The really, really important thing to remember about the European Union is that it does not matter. Europe moves no votes and it inspires no marches: like the canonicity of the Star Wars prequels, it invites strong opinions from the already-convinced, and bores everyone else. Even people who vote for UKIP don’t really care about Europe: they’re disgruntled and disconcerted by the way things are, and it’s simply the closest thing to writing ‘It’s all gone to pot!’ on the ballot paper yet devised.
Before David Cameron pledged a referendum – in a distant time, on a subject yet to be decided, in which he will take a stance that will become clear later – the Conservatives hadn’t won a parliamentary majority since 1992, his government was deeply unpopular, the economy was stagnant, and the worst of the cuts had yet to come. Today, as the prime minister enjoys his first good week since the budget, that is all still the case.
If the Tories really do fight the next election with a referendum on Europe at its heart, that will be good news for Labour: because it will either mean that the Labour leadership has successfully neutered its current weaknesses on the economy, welfare, immigration and leadership, or that the Conservatives have simply decided not to talk about them.
Since the budget and its fallout broke the back of his government, Cameron has been reverting back from the role of prime minister to that of leader of the opposition. The problem for Labour is that he was pretty good at leading the opposition. The problem for Cameron is that he’s judged as a prime minister now: so he’ll enjoy the brief afterglow of the speech, but as people to continue to feel the pinch, his – and the Conservatives’ – numbers will fall back down to earth. The basic underpinnings of the Conservative crisis – that in most of the country, most of the people really don’t like them very much – hasn’t changed.
But what we’ve been reminded this week is that the underpinnings of Labour’s crisis are still there, too. Cameron still leads as the most popular choice to be prime minister in most polls. Significant numbers of Labour voters don’t want a Labour majority government. It’s become a commonplace to say that the Conservatives ‘didn’t win’ the 2010 election. It’s perhaps been forgotten that Labour definitely lost it.
The balance of probability is still on Labour’s side: the next election is Labour’s to lose. But too much of Labour’s offer is an objection, not a counter-argument: it’s not enough to attack the coalition and hope to ride a tide of anti-incumbency outrage to victory. It’s easy for cynics to say that Labour had ‘no policies’ in 1997; but a quick glance at the 1997 manifesto – and indeed the entire campaign – disproves that.
What Labour had were ‘broken windows’ policies: policies that spoke to a system of values that spoke to one nation. What Labour has now is a series of values that speak of being ‘one nation’, but aren’t yet backed up with a policy offer. Now is the time for Labour to flesh out what opposition to the universal credit means, to really get to grips with the urgent questions that the Conservatives have neglected.
In recent days, the comparisons between Cameron and Harold Wilson, his predecessor-but-five, have become harder and harder to resist. Cameron, like Wilson, set himself up as new man for affluent times, and came unstuck in crisis. Cameron, like Wilson, preferred a fix to a decisive solution.
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Stephen Bush writes a weekly column for Progress, the Tuesday review, and tweets @stephenkb
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I found it hard to see the point of this piece. It didn’t bite on the hard stuff. I was around during the Wilson referendum and recall the combination of keeping the party intact ( not unimportant) and the need to legitimise the recent entry into the EU. Only one of these applies now. To me the passage of years of membership is to link EU membership with the achievement of the broader labour economic and social objectives, not to separate them. Remember Tom Nairn’s “left against Europe”. It’s still worth reading. There’s far more social democracy in the EU than nationalist little englanders will ever achieve.
Simple territory to buried Bad News
I cannot but agreed and disagree with your view that Europe moves no votes. Yes, European
Union matter, the numbers of people moving to the right on this issue are increasing. Again the factor responsible for this movement is multidimensional, as you said, the way things are, people are disillusion on how with the government, not only Conservative and Collation government, also with Labour.
Those are the right who already made up their mind on Europe have things to use in the song, blaming everything on Europe, the lacks of understanding of the benefits of being in European Union. They want referendum on what they don’t understand with believes voting UK out of EU all their problems are solved.
It is a simple territory to buried bad news on the Economy, David Cameron play the game well, those write the script for him are very clever. He will give British people a referendum if he wins next election. Why not now? That is where the opposition has to work on.
Given the importance Stephen attaches to opinion polls and election results, as distinct from political strategy and effective government, it is surprising that he has such a low opinion of Harold Wilson. After all, Wilson won four of the five elections he fought as leader of the Labour Party – in 1964, 1966, February 1974 and October 1974 – though to be sure, only in 1966 did Labour secure a substantial majority of MPs. Cameron has not yet won a single general election and the way things are going, he looks likely to be a one-term prime minister.
It may be, however, that his EU referendum tactic is inspired by the precedent set by Wilson in 1975. There is not much doubt that had he won the 1970 election, Wilson would have accepted the same terms for joining the “Common Market” as Edward Heath negotiated. But in opposition the internal politics of managing the Labour Party forced the leadership to oppose entry. Labour voted against the terms negotiated in 1971 and were joined by 39 Conservatives. The government only won the vote with the support of 69 Labour MPs led by Roy Jenkins, who resigned as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, while 20 others abstained. Under pressure from the Labour left, Wilson promised that a future Labour government would renegotiate the terms of entry and then put them to a referendum. This was done in 1975. The concessions sought by the British government and agreed by the other European leaders were largely cosmetic, but these “renegotiated” terms were approved by the Labour Cabinet by 16 votes to 7. However, a majority of the parliamentary party voted against and a special Labour conference voted 2 to 1 against. In the referendum campaign that followed, the Labour government allied with the Conservatives and Liberals to campaign for a yes-vote, while the bulk of the Labour movement campaigned against, but it was the yes-campaign that won by a decisive 2-to-1 margin.
Faced with similarly intractable problems of party management, Cameron has adopted a similar response and doubtless hopes to achieve a similar result. There are, of course, important differences between then and now. The proposed timescale is longer, the EU is itself in crisis and Britain has few allies to help a Conservative Prime Minister head off internal eurosceptic critics. But if he does win a second term, Cameron, like Wilson before him, will be able to count on the support of big business and the British establishment for staying in the EU on “renegotiated” terms, while all the polling evidence suggests that when voters are obliged to make up their minds, as opposed to giving vent to discontent, they will opt for the the devil they know rather than risking a leap into the unknown.