There’s a great irony about the politics of Europe in the UK.

Europe is one of the most important determinants in our national destiny. More than half our trade is with EU countries. Without the EU we can achieve little on climate change, on international crime or on energy security. Within the EU we can ensure our major foreign policy objectives on Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Middle East Peace Process and Russia can flourish.

Yet the moment you enter a debate on Europe you feel as if you are donning an anorak. In fact not an anorak – something far less cool – a cagoule. It’s a world where exorbitant language is the order of the day and any old myth will do. Ranged in opposition are the eurosceptics, red, white and blue in tooth and claw, obsessives to a man (and interestingly they are all men), all togged up for the occasion.

Let me be clear. Europe will not be a key determinant in the general election. By far the most important issue will be the economy and the very real danger that Tory cuts now would take us into a second recession or even slump.
But what we have seen so far this year is that on every occasion that the Tories have been subjected to even the slightest hint of scrutiny they fall apart. Sit them close to the fire and they melt. Frankly that’s what comes of too much molly-coddling in the nursery.

It’s certainly true on Europe.

I think we have learnt five things about them already.

• The Tories are still the same old euro-phobic dogma-driven obsessives that they always have been.
• Cameron is not in charge of his own destiny in relation to Europe but in hock to his back-benchers.
• Cameron has hand-picked for himself a set of extremely unsavoury allies in Europe.
• Cameron’s proposals on Europe are naïf, unworkable, undesirable and unachievable and
• The Tory position is already damaging the national British interest.
Let me deal with them in turn.

First, the Tories are still the same old euro-phobic dogma-driven obsessives that they always have been.

Cameron has spent a great deal of time trying, in the PR slang, to ‘detoxify the Tory brand’. Desperately seeking his ‘Clause Four moment’ he has gone out of his way to hug a hoodie, proclaim the Tories as the new progressives and declare the party a nastiness-free zone.

But there’s a problem – on Europe his party is now more extreme than it ever has been.

Just think about it – more extreme than Mrs Thatcher. More extreme than John Major. After all neither of them abandoned the centre ground or left the European People’s Party.

The truth is Cameron’s MPs, his MEPs and his candidates are still every bit as pavlovian about Europe as they ever were.

MPs like Philip Hollobone who says: ‘The EU is yesterday’s idea and leaving it would be beneficial to the UK.’

MPs like Douglas Carswell who says: ‘Europe hasn’t come our way. It’s time for out.’

Or that great bastion of rampant populism, Philip Davies MP who calls the EU, ‘A United States of Europe’ and whose website tells you to “click here for my full speech”, but then informs you that “Philip Davies does not necessarily endorse what you’re about to read”.

It’s difficult to know precisely how many Tory MPs and candidates want out of the EU, but a few have already owned up.

And you only have to listen to a few minutes of debate in Parliament to hear the tenor of their views.

Last week we saw a classic example. Douglas Carswell had tabled a private member’s bill that would have taken the UK out of the EU. Unfortunately for him there were two other bills before his and Tory MPs tried to talk them out so that his bill was never reached. He angrily accused his own colleague (and Tory whip) Brooks Newmark of ‘deliberately seeking to talk out items on the agenda that are of interest to millions of voters’. Another Tory, Christopher Chope, then piled in accusing Newmark of doing it so as to get himself promoted. I gather the ensuing discussion almost led to fisticuffs behind the speaker’s chair.

It’s good to see in these days of Tory airbrushing that the Tories do still care enough about some things to get themselves hot under the collar.
There’s now a Conservative Central Office clampdown on candidates so they are not allowed to declare their real politics on Europe, but according to a recent Telegraph poll, three quarters of Conservative Candidates want to renegotiate the UK’s relationship with the EU “as a matter of priority”. In other words, it’s more important to them than dealing with the worldwide economic crisis or tackling climate change.
As I say, obsessives.

Which takes me to my second point. Cameron is not in charge of his own destiny in relation to Europe but in hock to his back-benchers.

I suspect that Cameron doesn’t himself care much about Europe. But what he certainly did care about in 2006 was becoming leader of his party. That’s why, when he was languishing behind David Davis, he promised that he would take the Tory party out of the European People’s Party. It won him the vote of people like Roger Helmer MEP. It was not easy. He had to battle with his own MEPs. His own colleague Ken Clarke thought ‘What a pity to insist on finding some new, slightly head-banging European policy… to take up as his first act in the leadership.”‘.

