The EU Constitution: A
pointless exercise
Al-Qaeda can claim credit for
unseating the Spanish Government last March.
One consequence of that was the withdrawal of Spanish forces from
Iraq. A lesser, and lesser known,
consequence was the success of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in
the European election.
The coming to power of the Spanish
socialists revived the possibility of agreement on an EU Constitution, which
had been thwarted before Christmas by the previous government’s insistence on
sticking to the voting weights assigned by the Nice Treaty. The new flexibility in Madrid meant that the
Constitution was back on the agenda and that, with Blair refusing to
countenance a referendum on the Constitution, the EU elections in the UK were sure
to be dominated by the demand for a referendum, which had the support of 70-80%
of the electorate.
The Conservatives were licking
their lips at the prospect of the collapse of the Labour vote in the EU
elections, and possibly in the local elections in England and Wales to be held
the same day. Humiliation, and perhaps
early retirement, was beckoning for Blair.
However, faced with this imminent
disaster, Blair reversed gear, as he did over Ken Livingstone, and promised a
referendum if a Constitution were agreed.
The Conservative fox was shot and the UKIP, helped by the recent
acquisition of Robert Kilroy-Silk, was able to make membership of the EU an
issue and, by so doing, make a big hole in the Conservative vote.
The Conservatives got only 27% of
the vote when they expected over 40%.
Labour was reduced to a mere 23%, that is, only 1 in 10 of the
electorate, but think of what that figure might have been if Blair had not
promised a referendum. The UKIP came
third with 17%, marginally ahead of the Liberal Democrats. Although around 45% of their votes came from
people who voted Conservative in 2001, a surprisingly high percentage came from
Labour (20%) and the Liberal Democrats (11%).
Much has been written since about
this dramatic rise in the UKIP vote and its significance for British
politics. It has little or none. Commentators seem to have forgotten that in
the 1999 EU elections UKIP got around 7% of the vote without a well known face
at its head, but in the 2001 General Election its vote faded away to less than
1%. Something similar will happen at
the next General Election. The
Conservatives are not going to win it, but they have little or nothing to worry
about from UKIP.
The EU elections provide voters
with an ideal opportunity to kick the Government. And it’s a free kick, in the sense that it doesn’t cost voters
anything since it doesn’t matter who gets elected. The European Parliament has little or no impact on the lives of
the people of the EU. So voters can
indulge themselves in EU elections, without fear of the consequences. Not only that, since the voting system is
proportional, indulgence can have an effect by getting people elected. The end result should not be taken as a
guide to voting at the next General Election, which is about the serious
business of choosing a party to govern the UK, and where the first past the
post system means that voting UKIP instead of Conservative might get a Labour
or Liberal Democrat MP elected.
The difference between the Labour
and Conservative parties on the EU is almost non-existent (as it is on most
other matters), but they pretend that there is a great gulf between them (as
they do on other matters). Labour
pretends that the Conservatives want Britain to leave the EU, and the
Conservatives pretend that Labour is in favour of a European Superstate. In reality, both want the EU to remain
approximately as it is, that is, little more than a free trade area.
Both are resolutely opposed to
political union, to the “ever closer union” envisaged in the Treaty of
Rome. Their common enthusiasm for EU
enlargement was motivated by a desire to put a brake on political union, not by
a spirit of generosity towards the new members from Eastern Europe, who were
forced to accept a very poor deal.
Of course, Blair came to power
seven years ago, armed with the soundbite that Britain should be at the heart
of Europe. But he has consistently
resisted any extension of the powers of the EU, most recently in negotiating
the Constitution. His flirtation with
joining the Euro zone seems to have been an aberration, which he has now put
behind him. It never made sense that
someone who was determined to resist the EU gaining powers over relatively
trivial matters was considering granting one of its institutions, the European
Central Bank, the fundamental power of setting interest rates for Britain.
Theoretically, the Conservative
stance is now to seek to return some existing EU powers to the nation
states. Scratching around for examples
of such powers, all they have managed to come up with is international aid and
fishing. But Michael Howard has made it
clear that he is not proposing that Britain leave the EU if these powers are
not repatriated. So, it can be taken
for granted that this is not a serious policy but merely rhetoric designed to
position the Conservatives on the Eurosceptic side of Labour for electoral
purposes.
The intervention of UKIP was a
breath of fresh air, which cast serious doubt on the case for the UK’s
membership of the EU. When pressed to
make such a case, supporters of membership usually mutter vaguely that millions
of jobs in Britain depend on exports to the EU. Listeners are meant to take from this that millions of jobs would
be lost if Britain left the EU, although this is not usually stated
directly.
There would have been some truth
to this 20 years ago when the EU had a high external tariff, which would have
made it difficult for Britain to sell into the EU from outside. But today the external tariff is less than
2% on average, which is a good deal less significant than currency fluctuations
for selling goods into the EU.
