Labour is now exactly where a modern, progressive centre-left party should be on Europe: unequivocally in favour of Britain’s continued membership of the European Union, while building alliances for reform and guaranteeing an in-out referendum in the unlikely event of a future government proposing to cede more sovereignty.
In contrast, David Cameron has lashed himself to a non-credible commitment to a time-fixed referendum following a fantasy ‘renegotiation’ which will not happen. Cameron’s policy is nothing to do with the national interest and everything to do with appeasing his Europhobes and the United Kingdom Independence party in the hope that will see him through the next election. Sooner or later, to be successful, a Tory leader is going to have to face down their anti-Europeans. Cameron is too weak to do that.
Imagine if Ed had bowed to demands from some in the Labour party to mimic the Tories’ fantasy position. The next Labour government, instead of being able to focus on the public’s priorities, would have been immediately plunged into an unnecessary and damaging campaign over Europe that would have dominated the next parliament.
Europe obsesses a very small number of people a great deal, but for the overwhelming majority of voters and, crucially, those who will decide the outcome of the next election, it is low on their list of priorities. In Exeter, the type of seat we have to win to form a government, we have one of the highest and most up-to-date voter contact rates in the country and Europe is almost never mentioned. And as the euro crisis fades and the UK and other EU economies grow, Europe is likely to become less salient as the election approaches. The impact of events in Ukraine has also gone almost unremarked upon by British political commentators who see Europe solely through the narrow prism of domestic politics. The daily images of Ukrainians waving Ukrainian and EU flags and, ultimately, being prepared to die for a European future, may have been lost on most UK commentators, but I suspect they have not been on the British people. Vladimir Putin’s aggression and dangerous nationalism is serving as a vivid reminder of the fundamental importance of the EU and Nato to our collective security, freedom and prosperity. That is why Nigel Farage and Tory anti-Europeans have been so quiet about it. But the British people are not stupid and polls taken since the Ukraine crisis have shown growing support here for continued EU membership.
Labour’s policy has the important additional benefit: it appeals to business and overseas investors in Britain who have been spooked by the uncertainty caused by Cameron’s approach. It is a big, strategic policy on which Labour and most of business are on the same side and should help us garner much-needed business support between now and the election.
Recently, on party funding reform, now on Europe, Ed Miliband has chosen principle and national interest over short-term tactics and expediency. That is courage and leadership. It shows he is serious about winning and more than fit to be our next prime minister.
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Ben Bradshaw MP is a former minister in the Foreign Office. He tweets @BenPBradshaw
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Absolutely right. Critical to sell to business that we’re the only electable party who won’t be offering to decimate our domestic market at the next general election
It’s such a relief this is what he’s plumped for. This decision reduces the chance of Britain going isolationist, reduces the risk of a Labour government being blown off course by rows about the EU, and increases the chances of getting that government.
I too think Labour should put principle above tactics, but I’m not sure that’s what’s happened here. I think the right policy here is also the best tactics.
Had Miliband matched Cameron’s pledge to hold an In/Out referendum in the next Parliament come what may, Europe would have decreased in salience as an election issue. Yes, UKIP would still have had the chance of a field day at the Euro-elections this year. But after that, the position of any future government would be known, and it simply wouldn’t matter how anyone voted. We’d get an In/Out referendum anyway.
In those circumstances, pollsters wouldn’t bother doing polls about this issue in 2015, and journalists wouldn’t bother asking hard questions. All the action would be on other issues. If Europe had any electoral importance at all, it might get some votes for the LibDems, for having a distinctive position. True, some potential UKIP voters might feel okay about voting Labour. But I think a lot of those people are in northern seats Labour should win anyway; and if they’re in marginals, then it’s almost as good for them to vote UKIP as to vote Labour.
Crucially, Tory candidates and spokesmen would not be pressed on their divisions about Europe. Nor could Labour attack them on the issue, since the natural reply would be: “You agree with our policy”.
Now, in contrast, Labour can attack on this, and because there’s a clear dividing line, questions will be asked of both sides. That’s good for Labour, because the Tories are so hopelessly fratricidal on this. Squabbling among Tories, and between them and UKIP, is bound to be a feature of the election, and is likely to make them look as silly as it did in 1997 when Sir James Goldsmith was a candidate for the Referendum Party.
