The new new Europe
Anyone else get the impression that it’s take out the trash day?
On a day when Labour fundraiser Lord Levy has been arrested and Israel seems to have declared war on Lebanon, David Cameron looks to be quietly dropping the one policy pledge he’s actually made.
When he proposed moving the Conservatives out of the European People’s Party (EPP) grouping in the European Parliament because of its federalist leanings, most observers probably expected it to be a pretty quick break. In the event, though, there’s been a revolt among his MEPs, stern warnings from everyone from John McCain to Nicholas Sarkozy, and an almost complete failure to find international support for a centre-right group with more nationalist views.
This last point is probably the key one: to form a new group, and thus have any hope of influence in the Parliament, the party would need to find allies from at least four other member states. So far he’s found one, the Czech Republic’s ruling Civic Democrats – and, because the Czech government is currently a coalition including more pro-European elements who need to be kept sweet, Prime-Minister-to-be Mirek Topolanek has asked that the formation of the new Eurosceptic group be postponed.
Until 2009, actually.
Now the Labour party have already jumped on this as evidence of how marginalized Dave has made himself in Europe. And it seems very likely that this is nothing but an incredibly cynical political maneuver to help Cameron escape from a trainwreck of a policy without appearing to backtrack.
…but once you accept that, it’s actually a rather good policy. No one can tell Cameron he’s u-turned, because he can just point to the calendar. But he no longer risks immediately alienating key centre-right allies such as Merkel, and suddenly has a three-year breathing space in which to drum up support for its new group and hopefully prevent it from being such an embarrassing damp squib.
Best of all, by 2009, all bets are off. Jacques Chirac will be long gone, globalization will still be here, and it seems likely that Europe will be
a) economically more liberal than the protectionist mess it is right now; and
b) not one inch closer to being a federal superstate
Thus, if he does have to backtrack, Cameron can say, “There’s no need to pull out of the EPP, since we’re winning all the arguments about what the centre-right should look like anyway.”
He faces a few embarrassing headlines about this today and tomorrow, but they’ll almost certainly go unnoticed thanks to Lord Levy, Ehud Olmert and the NatWest Three. And in the long term, either he leads a new group, or he claims to be leading the old one. Win-win.
Hate to say it, but he might just go far, that boy.
I reckon you are right – this has got Cameron out of a hole.
He had to make the EPP withdrawal pledge to get anti-Euro support in the Tory leadership election. But he is intelligent enough to know that pledging to pull out of the EPP but to stay in the EU gives the worst of both worlds – continued EU membership but with no influence. Plus, as you say, things are now moving the Tory way in Europe.
I don’t think Cameron ever intended to pull out of the EPP. He he took a gamble – promising to do it but betting that events would move on so that he didn’t have to.
Steve:
I don’t think Cameron ever intended to pull out of the EPP. He he took a gamble – promising to do it but betting that events would move on so that he didn’t have to.
I suspect you’re right, and think it’s something we’ve seen before in relation to Europe: did Blair really think he could win the constitution referendum, or was he gambling that the thing would collapse before it came to that?
…which is another point for the “Cameron is the new Blair” theory, really.
I certainly don’t doubt the idiocy of Cameron’s original promise or the opportunism of his discovery of new long grass into which to kick it. But what astounds me is the consistent ignorance of the workings of European politics, in the sense of the interplay of both the supranational level and the national levels of politics and political discussion, that has been displayed. Were they surprised by the reaction of politicians such as Merkel? Have they talked much to the really atlanticist Polish Christian Democrats in Civic Platform rather than the rather absurd PiS party? And if they have, have they then discovered why there is no point even trying to winkle the Civic Platform out the EPP (on the contrary Civic Platform, like many other conservative groupings within the EPP is desperate for them to stay, and to change the EPP from within)? So it is no surprise there is nothing happening now. But I agree that post 2009, all bets are off, but the analysis needs to take into account the quite severe shaking up that the taken-for-granted system of the PES, EPP, ELDR, plus a few small others, might take post 2009 given the number of MEPs elected in the new Member States, many of whom belong to parties which do not conform to the basic tripartite system of the PES, EPP, ELDR division (at least for the purposes of dividing up most posts in the European Parliament). But perhaps the biggest motivating factor for all this is not only the possibility of having enough members to be a group within the EP, but also the possibility of being big enough to be a ‘transnational political party’ with funding under the EU budget. This has already led to a splintering of the EU party system with new political parties challenging the PES, EPP, ELDR hegemony. Things may be very different after 2009.