To my surprise, I heard Robert
Kilroy-Silk make this point clearly during the election campaign. And on the Today programme on 19 June, John
Humphries put this point to Neil Kinnock and left him floundering.
The three main parties are wedded
to the dogma that global free trade is good thing. If and when they get their heart’s desire, the world will become
one big free trade area, in which case what’s the point of an EU that is little
more than a free trade area?
From time to time, complaints are
made that Blair has failed make the case for Britain’s membership of the EU,
and from time to time he has promised to do so. But it has never materialised, and the reason it has never
materialised is that a case barely exists for the kind of EU that Blair wants,
that is, a free trade area. A case can
be made for political union, but Blair (and Howard and Kennedy) is opposed to
that.
The EU Constitution is not a
blueprint for a European state. In the
days when he was resisting calls for a referendum on it, Blair described its
compilation as a “tidying up exercise”.
Since it is largely put together from existing treaties, that
description is not far from the truth.
Nevertheless, a referendum on it
is unwinnable. What case can its
proponents make for it? When he
announced the referendum, Blair gave the impression that he was going to somehow
turn it into a referendum on EU membership.
Since, as the Conservatives swiftly pointed out, rejection of the
Constitution would maintain the status quo with the UK a member of the EU, that
plan was quietly dropped.
So what is plan B? Vote for this Constitution because it is “a
tidying up exercise” that will make little or no difference, which begs the
question: why is it necessary at all?
What problem is it supposed to address?
Blair will no doubt say that it is to make the EU workable after
enlargement, which begs the question: why, when negotiations stalled before
Christmas, there was a feeling of relief emanating from Downing Street that an
awkward issue had gone away, rather than deep regret that the enlarged EU would
now be unworkable? The plain fact is
that enlargement was in the pipeline long before the scheme to draw up a
Constitution, or the structural changes within it, was thought of, and, prior
to 11 March, enlargement was going ahead with the present arrangements.
It is impossible for Blair to work
up enthusiasm for a Yes vote by saying vote for this, it’s not important. But he cannot do anything else without
adding to the suspicion, worked up by the press and the Conservatives, that the
Constitution is significant step on the road to a European state. The use of the term “Constitution”, and the
fact that a “Constitutional Convention” was held to draw it up, makes it very
difficult to refute this: as Howard keeps on saying, states have Constitutions,
whereas relations between states are governed by Treaties. There was no need of a Constitution to make
the enlarged EU workable: the Nice Treaty made the arrangements for
enlargement, which are now said to be unworkable. If so, there is a simple solution: amend the Nice Treaty; there
is no need for a Constitution.
If the EU was moving towards a
political union, and its members were all agreed on that course, then there
would be a case for devising a Constitution to reflect that sense of
purpose. In fact, development of political
union is stalled, thanks largely to Britain, which for the last 20 years has
been hell bent on preventing the EU evolving into an alternative centre of
power to the US. In France and Germany,
and a number of other states, the ambition remains, but, unless Britain is driven
out of the EU, it is not going to happen.
Meanwhile, drawing up a Constitution is a pointless exercise.
Blair didn’t want an EU
Constitution in the first place, and he was delighted when Spain and Poland
stymied it before Christmas. When the
possibility of one being agreed re-emerged, thanks to al-Qaeda, he had to beat
a tactical retreat and concede a referendum in order to avoid a meltdown in the
Labour vote in the EU elections.
He would probably have survived
that. But, had he forced the
Constitution through Parliament without a referendum, when popular opinion was
against it, he would have been damaged by the issue at the General Election,
perhaps fatally damaged. With a
referendum promised after the General Election, that won’t happen.
Just as Hague’s attempt
to make the Euro the central issue of the last General Election failed because
a referendum was promised on it, so any attempt to make the Constitution the
central issue of the next General Election will now fail. It must be assumed that Howard is too smart
to make the mistake that Hague made.
Tactically, Blair’s about turn was
a stroke of genius, which robbed the Conservatives of an issue that just might
have won them the next election. Since
they have decided not to make an issue of Blair misleading Parliament and the
public before the invasion of Iraq, and since it is inconceivable that they
could win on domestic issues, the next election is over bar the shouting. At a stroke, Blair has, bar unforeseen
accidents, won himself a third term.
The referendum is unwinnable, but
then one may never be held. Putting it
on the long finger means that one or more of the other 24 states in the EU may
have rejected the Constitution before the UK referendum is held – in which case
there is no point in a UK referendum, since the Constitution would then be a
dead letter, which would have to be renegotiated and reapproved, or abandoned.
It will be interesting to see if
the legislation providing for the referendum allows it to be cancelled if the
Constitution is rejected by another state.
That would be the best result for Blair: the Constitution would then be
put back into cold storage, where it languished unlamented from Christmas until
al-Qaeda bombed Spanish trains on 11 March.
Labour & Trade Union Review