an unambiguous and vigorous lead to the people.
A number of questions nag away at my brain: what has Britain
gained from EU membership to date? What can they gain from
membership in the future? Where is the political mandate for
what is now happening to British sovereignty? Most
importantly, in the absence of any promise to withdraw
Britain from the EU by either of the two political parties
with a chance of power in Britain, what peaceful and lawful
action is left to those who see this destruction of Britain
as an independent power as no more or less than the most
profound act of treason? After fifty solid years of liberal
internationalist propaganda, the word treason has an antique
ring for many people, but what else can one call the removal
of powers from the British people by politicians who
simultaneously tell their electorate that no important
sovereignty is being ceded?
It is better to be a poor free man than a comfortable slave,
for a slave lives always at the whim of his master. That is
one of the hardest truths for any human being to accept, but
it is a profound truth nonetheless. If we remain within the
EU, we shall become the subjects of those with historical
cause to hate and resent us. The federalist movement may be
utterly broken: it cannot be parked permanently in the
middle of the political road. To adapt the words of the John
Dunning, The influence of the EU in Britain has increased,
is increasing and ought to be abolished.
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