But everything had to be sacrificed to that overarching Cameron ambition to get a few more votes in the bag, to secure his election as leader. This was no point of principle. It was a narrow calculation.

And that’s my worry. Cameron will surrender the national interest to keep his backbenchers happy.

He won’t have any choice. A Tory government, whatever the majority, would be in constant hock to its backbenches. Even if they had a majority of 60 – which looks very unlikely – there are at least 30 Tories who would scupper any vaguely sensible policy on Europe.

Day in day out Britain’s policy on Europe would be determined not in the Foreign Office, not in No 10, but by a cabal of backbenchers, many of whom actively want the UK to leave the EU.

Because Cameron may have changed the face of the Tory party, but he hasn’t changed its DNA.

This isn’t leadership, it’s salesmanship in fancy dress.

Incidentally, in his speech last week David Cameron owned up, indeed he boasted, that he is a salesman. I couldn’t help thinking about that great line of Woody Allen’s; ‘there is something worse than death: have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?’ Or for that matter Oscar Wilde’s line that ‘the salesman knows nothing of the value of what he is selling except that he is charging far too much for it’.

That’s why Cameron represents the change Britain can’t afford.

Third, Cameron has hand-picked for himself a set of extremely unsavoury allies in Europe.

Just look at them. After all you can learn a lot about someone by the company they choose to keep.

The Polish Law and Justice Party, or PiS, is the major partner in the ECR.
It’s not quite the motherhood and apple pie party that Conservative Central Office would have you believe.

The leading PiS MEP, and leader of the ECR grouping after he lost the Vice-Presidency of the Parliament to the Tory MEP Edward McMillan Scott, is Michael Kaminski. His political career has been interesting.

In 1999, he visited London to present a gorget embossed with an image of the Virgin Mary to former dictator General Pinochet.

In 2000 he used the word “pedał”, a derogatory Polish, usually translated as “fag” or “queer” to refer to gay rights campaigners. When asked by the reporter if such a term is offensive, he replied: “That’s how people speak, what should I say? They are fags’.

In 2001 he vigorously opposed the then Polish president’s apology for the murder of Jews in a 1941 massacre in the town of Jedwabne.

And in 2004 he was the Polish Andy Coulson as spin-doctor for Lech Kaczyński, who tried to ban gay pride marches in Warsaw. No wonder Robert Biedron, a board member of Poland’s Campaign Against Homophobia, said that Kaminski has “become the symbol of homophobia in Poland. As an MEP he consistently votes against resolutions that fight homophobia in Europe”.

Most importantly though, there is absolutely no doubt that Kaminski was a member of National Revival of Poland, a far-right neo-Nazi anti-semitic organisation.

Here, as so often with the modern Tory party, there has been a bit of airbrushing. At their Conference last year a Tory leaflet proudly proclaimed that Kaminski spent his teenage years fighting against Communist occupiers but rather conveniently left the information about the NOP out of his biography. And it can be little surprise that the day Kaminski took over the leadership of the ECR grouping, someone in a parliamentary office deleted this element from his Wikipedia entry.

Another party in Cameron’s grouping are the Latvian For Fatherland and Freedom Party represented by MEP Roberts Zile. The Party, known as the LNNK, have banned gay pride marches in Latvia. They are, however, more than up for marching at the annual Latvian Legion Day on 16 March in honour of Latvia’s Waffen SS veterans, a highly controversial march that has been condemned by the Simon Wiesenthal Organisation and was banned by Riga authorities, but continues. The Conservatives attempted to defend this situation, even under sustained attack from historians and other experts on the Holocaust. They still don’t seem to understand that any glorification or attempted reinterpretation of the Holocaust, no matter how minor, is hugely offensive and disgusting.

Likewise Cameron’s Lithuanian allies, Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania, are using the web to begin a witch hunt against more moderate politicians by attacking a local mayor for “supporting the homosexuals demonstration in Vilnius”.

