Progress has published many articles and opinions on how the Conservatives can take extreme and unstable views on the European Union. While this is a continuing narrative, as we approach the general election, the Conservatives would rather we did not focus on these areas of division and embarrassment. A recent important example emerged last week (15 February) when both Labour and Liberal Democrats pointed out that the Tories plan to cut joint EU policing, something which critics say would ‘threaten’ Britain’s ability to fight cross-border crime. As a London MEP campaigning in my constituency on these matters regularly, and facing down the Conservatives in the European parliament, I believe this area of justice and home affairs (JHA) is the sort of Achilles’ heel that the Tories would rather we ignored. Recently, the Crown Prosecution Service talked about the “phenomenal” levels of cross-border crime affecting the UK. In my constituency, gun crime, drug and people trafficking are all daily realities and all of them have a cross-border context. Today, 80 per cent of non-domestic murders in my London constituency now involve investigations in the EU but outside the UK. As a rapporteur to the European parliament on Europol, the European police intelligence-gathering agency, I also know that it is an area of strength for the European Union that there are increasing resources and democratic accountability going both into Europol and EuroJust.

The Conservatives have consistently voted against Europol and Eurojust (the EU body that coordinates criminal investigations across EU countries) and the party has confirmed that it will oppose the expansion of Eurojust powers granted under the Lisbon treaty. This stance has been pushed by hard line eurosceptics who claim that Europol and Eurojust amount to the move towards a European equivalent of the FBI. This is an absurd claim but it feeds into the paranoia that the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative party has created. Similarly, Europol is currently headed by a high flying senior British police officer and is widely seen as a small but effective organisation which along with Eurojust is used disproportionately by the United Kingdom compared to all other EU countries. It is clear that in this area of JHA the Conservatives are creating clear dividing lines between progressives who believe in an effective European Union that should cooperate in areas of clear benefit to citizens and communities and an ideological opposition from the Conservatives to anything that smacks of increased cooperation. This has led to the Conservatives in the European parliament and their new rightwing group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, voting against the Stockholm programme which included the better training of judges and police forces and enhanced cooperation with increased democratic scrutiny by the European parliament.

Labour MEPs are alert to the potentially extreme positions among Conservative MEPs in the European Parliament and frequently report these to our members and supporters. The Conservative Party is putting rigid ideology ahead of the national interest when we should be working together to address matters of common concern whether climate change, solutions to the economic crisis and on fighting cross border crime. These issues are ones that voters care about and that can best be solved by engagement and cooperation instead of infighting and isolation.