Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party have found little respite from political pressures after his successful fight against the Scottish National Party’s threat to have Scotland leave the United Kingdom. True, that fight was essentially an all-party English fight in which the opposition British Labour Party played a significant part. And indeed Labour had a good political reason to assist Cameron, since the party presently maintains a substantial number of the Scottish seats to the British Parliament.
Cameron’s present difficulty, however, arises from a particularly English, rather than Scottish challenge, as the forces opposed to the country’s membership of the European Union (EU) seem intent on forcing an exit from that integration experiment.
As we had indicated in a recent editorial, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), essentially a fringe of the ruling Conservative Party, has wasted no time in maintaining the pressure on Cameron, a determination strengthened by defections from the Conservatives on the issue, and by a recent –bye-election success by the fringe party that has diminished Cameron’s parliamentary majority.
In return, Cameron has sought to hold his party’s popular support by threatening to leave the EU if Britain does not achieve a successful negotiation with the grouping. His challenge is based on what opponents of the Union claim to be excessive integration into Britain as a result of the requirement for free movement of people. And in effect, he has adopted the UKIP’s assertion that the number of people now entering the United Kingdom from that source is exerting pressure on the British social system.
West Indians of long memories will, perhaps, recall that similar pressures were exerted against the British government in the period of West Indian integration to the United Kingdom in the 1950’s into the 1960’s, during the rule of Britain by the Conservatives under Harold Macmillan, and that the alleged threat to the social integration of the country proved to be a fiction.
Cameron, however, seems to have decided that the EU can be a useful scapegoat at present. Concentrating on the alleged threat, he hopefully sees as a means of maintaining the integrity of his party in the face of a general election due in May of next year. For in addition, he is also cognizant of the fact that the Liberals with whom the Conservatives form a coalition government, seem to have lost strength as a potential fighting force in the elections.
Cameron would now appear to feel strengthened in his choice of an anti-EU strategy for holding his party together in the face of the coming general elections, by a new issue on which he is trying hard to capitalise. For he has been handed what he seems to consider a political weapon by a decision of the EU bureaucracy that Britain now owes substantial sums of money in respect of a retrospectively assessed surcharge of 2.1 billion euros due to the organization.
In turn, he has now demanded negotiations on the issue, no doubt on the basis that there will be a backing down by the EU, giving his Conservative party a political weapon vis-à-vis the rise of the UKIP. And no doubt, Cameron has in his mind a successful attack of this kind made by the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at the beginning of the 1980’s when she charged that unless there was a reassessment of British contributions, she would withhold British VAT payments to the EU.
It doesn’t seem however, that the EU will be inclined to play with Cameron on the issue. The EU bureaucracy, the European Commission, is insisting that the assessments made on Britain are purely the results of a technical exercise to which all members of the EU subscribe, and that Britain can be no exception. And now, as if to add fuel to the fire, reports from Germany are indicating that Chancellor Merkel has been indicating to Cameron that her country is (according to press reports) “prepared to consider a British exit from the European Union if there is a challenge to freedom of movement”.
There are indications however, that Cameron hopes his strategy, in the midst of his troubles with the EU as well as the challenges from UKIP, gains him some respite, in terms of the proximity of the May 2015 general elections. For hot on the heels of his successful Scottish referendum results, in which the Labour party claims a significant part, recent polls are indicating that the British peoples’ assessment of the opposition is not particularly high either.
Polling results last week from Scotland, in which the Labour party presently has the majority of the Scottish seats (40 of 59) in Parliament, have indicated that the party has only about 23% popular support in 90% of the seats which it presently holds. This is surprising given the Party’s strong showing in the referendum; and assessments of this result is suggesting that the performance of the present Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has not been impressing the British electorate.
Cameron’s Liberal allies also give little consolation to him as by-election results also show that the coalition is now weakening, rather than strengthening, the support of that party; and Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberals Nick Clegg, will hardly be happy that Cameron is apparently wanting to challenge the longstanding key platform of his party, that is, support for British integration into Europe.
So at home, Cameron may still have some respite, as what is being indicated is that the British people are really not satisfied with performances of any of the parties at the present time. On the European front, it is clear that Germany feels the need to ensure strong British support in the EU, though Mrs Merkel will also not want to alienate allies within the integration movement who support the present assessments of the EU bureaucracy. And there is a sense that Germany feels that the United Kingdom, at this time, is letting domestic pressures unduly influence the critical decisions that the Union needs to make, as countries seek to recover from the recent global recession.
Cameron’s desire, now, to use the back payments issue is clearly designed to assist in alleviating the pressures for an exit on the immigration issue that UKIP is pushing. Whether he can successfully emulate Margaret Thatcher’s successful 1980 anti-EU “I want my money back” by his new slogan, “ I refuse to pay”, is left to be seen. And whether, even if he is successful on this issue, it will be strong enough to appease his UKIP opponents on the immigration issue, is also up in the air.
Of course, his present consolation may well be that neither of his opposing political parties seem to be particularly impressing the British electorate at this time.