The British elections having resulted in a fairly decisive victory for the Conservative Party, the country’s neighbours and partners in the European Union will now be bracing themselves for the referendum on the country’s membership, promised by Prime Minister David Cameron. The issue had seemed to be assuming the proportions of a decisive aspect of the recent elections until Cameron sought to ease the pressure exerted by it as a significant election issue.
As it turned out, the decision to hold the referendum allowed the Prime Minister to, at least temporarily, remove the issue as a major element of continuing disturbance within his own party, an obvious prerequisite for ensuring a united front against the Labour Party. And in consequence too, it relieved the pressure exerted within the ranks of Conservative Party supporters by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) itself, leaving Cameron to have more autonomy in dealing with the issue of Britain’s future relationship to Europe.
At another level, the Labour Party, having played a decisive part in defeating the previous campaign for secession by the Scottish National Party, has now found itself weakened in terms of trying to hold its traditional substantial proportion of seats in Scotland, and thereby maximize its parliamentary strength. And in that sense, however, it is likely that the issue of Scottish independence, which had seemed to disappear after the referendum, will again surface as a significant one, with both domestic and external implications, during the current parliamentary term.
Easily the most significant issue with respect to the country’s external relations, however, remains that of its membership in the European Union. For while Cameron has seemed to neutralize the issue as an electoral one, the fact is that he was able to draw the potential UKIP electoral support by conceding to its demands, and the result is going to be a certain amount of political and parliamentary preoccupation with both the timing and terms of the so-called in-or-out vote.
Britain’s European partners will hardly be pleased that that matter continues to remain high on the government’s agenda. They must feel that the odds are that Cameron is likely to be a hard, or apparently hard, negotiator on issues as they arise, giving the EU an image of continuing political and institutional instability. To its partners, Britain will be trying to ensure minimal negative feedback from potential decisions, at a time when the country will be trying to set a favourable stage for the promised in-out referendum.
A potential implication of this can well be a more circumspect degree of support by the Labour Party for the position that Cameron adopts in terms of the referendum. The Labour Party leadership may well feel that its generally pro-European stance has not been an electoral positive, though it is necessary to say that the party’s leadership seems to have adopted a stance of the less said about the issue the better. No doubt, in the coming months, the party will be seeking to come to a conclusion as to whether this positioning paid off in any way on such an important issue.
But the Conservatives will undoubtedly have to be considering that the significant continuing issue for the Scottish voters has remained that of the unity of Great Britain as a state in global relations, and therefore the integrity of British external relations decisions, as time goes on.
It will be recalled that the Labour Party took a decisive stance of full and favourable participation in the referendum on the issue of Scottish independence, led by the SNP. But the elections have shown that the Labour Party’s assumption that a commitment to British national unity would have been subsequently seen by the Scottish electorate, and certainly by the wider British electorate, as a political or future electoral positive, was a false one.
The Labour Party has always depended on a certain electoral strength in Scotland (and indeed in Wales) as a necessary balance to Conservative strength in England. But the virtually complete rout of the party’s parliamentary representation has demonstrated otherwise; and the party appears to have put itself in a position of no other option than seeking to reinforce its position towards continuing national unity as the SNP prepares itself for another referendum.
This present positioning of British politics, in relation to both the country’s continuing membership of the EU, and to the potential constitutional integrity of the UK itself, must therefore be giving pause not only to both the Conservative and Labour parties, but equally to their colleagues in the EU states. For to some extent, each significant issue in European decision-making is likely to be considered, in terms of a British position, from the perspective of its impact on British popular sentiment towards both issues, as they assume prominence on the British parliament’s decision-making agenda.
Whether, then, the virtual necessity of the government to portray a continuing stance of stability in its international decision-making, particularly vis-à-vis Europe, will induce Prime Minister Cameron to seek a certain compromise with the Labour Party on major issues for parliamentary determination, particularly those relating to the EU and the wider European sphere, is worth watching.
In that regard, the potential membership in the EU of the Ukraine, undoubtedly a significant aspect of European Union diplomacy, may find the British government weighing that issue from the immigration perspective that has dominated attitudes to the EU, and consequently the British political debate in recent times. The Prime Minister may well take time to weigh the significance of this issue, giving the impression of being forced to delay European decision-making in favour of sustaining peace in the British political sphere.
How many other issues of this kind may arise over the five year parliamentary period is left to be seen. And left to be seen too will be how they will affect the play of the UK-exit referendum, promised by Cameron for this parliamentary term.