Similarly, the Christian Union from the Netherlands, another ally, was aligned in the European elections with a party that refused to allow women to stand for election or become full members. They were found by a court in the Hague to have violated UN conventions.

Let’s be clear, this group of right-wing extremists with extremely dodgy pasts is no gathering of the Mothers’ Union. They don’t sit around making jam and singing Jerusalem. It’s about as progressive as the gentlemen’s clubs Boodle’s and Buck’s and Pratt’s and White’s all rolled into one. It’s about as forward-thinking as the Academie Francaise and as modern as a sherbert lemon. Its members include homophobic bigots and its associates have been accused of out and out anti-semitism.

Mind you, I’m not surprised Daniel Hannan MEP described Kaminski as the closest thing to a Tory outside the Carlton Club. After all William Hague campaigned to have Pinochet return to Chile, Tory MEP Roger Helmer thinks homophobia was created by a “militant gay rights lobby” and the Tory spokesman on Europe Mark Francois has consistently voted against every single piece of pro-gay legislation.

Most extraordinary of all is the ECR’s voting record in the European Parliament. In a vote on 10 February seven Tory MEPs including their leader Timothy Kirkhope, along with French Far Right Front National MEPs Bruno Gollnisch and Jean-Marie Le Pen voted against condemning the use of the Death Penalty, and refused to denounce the use of the death penalty for children, while ten Tory MEPs abstained on the same point alongside 17 other ECR members and the BNP’s Nick Griffin.

So what have we learnt about Cameron in all of this?

A. His party hasn’t changed at all.
B. He is so ambitious that he will promise anything to secure the leadership of his party.
C. He has a habit of making rash promises.
D. He will put party dogma before the national interest.
E. Either he is so obsessively euro-phobic himself or he is so in hock to his anti-european MPs and MEPs that he is prepared to swallow any amount of extremism amongst his allies.

Which brings me to my fourth main point.

Cameron’s proposals on Europe are naïf, unworkable and downright wrong.

You will recall that Cameron made a “cast iron guarantee” that if elected he would give a referendum on whatever came out of the treaty negotiations in Brussels. Then, throughout last year, as it became more and more likely that the Lisbon Treaty would come into force, he wriggled through the dance of the seven veils to produce a new policy, which consisted of a ‘referendum lock’, a ‘parliamentary sovereignty bill’ and the repatriation of several elements of labour and social law from Brussels to the UK.

First, the ‘referendum lock’. Cameron, in an act of abject apology for not appeasing UKIP/Tory backbench opinion, now says he will have a referendum on any future treaty that transfers powers from the UK to Brussels. It sounds fair enough, if you believe that parliament should be supplanted by plebiscites. But the difficulty is clear. Who decides which treaties count? Would Croatia’s accession treaty? Cameron says not, but what if others argued that it should? Presumably either the government or the courts would decide. If it’s the Government we’re back to relying on Cameron’s word and his personal judgment. If it’s the courts then we have simply handed power over to the lawyers and the judges rather than parliament. It’s clear that this referendum lock is as rusty as the original cast iron guarantee.

Cameron has also promised a so-called Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill. This is one of his least thought-out proposals yet. It is a fundamental principle of the British constitutional settlement that Parliament is already sovereign. Parliament can repeal or amend any law it chooses, including the 1972 European Communities Act, which would mean leaving the EU.

The Tories have since suggested this Sovereignty law would be ‘like Germany’, where so they maintain the constitutional court has the power to check whether EU activity is in conflict with Germany’s constitution. This is true, but as we’ve all come to expect, the Conservative have read two lines of Der Spiegel translation and not a lot else. If they’d researched better they’d know that it is Germany’s written constitution, as interpreted by the constitutional court – the Bundesverfassungsgericht – that sets clear limits to Parliamentary sovereignty. In Britain however, there is no written constitution, nor any higher power than parliament. As is recognised by constitutional experts, in Germany ultimate authority lies outside of the parliamentary system. It is quite the opposite in the UK.

So a UK sovereignty bill would have no greater authority than any other law passed by parliament. It could also be amended or repealed and could not stand as a higher authority over any EU treaty. Indeed the very fact that some Tories seem to think it could is in itself worrying. If a Cameron Government unilaterally pulled out of EU legislation or declared that it won’t apply in the UK, the EU would almost certainly issue infraction proceedings against the UK, people would take the Government to court and the UK courts would rightly strike the new bill down. It would be an act of aggression against our very membership of the Union.

