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Breaking Up Is So Very Hard To Do...
Pity poor old David Cameron. During his campaign for Tory party leadership, he made one solid pledge: To pull Britain's Conservatives out of the clutches of the European Parliament's ultra-federalist EPP grouping.
A sensible policy, you would think. After all, the EPP-ED grouping fiercely supports the European Constitution, a document that Conservatives swore to defeat. It is committed to having the EU speak with one external voice in foreign affairs. It has proposed an EU-wide tax, an EU police force and the development of EU citizenship. It has also supported an energy tax, joint EU water policy, and common immigration policies for the union. It also demands an erosion of national vetos to streamline decision making in the EU.
What's there to like, at least for a British Conservative worthy of the name? Surely Cameron was speaking for the vast majority of his party's members when he agreed to remove the vehemently anti-federalist Tories from this coalition.
Since then, though, he's had nothing but trouble. More than half the party's 27 MEPs don't want to go, claiming that leaving the genteel salons of the European centre-right will mean they'll be forced to sit with crackpots and extremists on the extreme right.
Powerful European figures have mauled his policy. Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that the Conservatives face a "loss of influence in Europe" if they break links with the EPP - a warning echoed by Rebel MEPs, who want to remain in the grouping. France's presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy is said to have claimed that Cameron exhibited "weakness" by caving in to Eurosceptics within his party - Er, perhaps that would be all of them?
Added to this comes the news that EPP members are determined to make any split as difficult as possible. Cameron sent Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague over to Brussels to negotiate an amiable split with the federalist grouping - and to enforce some sort of order upon the Tory MEPs, who have been warned that they face deselection if they refuse to follow Cameron's line.
However, EPP figures are warning that the divorce could be bloody. Not only will the Tory MEPs lose the committee posts and priveleges that come with EPP meetings, they will also lose the "informal contacts" with senior centre-right figures if they split from the group.
Hague's other task was so sound out new partners for a centrist, pro-Market, Atlanticist party. He hoped to draw the attention of liberal pro-West parties from the ten new member states, though forthcoming elections at home have delayed any pledges from his most promising partners in the Czech government. Other potential partners - such as Poland's ruling group - are beginning to look too weird to join the Tories as a credible alternative to the EPP. Nevertheless, the Guardian claims that the Tories have been forced to open negotiations with "sexist and homophobic parties" to create the necessary five-nation block that will open access to the European Parliament's privilege drawer.
One senior figure told the Telegraph that Cameron had three options: To shut up and stick with the EPP, to form a new group with what he described as "extremists" or to instruct the Tories to sit on their own, outside any respectable (or unrespectable) grouping - like Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right National Front.
Another option, of course, would be to lure MEPs from the EPP and Liberal grouping, though as MEPs actions in recent years have amply demonstrated, they're often in it for the perks and would be loath to surrender a prime position at the trough for a
An amusing sideshow was provided by the United Kingdom Independence Party leader Nigel Farage. Farage, whose party wants to pull Britain out of the EU, warned that if the Tories ever come to power in Britain, they "would probably serve the national interest better by being part of the family of European governments rather than being on the fringes. If we are going to stay in the EU it would be better to have a government that was in negotiations with other governments in Europe rather than one that has distinctly frosty relations."
Doesn't he sound housetrained? EURSOC hopes Farage hasn't gone native over there in Brussels.
Farage's party made mincemeat of the Tories in the last EU parliament elections. While its success wasn't so spectacular in the British general election that followed in May 2005, the EU Referendum Blog has demonstrated that the UKIP ate into enough Tory votes to swing the election to Labour. In other words, had the Tories managed the UKIP threat, they might have won the election, or, at worse, left Tony Blair with an unworkable majority.
So, perhaps his comments can be dismissed. After all, a Tory leader who fails to follow through on his only pledge on Europe will be easy prey for the UKIP, which shares no such ambivalence on EU issues.
Moreover, if Cameron wins the next election in Britain, he will be the leader of Europe's second biggest economy and most dynamic large economy (unless something goes horribly wrong in Britain and horribly right in France). It's NATO's biggest European player, one of the EU's major paymasters and home to the continent's most important financial centre.
One has to ask what the EPP's leaders have to gain by freezing out the British.
Will the Conservativesreally be frozen out by the likes of Merkel and Sarkozy? They need a British PM at least as much as he needs them.
Cameron is working hard to drag his party to the centre - too hard, some say. He's replacing Thatcher's legacy with one-nation consensus building.
Shortly, in all but EU policy, the Conservatives will look like an utterly respectable Christian Democrat party from continental Europe. On most issues, the Tories will be able to vote alongside the EPP's mainstream. On the crucial issues of European integration, it will vote against them - though this doesn't really matter, as the EPP always teams up with the opposition Socialists on federal issues to form a large majority bloc.
So why the upset? The EPP will still be the biggest party even if the Tories leave. One has to look at the EPP's federalist charter for an answer. This is a party dedicated to increasing the power of the EU state via further empowering the Commission and the EU Parliament. Pulling all Europe's centre-right parties into one grouping, just as parties of the left join the European Socialists, creates two large Europe-wide parties - a step towards that hallowed day when we all vote on Europe-wide elections.
By breaking away, the Tories are shattering this illusion. They're also alerting other EU nations to the possibility that their elected MEPs might belong to a federalist group dedicated to robbing their home parliament of power. Creating a new party - or simply sitting it out on the sidelines - demonstrates that not every party needs to betray its principles for the sake of cost European unity. You could call it a public service.
