When, in January of this year, Prime Minister David Cameron spoke to the British people on the issue of the country’s membership of the European Union, he promised that following the next parliamentary general elections due in mid-2015, the electorate would have an opportunity to decide on that issue, in what he called an “in or out” referendum, by the end of 2017.
At that time much commentary suggested that the Prime Minister had pulled off a political coup in taking off the increasing pressure on himself and his government, emanating largely from within his own party, as well as disconnecting it from the issues that would be arising in the general elections.
No doubt surprising to him, however, the response from elements within his own party has turned surprisingly hostile, and what seems to be a new campaign for a more or less immediate referendum has arisen from within the party itself. And to the Prime Minister’s surprise, it has been joined by a former Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher’s government, Nigel Lawson, who has always held a certain eminence among Conservatives.
Lawson’s insistence that Britain should take steps to leave the EU as presently constituted, has clearly taken Prime Minister Cameron by surprise, given the fact that by no means can he be defined as being among the ‘fringe’ (and therefore politically inconsequential) members of the party. And his announcement seems to have induced others of prominence to announce their support for an early referendum. Further, it would appear that the call for a referendum has been influenced by the relatively strong showing of the anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party, itself something of a fringe of the Conservatives, in recent local government elections.
The implication, for Cameron, of the call for an immediate referendum obviously is that it would affect his strategizing for a general election in 2015; and that if an anti-EU referendum were successful, it would almost certainly mean that Cameron would have to demit the leadership of his party.
But a further implication is, no doubt, also clear to both Cameron himself and the party. For the relatively Conservative-leaning, but influential newspaper, the Financial Times, has made it clear by suggesting that Cameron is already losing his grip on the party. As it recently put it, “A strain of collective madness has descended over the Conservative party in recent days, with backbenchers vying to trample on David Cameron’s European policy.” Yet an alternative fact will also be influencing the Conservative leader, which is that the polls show that there is more public support at this time for him personally, than there is for his party.
Sentiment on membership of the European Community-cum-Union, has intensified after the relative calm of Labour Prime Minister’s Harold Wilson’s referendum, and after it appeared that Margaret Thatcher had successfully negotiated acceptable terms for Britain staying in the European Common Market’s successor regime, the European Single Market and Economy. But although all indications are that the United Kingdom is an economic beneficiary of the system, there remains a feeling that the increasing complexity of the system, particularly since the establishment of the Eurozone (from which Britain exempted itself), is not in the interests of the country, and that a special arrangement for a limited adhesion to the EU (a position rejected by General de Gaulle when it was first mooted in the early 1960s) would be preferable.
In this regard, reference is often made in British circles to the position of Norway, whose successive governments, have always lost referenda and have been allowed to settle for a limited arrangement with the Single Market and Economy. But European leadership sentiment, grappling with the severe economic difficulties of the present, appears at this time to feel no partiality for any such arrangement for Britain. And they note that generally, Norwegian governments have been generally partial to the EU system, even though they have not been successful, in referenda, in persuading their electorates to go any further.
The position of governments like those of Germany and France have their priorities elsewhere at present. First they are intent on taking all measures to come to terms with the Eurozone economic recession, which they see not as a regional phenomenon peculiar to the EU, but as an international phenomenon affecting the Western economic world. And in that regard, they would appear to see the British government’s reaction to populist anti-EU sentiment as political weakness. Cameron has always been perceived as a supporter of the EU, and no doubt to the Europeans now, they seem him as trapped in an opportunistic strategy which, at least for the moment, has virtually collapsed.
Secondly, the leading countries of the EU also appear to perceive the current British situation and what is in effect the British government’s dithering response, as potentially harmful to Europe’s longer term, wider interests. For they see the rise of new powers, in particular China, as indicating a coming rearrangement of global economic relations, in response to the now widely acknowledged implications of globalization.
The Europeans see the need for a consolidated Europe as now, more than ever, necessary, and explain their agreement to negotiate a United States-European Union Economic Partnership with the United States, as a strategic medium-term step towards maintaining the pre-eminence of the North Atlantic economic zone in the now shifting global economic arrangements.
The leading European states therefore see the current British manoeurvres over whether or not to stay in the EU as a domestic political play, periodically occurring in the past, but today, out of step with arrangements towards an inevitable reshaping of global relations. They see it as hindering necessary global political and economic planning for their continent. They will therefore, at this time, hardly be sympathetic to Cameron’s predicament.