In other words, either this sovereignty bill means something, in which case it is downright dangerous, or else it doesn’t, in which case it is no more than another round of Cameron shoddy salesmanship.

Cameron also argues that he wants to ‘repatriate’ social and employment legislation. Let’s be clear, this is not only undesirable it is completely unachievable. Social and employment legislation is no longer tied up in a single ‘social chapter’. It is now a silver thread running through many different areas of the Treaty. It is intrinsic to the single market. So a new set of UK opt-outs would require

• the agreement of at least 14 Member States that they want an intergovernmental convention
• the agreement of the European Parliament
• a successful Convention, if insisted on by the Parliament
• successful negotiations at all stages which don’t surrender other political capital – for instance on the UK rebate;
• unanimous agreement by the European Council; and
• ratification in every member state, including in those that would have to hold referendums.
That’s a pretty tall order – and if Cameron is honest he knows it’s out of the question.

But it’s also downright wrong. We want these social rights – guaranteed paid leave, maternity and paternity leave – because they improve working conditions of UK workers, because they ensure there is no social dumping across Europe and because they ensure a much more family-friendly Europe.
Cameron said he would guarantee Parliament control over two things. First, over passerelles – that is where a policy area moves from unanimity to Qualified Majority Voting in the European Council – and second on any decision to opt in to EU Justice and Home Affairs measures.

Again – sounds nice – but all that glistens is not gold with Cameron.

In fact the provision on passerelles is already in the Lisbon Treaty and we have already guaranteed that any opt-in will be subject to votes in Parliament.
Quite extraordinarily, the Tories have even flirted with the idea of trying to opt-out of the European arrest warrant scheme, which has been used to fast-track the extraditions of over 350 fugitives from British justice since it took effect in 2004. The average extradition time has fallen from 18 months to 50 days. These are not any old criminals, either. These are people wanted for terrorism, murder and child sex abuse. This really is a case of Tory euro-dogma driving out common sense.

So, as I say, Cameron’s proposals on Europe are naïf, unworkable, undesirable and unachievable.

But the biggest problem of all is that the Tory position is already damaging the national British interest.

For a start, leaving the main grouping in the European Parliament has meant that the Tories have already lost influence. It means British businesses, who would naturally look to a British MEP for advice or support, now have nobody they can turn to in the largest group.

I cannot tell you how eagerly my counterparts in other EU countries denounce the Tories – not just because of their views on Europe, but because, as one put it to me ‘they are just so rude‘.

It also means the Tories are constantly not just on the wrong side of the argument, but on the losing side when it comes to votes. An independent report shows that since leaving the EPP the Tories are now joint last with the UKIP group in the European Parliament for winning votes. In comparison Labour MEPs are on the winning side 80 per cent of the time.

Equally, the whole process of leaving the EPP has created an enormous degree of mistrust of the Tories. That’s why, despite having several Tories on the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, not a single one was awarded a portfolio on financial services.

This is when they are in Opposition. Just imagine what it would be like if they were in Government. Britain would become what the Conservative Party is in the European Parliament: the windbag of Europe, the sick and angry impotent old man of Europe violently shaking his fist in the corner as the rest of the EU gets on with the business. Equally at odds with Sarkozy and Merkel, Zapatero and Berlusconi, they would retreat into isolationism. Disappointed not to get what they want, sulking in the corner. Desperate to appease their backbenches, selling out on what really matters for the sake of UK PLC.
If British businesses – with interests in Europe and the single market – end up with a Tory Government, they will find it more difficult to gain influence within Europe, and Tory dogma will be blocking their progress in our largest market.

Cameron’s business slogan should be rephrased: “Open to business for anyone not European”.

No wonder British business is already worried about Dave’s drive for dogma.
Cameron, in one of his most ill-judged speeches, spoke last week of his ‘patriotic duty’. Let’s be clear, undermining British influence in Brussels and Strasbourg, alienating key allies in Berlin and Paris, pushing for an unachievable and unworkable renegotiation of British membership of the EU, all for a dogmatic obsession, is not patriotic.

