It took exactly 50 words for the
Queen to set Britain on course for a moment in history that will define it for
the forseeable future.
This is what she said: "My
government will renegotiate the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European
Union and pursue reform of the European Union for the benefit of all member
states. Alongside this, early legislation will be introduced to provide for an
in-out referendum on membership of the European Union before the end of
2017."
It took another 22 words for her
to fudge the future of the United Kingdom: "My government will also bring
forward legislation to secure a strong and lasting constitutional settlement,
devolving wide-ranging powers to Scotland and Wales." Enough fudge there,
methinks, to feed a palaceful of courtiers for several years.
So let's focus on the first
union, the European one. In or out? A simple enough question, perhaps, but one
that will dominate all political life until it is over and done with. For David Cameron, the stakes could
hardly be higher: his place in history, the future of his party, and the future
of the country. No pressure, then.
When he unveiled his EU strategy
in what became known as his Bloomberg speech in January 2013, I suggested that
of the five most likely scenarios it was possible to imagine, all but one ended
with his resignation. Scenario 4 went like this: "Cameron wins the
election with an overall majority in the Commons, persuades the EU to negotiate
a few more opt-outs for the UK, but not enough to satisfy his back-benchers. He
says he'll urge voters to back the deal anyway, but more than 100 of his MPs
refuse to follow him. The party splits and he resigns."
(Scenario 5 was: "As above,
but the newly-negotiated deal is so good that it satisfies even Bill Cash. All
Tory MPs line up behind him to vote Yes in the referendum, and the deal is
overwhelmingly approved by voters. Cameron emerges triumphant and walks across
the surface of the River Thames in celebration.")
We now know that Mr Cameron
intends to resign anyway, whatever the outcome of the vote, before the next
election. So the EU referendum, whether it's next year or the year after, is
likely to be his last significant political act.
The sighs of exasperation at
Britain's continuing ambivalence over its EU membership can be heard all the
way from Lisbon in the west to Bucharest in the east. It's not as if our EU
partners don't have other things to worry about, above all the still unresolved
matter of Greece's slow slide towards bankruptcy.
So Mr Cameron will struggle to
engage other leaders' full attention. They know he's committed to the
referendum, and they know he'll need something to show for his pledge to
deliver real reforms, especially on welfare benefits for citizens from other EU
states. They want Britain to remain in the EU -- although frankly I wonder why,
sometimes -- but more than anything, they want the "Britain problem"
to go away.
A recent article in the New York Times referred to Britain's "reduced involvement — and seeming loss of
stature — on the global stage". If the UK leaves the EU, it will look to
the rest of the world as if we have finally turned our back on several
centuries of global activism, both in our empire-building days and since.
If that is what a majority of
British voters want, so be it. I'm sure we'd survive somehow. The people of
Norway, for example, do not necessarily lead impoverished lives just because
they have remained outside the EU and have no pretensions to be a global power.
(Nor, it has to be said, do they rely as we do on being the preferred base of
operations for a wide variety of multi-national corporations and a magnet for
foreign investors.)
Mr Cameron insists that he wants
the UK to stay in the EU. In which case, he would do well to read and memorise
the advice offered by Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform. First,
do not over-bid. Second, start making the case for membership, even at the cost
of upsetting some of your own party's anti-EU headbangers. Third, start taking
some initiatives in the EU rather than always sitting on the sidelines. Fourth,
build alliances. And fifth, try to be a bit more European in the way you go
about things: "British politicians tend to forget that their rambunctious
style of domestic politics – involving confrontation, bluntness and a
win-or-lose psychology – goes down badly in Brussels."
All of which is very much to the
point. See, for example, the warning from the French foreign minister Laurent
Fabius: “I find this process quite dangerous … The British population has got
used to being repeatedly told: ‘Europe is a bad thing’, and the day they are
asked to decide, the risk is that they will say: Well, you told us: ‘Europe is
a bad thing’.”
David Cameron should also bear in
mind Murphy's Law -- "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" --
even if it is not yet enshrined in an EU treaty. If Greece crashes messily out
of the eurozone, if a Commons majority of 12 gets whittled away to single
figures, if George Osborne's new dose of welfare cuts goes down badly -- well,
all bets are off.
Referendums have a nasty habit of
becoming at least in part a judgement on a government's popularity. I can't
help wondering what the chances are of Mr Cameron's lot still being flavour of
the month by referendum time.
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