Monday, May 13, 2013

An EU referendum is the political mouse that roared

By Matthew d’Ancona 4:51PM BST 11 May 2013

David Cameron's promise of a new deal has won few friends. To too many eyes, it looks like compromise

Lord Lawson is close to George Osborne, and his article calling for exit from the EU reflects views that, it is safe to assume, he has already discussed with senior Tories

Lord Lawson is close to George Osborne, and his article calling for exit from the EU reflects views that, it is safe to assume, he has already discussed with senior Tories Photo: David Rose

Political absurdity is often the face of deep-rooted complexity; especially so in the case of a coalition. This week, it is probable that an amendment regretting the absence of an EU referendum Bill from the Queen’s Speech will be called, and force a most peculiar outcome.

As things stand, Tory backbenchers will be granted a free vote on the motion tabled by two of their number, John Baron and Peter Bone, while members of the Government will abstain. However, as The Sunday Telegraph reveals today, some Lib Dem ministers are now expected to complicate matters further by voting against, as their pro-EU convictions dictate.

This is not the first time that the dynamics of Coalition have spawned psychedelic, multi-dimensional politics. In December 2010, as tuition fees gave the Lib Dems their first bitter taste of government’s moral quandaries, Vince Cable came close to commending the reform to the House – and then abstaining on it. As John Denham, then shadow business secretary, asked: “When was the last time that a minister – a secretary of state and a member of the Cabinet – came to the House to defend a policy that he drew up, on the same day on which he told the BBC that he might not even vote for it?”

When indeed? To its latest dilemma, No 10’s response has been Confucian in form: “When you see a mouse come in to a room, you can either say 'there’s a mouse’, or you can jump on a table, screaming.” Safe to say, I think, that the mouse in this kung-fu riddle is the EU referendum, or perhaps the amendment itself, and that the screaming is all the fuss that the political and media class is making.

The Prime Minister’s distaste for panic has undoubtedly served him well over the years, not least in the mind-numbing maze of bipartisan Government. The Cameroons are right to complain that some in their party act as if the Tories were not in coalition, or the Lib Dems could be safely ignored. That arrogance cost the party the boundary review and perhaps the next election (the constituency reorganisation would have been worth about 20 seats to the Conservatives). What should worry Cameron is the resilient lack of trust between himself and a significant core of Tory MPs. When they demand a draft referendum bill, they are saying: we take all your points about Clegg and the Lib Dems and what you can and can’t do, but even so – sorry, mate – we still want it in writing.

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Considered in this context, it is remarkable that the PM’s speech on Britain’s relationship with the EU in January – promising the first referendum on our membership since 1975 – made so little impact upon the debate it was meant to calm, or upon the rise of the UK Independence Party. According to one loyalist member of the Government: “The fact is that people don’t trust us.”

What Alastair Campbell once called “this huge stuff about trust” is the binding force in all of this, at every level. The perception that Cameron broke his own “cast-iron guarantee” to hold a referendum on the EU Lisbon Treaty compounded the ugly legacy of MPs’ expenses, Iraq, spin, sleaze, “Back to Basics” and much else besides. This is an era of institutional frailty: Parliament, the press, the financial sector, the BBC, all have been traumatised by scandal and deceit. And never before have politicians been subject to such relentless scrutiny: the tools of the digital revolution have the paradoxical effect of forcing honesty upon those who govern, while reducing trust among the governed.

Against this backdrop, the sleek élites of the late 20th and early 21st centuries already look dated. Those who point at Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage and say they don’t look like men of government are only bolstering their credentials and their voter appeal. The Mayor of London and the Ukip leader prosper precisely because they have the scuffed honesty of amateurs – real human beings who have not been bred in laboratories, and speak their mind rather than parrot the “line to take”.

In reality, of course, both men are politicians to their finger-tips; Boris is the second-term mayor of a global city which last year hosted the Olympics, while Farage is masterminding a deft electoral guerrilla strategy that suggests he has talents that transcend saloon-bar charm and Barbour chic. But they understand that a deeply suspicious electorate values “authenticity” more than anything else.

Alongside the historic collapse of trust, Cameron has to confront a no less dramatic shift in the foundations and fortunes of the EU. As the late Hugo Young argued in his magisterial account of Britain’s relationship with Europe, This Blessed Plot, Eurosceptics were always open to the charge of “lack of realism”. Writing in 1998, Young observed: “The world they defended seemed, in the end, to be nostalgic and narrow: assailed by demons, racked by existential confusion.”

But, 15 years on, their world and the EU’s look very different. The Continent is racked by the eurozone crisis, and it is no longer as easy to argue that Britain outside the EU would suffer economically. As Lord Lawson wrote last week in his Times article calling for exit: “The heart of the matter is that the relevant economic context nowadays is not Europe but globalisation, including global free trade, with the World Trade Organisation as its monitor.”

Lawson is close to George Osborne, and his article reflects views that, it is safe to assume, he has already discussed with senior Tories in the Coalition. Michael Portillo’s piece in the same newspaper was angrier, more overtly hostile to Cameron’s position and, in Latin style, scornful of today’s Conservative leadership: “They whinge about Europe, but don’t have the self-confidence to pull out.” Portillo accused the political class of “defeatism” and invited the reader to imagine “Margaret Thatcher approaching the issue in such an insincere and political way”.

At such moments, one recalls that Portillo is not only the father of Tory modernisation – too rarely recognised as such by its beneficiaries – but was also a close disciple of the Iron Lady. In arguing that there is a “fundamental mismatch” between Britain’s ambitions and those of the EU, one that cannot be “resolved by a little renegotiation”, he spoke, I suspect, for the majority of Tory MPs and for a growing percentage of the population. Cameron’s best line is that Britain is in a “global race”. It is getting harder with each passing month to argue that our membership of the EU is a help, rather than a hindrance to our performance in that contest.

To his under-acknowledged credit, this PM has offered the public a referendum on British membership. But his promise of a new deal, a fresh beginning worth waiting for before we decide, has gained little traction and won few friends. To too many eyes, it looks like compromise rather than half of the logic. This week’s amendment is only one of the many interventions, ploys and stunts he can expect, intended to push him further, faster, on this central question of the nation’s identity. In politics, the mouse sometimes roars.

An EU referendum is the political mouse that roared - Telegraph

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