There is of course an alternative. But it requires a concerted decision to engage with Europe, not alienate all our allies and trading partners.

It also requires a mind-set that doesn’t see Europe as the problem but as a possible means of dealing with the key challenges Britain faces.
Europe isn’t perfect. It needs significant reform. Its budget needs a radical overhaul so that it reflects the economy of the 21st century not the 19th. It needs to be far more disciplined in the way it deals with the emerging economies of India, China, Russia, Brazil and Mexico. It needs to tackle the issues that matter to voters – international crime, migration, jobs, climate change, poverty – rather than constantly worrying about its internal structures.
That’s what Labour is focused on.

That’s why we support the European Arrest Warrant – because it puts international criminals behind bars.

That’s why we support European action on climate change – because no country is a hermetically sealed unit.

That’s why we support coordinated action on the economy – because Europe has to compete on the basis of added value, not just in the bargain basement.
And that’s why we support Britain’s membership of the EU – not just because it has brought peace to a war-scarred continent, not just because it has extended human rights all the way from Lisbon to Vilnius, but because it is good for British trade and British clout.

In short I believe it’s our patriotic duty.

It’s also, of course, because internationalism is in the very DNA of Labour. The great international problems of economic instability, terrorism, crime, migration and war all require international solutions. Or in the words of John Donne: No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.

Sadly the DNA of the Tory party is still twisted around a core of virulent euro-scepticism.

Conclusion

The General Election is just weeks away.

Snapping at the heels of Tory candidates in marginal constituencies up and down the land are UKIP candidates – 423 of them.

And snapping at the heels of David Cameron are the Tory headbangers, MPs and candidates alike, dozens of whom want to leave the EU entirely and three quarters of whom want to renegotiate the UK’s membership with the EU.
The sadness is that Cameron hasn’t the guts or the sense to see that a grouping of right wing extremists is no place for the second largest party in Britain, no place for Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, no place for a Party aspiring to Government.

If we fail and the Tories win, the UK will languish within Europe. Cameron’s backbenchers will hijack European policy, Ashcroft will bank roll it elsewhere and Britain will be the sick man of Europe.

I’m not under any illusion that Europe, and the European Union, will be the centre piece of this election campaign. It probably won’t register on many people’s radars.

But David Cameron’s judgement on Europe, his alliances in Europe and his tendency to prefer Tory euro-dogma over pragmatic British common sense show us what he really is: a salesman out to make a quick buck.
I just hope people take a long hard look before they leap.

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

REPORT FROM THE EVENT:

Chris Bryant prefaced his speech with a fierce attack on William Hague and his links with Lord Ashcroft. Chris calculated that Hague and Ashcroft had spent 133 hours in the air together, yet claim they never discussed the issue of his tax status. Chris accused Ashcroft of buying influence and exploiting his links with the Shadow Foreign Secretary to further his business interests, and accused Hague of allowing the Tories to sell Britain’s interests down the river.

After Chris’s spirited and detailed attack on the Conservative’s European policy he took questions from the audience.

Peter Luff, the Chair of the European Movement, welcomed Chris’s attack on the Tories’ Europhobia, but said it was shameful that after 13 years of Labour government Britain is a more Eurosceptic country than it was before. Chris responded by accepting that initial Labour attempts at ‘triangulation’ – always looking for a third way between pro- and anti- European stances – was the wrong approach, and that David Miliband has heralded a new, unashamedly pro-European approach in arguing for the Lisbon Treaty. He also said that for continuity’s sake he was more than happy to continue as Europe minister for another six years! Chris also pointed out that it is an uphill battle to make the argument for Europe – the media simply aren’t interested in covering speeches and interventions on the topic. He also criticised parliamentary scrutiny of European legislation, calling it ‘atrocious’.

Chris concluded by saying our problem has been that the debate on Europe over the past few years has been dominated by treaties and process. Instead, we need to move the issue on to the real benefits that the EU brings – the anti-piracy naval force in the Gulf of Aden, or enforced standards for mobile telephony. The soundbite for the doorstep is that you can’t trust Cameron to deliver for Britain when he’s cynically lined up with extremists to appease his backbenchers.

 

Photo: Chris Bryant 2010