You are in:
- Archives » 2008 » July 2008
Coming Off The Fence
Britain's most Europhile newspaper, the Financial Times, urges Conservative leader David Cameron to end his posturing and come up with some policy.
The FT says Cameron needs to make tough decisions on issues such as the 10p tax rate and the expansion of Heathrow airport. The newspaper also calls for a new line on the Conservatives fraught relationship with the European Union.
"Mr Cameron has rightly said he wants to tackle global challenges, such as climate change and migration," it says, "To succeed, he must work closely with the European Union. This will be difficult if he is also pandering to the eurosceptic right of his party by pledging to pull out of the EU’s main centre-right grouping."
The "eurosceptic right" of his party would be better described as the mainstream, or majority of his party. It's certainly the bulk of the people Cameron's party claims to hope to represent.
Conservative Europhiles make up a small fringe of the parliamentary party and an even smaller portion of grassroots Conservative membership and activists. Only in the European Parliament do Europhile Tories command a large percentage of representatives.
As for climate change, why does Cameron need to deal with this from within the clutches of the Euro-federalist EPP-ED? Surely if the EU and its parliament care as much about the environment as they claim to, MEPs will be able to work across party lines? EU MEPs as diverse as German Christian Democrats and French Socialists already vote shoulder-to-shoulder on "constitutional" EU issues - why can't they be expected to do so on green issues too? As for migration (read: immigration), withdrawal from the federalist group might actually empower Tories.
The FT here is merely trying to cosy up to the Brussels-friendly business elite it has identified as its target audience. Its conclusions might be wrong, but it is correct in principle to demand that David Cameron show his hand politically.
Cameron's Conservatives are enjoying the death throes of Gordon Brown's administration a little too much - as Tony Blair demonstrated nearly 15 years ago when John Major's government was going through a similar struggle, one has to begin to show a real alternative, otherwise voters will continue in their belief that one party is as bad as the other. Real policy might be a pledge to scrap the government's intrusive ID card schemes, its wasteful NHS databases, its creepy obsession with surveillance. Any constitutional changes initiated by the present government should be overturned, and a serious commitment to tackling violent crime outlined, even if this means tackling vested interests in the legal and policing professions. About the only thing European Cameron should be singing the praises of is the Human Rights Convention, with a pledge to keep the Human Rights Act in place (despite cries to the contrary from the press) but with a commitment to adjust the system in favour of the majority rather than the current system, which is too easily exploited by terrorists and their supporters.
