A treaty too far
One of the reasons why I like to write for The Cottage is that it is one of the rare local media where national, as well as local issues can be aired in a little depth. As a parliamentary candidate it can be hard to find this kind of opportunity - local papers (who are the most likely to provide coverage) tend to be more interested in local stories whilst the national press are more interested in copy from national figures rather than aspiring local candidates.
Another approach I have taken to communicating my views on national policy has been to get out and speak. I keep a record of the number of people I meet at speaking engagements and this currently stands at over 4,000 within Central Devon in the last eighteen months. I am out speaking a lot and I enjoy it. My hope with these meetings is to engage local people in what I call ‘an older and better’ style of politics where the emphasis is on debate and meeting face to face rather than on spin, sound bites and press releases. Where people can challenge my opinions and I can explore, and often learn from, alternative views. On these occasions people are invariably interested in a wide range of national issues including farming, education, health, the environment, our criminal justice system, foreign policy and one of the big issues of the moment, Europe. At the time of writing (late January) Europe is about to come to the fore again as parliament commences a number of weeks debating the ‘EU treaty’ which the Prime Minister signed in Lisbon before Christmas. With the EU being so topical many people have been asking me about my views on it. Well, here are three of them:-
1. In the beginning. When Ted Heath took our country into the Common Market in the early seventies most people believed they were entering just that, a common market for goods and services. There was always more to it than just trade of course. The fact that Europe had been the cradle of two world wars within the preceding sixty years brought an added poignancy to the quest to bind her closer together through free trade – this was, in a critical sense, a noble pursuit and as far as it went (or seemed to go) had I been 18 at the time of the 1970 election (I was 8) I would have put my cross next to Mr Heath’s party, comfortable with his vision for Europe. The problem is that it quickly became apparent that we didn’t get what we signed up to. As the years have rolled by the EU has become a substantially undemocratic and out of touch bureaucracy in which our ability to govern ourselves has diminished in an increasingly large number of areas. I frequently come across the effects of this as I travel around my constituency. Farmers struggling with the kind of directives and form filling that would make a seasoned lawyer wince, only two abattoirs remaining within the 700 square miles of Central Devon due to the burdens of Brussels having slaughtered the others, and businesses spending fortunes on compliance in areas where they should basically be left alone (aspects of the European Working Time Directive and Health and Safety directives are cases in point).
My concerns about the movement of the EU away from its original purpose saw me pretty sceptical by the time I arrived at university. As President of the Oxford Union, I organised a debate just before the 1984 European elections on the motion ‘This house believes that the future prosperity and security of Britain lies outside the European Community.’ My guest speakers included Ted Heath and German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt and the motion fell. Whilst, as a young man in his early twenties, I remember being in a certain awe of these statesmen I could still not buy the part of their argument that, to my mind, seemed to suggest that there was some kind of self evident geopolitical equation in which transferring powers to Brussels was the quid pro quo for a better and more secure future. I also struggled with the largely unspoken, but often implied, suggestion that if you had the audacity to disagree with this argument then you were some kind of narrow-minded ‘little Englander’. Far from it – I wanted as much of Europe as I could get; trade, culture, food, wine, languages and history. I wanted all the wonderful variety of Europe but I also cherished democracy and I wanted my parliament, answerable to the British people, to make our laws. That notion has never left me.
2. The Euro. We should not join. This for me is a largely economic argument. Giving up the pound would lead to us losing control of our interest rates and monetary policy. A ‘one size fits all’ interest rate policy does not work well in an economic area where the movement of labour is ‘sticky’ (and in many respects undesirable anyway) due to national boundaries and differences of language and culture. A sluggish response from labour markets to disparate levels of unemployment and growth across an economic region operating under common monetary conditions is something which we would be best to avoid.
The options for crisis management are likewise reduced. However you feel Mervyn King performed as Governor of the Bank of England in the run on Northern Rock and the accompanying evaporation of monetary liquidity within the banking system, we did at least have our own central bank to rely upon.
3. The treaty. The EU ‘treaty’ is basically the EU constitution (as rejected by the Dutch and French in 2005) in all but name. Don’t take my word for it just listen to Bertie Ahern, the Irish Taoiseach who said, “thankfully, they haven't changed the substance. Ninety per cent is still there.” Or how about Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the former French President and architect of the constitution who admitted that the differences between the constitution and the treaty are “few and far between…and more cosmetic than real.”
The treaty sees the creation of a European foreign minister (once again in all but name) complete with his or her own diplomatic corps. The EU will assume a legal personality allowing it to enter into treaties with other nations on our behalf and without reference to our own parliament. The treaty also dispenses with around 60 key vetoes that we currently enjoy in respect of EU legislation.
The government and the Lib Dems both promised, at the last election, to hold a referendum on the EU Constitution but now they argue that the treaty is not the same as the constitution so we are to be denied our say. This position is as dishonest as it is unacceptable. Whatever your view on the EU constitution (even if you love it) there is, in my view, no side-stepping the charge of a basic breach of trust with the electorate.
Some people feel so strongly about the EU that they challenge me as to why, if our parliament has (to paraphrase them), ‘handed the governance of this country to unelected bureaucrats’, there is any point in going into parliament at all. My answer to this is threefold; firstly, it is only from our parliament that we can mount any realistic attempt to fight for our democracy; secondly, there are, of course, many areas over which parliament does still have very significant control (as someone whose parents, due to poverty, had to leave school at 15 and 14 and whose own life was transformed by a free place at a grammar school, education is an area where I aim to make a real contribution) and thirdly; the best MPs work hard locally as well as nationally and it is at the local level that our voice is being most dramatically lost, a notion that those who don’t feel that this latest treaty really matters one way or another would do well to consider.