Nor are the Tories on safe ground even if they hold their own discipline. They now have one policy and one policy alone on Europe: a referendum. Cameron can’t spell out what new deal he wants, because he mightn’t achieve it. None of them can say which way they’d vote, because at least half of them would vote “Out” anyway (contrary to their own policy), and the others don’t know, daren’t think about it or don’t want to be hunted as Europhile witches.
So they’re reduced to being simply a new Referendum Party, that cannot and will not say what outcome it wants from its referendum. It’s weak, and likely to be exposed as incredible – as long as Europe is an issue.
Principle and tactics go hand in hand on this one.
The real news from Ed Miliband is that there will as good as certainly be nothing so much as a suggestion of the further transfer of powers to the EU if he is Prime Minister. Since Michael Foot, no major Party Leader has ever before said that, or anything remotely approaching it.
Consistently, all of two per cent of people place the EU the top of their list of priorities. Even only 20 per cent of UKIP supporters see a referendum on EU membership as important.
Cameron’s commitment is to hold one only after his imaginary renegotiation, itself following his inconceivable General Election victory.
He and Miliband are both saying no to one. It is just that one of them is doing so on the basis that there would be no further transfer of powers. Cameron is not saying that: a renegotiation could result in anything. But there is not going to be one, because he is not going to be in office.
Even for the European Elections, the Conservatives and UKIP remain statistically tied, 10 points behind Labour. Ten.
The main cause now is opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which perfectly embodies everything that the Eurofederalist project has always been about, and which gives incomparable explanation to the fact that, whereas the Left has opposed that project since the 1940s, next to no one on the British Right, including Margaret Thatcher, was anything less than wildly enthusiastic about it until the perceived need arose to oppose John Major on absolutely any available ground for his daring to be Prime Minister while not Margaret Thatcher.
To this day, someone like John Redwood, the intellectual guiding light who wanted Teresa Gorman and Tony Marlow in his Cabinet, could not tell you anything in particular about the EU to which he was opposed. He could have written the TTIP, just as the framers of the Treaty of Rome, of Thatcher’s Single European Act or of Major’s Maastricht Treaty, against which Redwood did not vote, could have done.
It offers the culmination, at least to date, of the entire dream. Attempts to claim that that dream was ever about anything else are the stuff of borderline, if borderline, insanity.
Which privatisation did the EU prevent? Which dock, factory, shipyard, steelworks or mine did it save? Well, there you are, then.
If we needed the EU for the employment law that, since we do not have it, the EU is obviously powerless to deliver, then there would be no point or purpose to the British Labour Movement.
Beyond fighting the TTIP every step of the way, Labour needs to commit itself, not to a referendum the result of which, as of all such, would be determined in the month leading up to it by the BBC, exactly as happened in 1975, but to primary legislation in and through the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
First, the restoration of the supremacy of United Kingdom over EU law, and its use to give effect, both to explicit Labour policy by repatriating industrial and regional policy (whereas the Conservatives are not committed to any specific repatriation), and to what is at least implicit Labour policy by repatriating agricultural policy and by reclaiming our historic fishing rights in accordance with international law: 200 miles, or to the median line.
Secondly, the requirement that, in order to have any effect in the United Kingdom, all EU law pass through both Houses of Parliament as if it had originated in one or other of them.
Thirdly, the requirement that British Ministers adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard.
Fourthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of any ruling of the European Court of Justice or of the European Court of Human Rights unless confirmed by a resolution of the House of Commons, the High Court of Parliament.
Fifthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs certified as politically acceptable by one or more seat-taking members of the House of Commons, with the provision that no MEP who was a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or of anything that the Speaker or the House deemed comparable, would be eligible to be so certified.
Thus, we should no longer be subject to the legislative will of Stalinists and Trotskyists, of neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, of members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura, of people who believed the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, or of Dutch ultra-Calvinists who would not have women candidates.
And sixthly, the giving of effect to the express will of the House of Commons, for which every Labour MP voted, that the British contribution to the EU Budget be reduced in real terms.