This is a UK paper, right?
Starting to sound like the hangover that follows the party.
Was this the moment UK stumbled out of Europe? - FT.com
Starting to sound like the hangover that follows the party.
Was this the moment UK stumbled out of Europe? - FT.com
Lie back and think of England. Historians may look on 2011 as the year in which two great unions began to fracture. Britain stumbled away from Europe, and Scotland prepared to bid farewell to the United Kingdom. The one dynamic gave impetus to the other.
For a day or two after saying No at the Brussels summit, David Cameron enjoyed the plaudits of his party’s eurosceptics. By the time the prime minister reported to the House of Commons on Monday, isolation did not seem quite so splendid.
Mr Cameron’s coalition is now in a lose-lose position. If the eurozone fails in the effort to rescue the single currency, Britain will be caught in the ensuing economic tsunami. If the euro is eventually saved by the creation of a fiscal union, Britain will find itself marginalised in European Union decision-making in areas pivotal to its own prosperity.
The much-trumpeted veto proved nothing of the sort. The others are going ahead regardless, and Britain has been denied any safeguards for the City. Mr Cameron’s coalition with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats has been brought close to breaking point. Certainly, the popular mood is with the Tory sceptics. But will Mr Cameron win plaudits for seeking special arrangements for City bankers at the expense of Britain’s wider industrial interests?
All this adds up to what was an avoidable disaster. There was no great plan for a rupture. What some Tories now see as Mr Cameron’s Churchillian moment was rather the result of an inept negotiating strategy placed in the hands of an inexperienced prime minister.
Sir Jon Cunliffe, Mr Cameron’s Treasury adviser, is being blamed. He decreed that the Foreign Office be locked out of summit preparations. This precluded any serious diplomatic groundwork in other European capitals.
Sir Jon insisted that the eurozone could be “bounced” at the 11th hour into accepting a British protocol to protect the City. This was a negotiating tactic he picked up while working for Gordon Brown. The possibility that the other leaders might simply say No was discounted. The Treasury, as one of its own once memorably remarked, has never really understood “foreigners”.
As things turned out, Mr Cameron had misread Angela Merkel’s intentions following a meeting in Berlin; and Nicolas Sarkozy had a score to settle after George Osborne recently compared France’s predicament with that of Greece.
Mr Clegg was as surprised as everyone else in Downing Street with the outcome. He had been assured that the Treasury paper was an opening gambit, but in the event it was presented as an ultimatum; and presented at an hour when European leaders wanted only to retire to their hotel beds. There was no plan B. All in all, as negotiating fiascos go, this one was at the top of the A-list.
Mr Clegg thinks there might yet be a way back. So, if they are permitted to try, do some senior diplomats. The deal on a fiscal compact is less solid than it first seemed. Does Ms Merkel really want to see Britain forever outside the room? And hasn’t Mr Cameron privately agreed his demands are negotiable? This hope explains Mr Clegg’s insistence that Mr Cameron must not deepen the rift by seeking to block the eurozone’s use of Brussels institutions. It may also account for an absence of any obvious triumphalism on Mr Cameron’s part.
The problem with all this is that it ignores the political dynamic in the Tory party. Last week’s summit was an opening shot. The hardline sceptics want to see Britain out of the European Union altogether. Many others want at the very least comprehensive opt-outs in areas as diverse as social and fisheries policies. Mr Cameron calls himself a sceptic. He has also been heard to remark that some of his own MPs are “frankly barmy”. Uppermost in his mind in Brussels was the anxiety to forestall a Tory rebellion.
Much of the Conservative party now speaks the language of English nationalism – driven to fury by Europe and increasingly driven out by the voters from Britain’s Celtic fringes. Mr Cameron’s party has only one MP in Scotland and just a handful in Wales.
This suits no one more than Alex Salmond. As Tory MPs demand a referendum on Europe, the Scottish National party leader promises one on Scottish independence.
Mr Salmond has an unchallenged grip on Scottish politics. Scotland’s first minister dominates the Edinburgh parliament in a way its architects thought would be impossible. If the Tories in Scotland are moribund, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are all but invisible. The polls show support for the SNP now above 50 per cent.
English nationalism feeds Scottish nationalism. The more a Tory-led government in London detaches Britain from Europe, the more easily the pro-European SNP points to a divergence of English and Scottish national interests.
Not a few in Mr Cameron’s party celebrate both prospects. They hanker after an Elizabethan England that would make its own way in the world. The Tories could forever dominate a nation that would indeed be splendid again in its isolation. Such are the pinched politics of nationalist delusion.
For a day or two after saying No at the Brussels summit, David Cameron enjoyed the plaudits of his party’s eurosceptics. By the time the prime minister reported to the House of Commons on Monday, isolation did not seem quite so splendid.
Mr Cameron’s coalition is now in a lose-lose position. If the eurozone fails in the effort to rescue the single currency, Britain will be caught in the ensuing economic tsunami. If the euro is eventually saved by the creation of a fiscal union, Britain will find itself marginalised in European Union decision-making in areas pivotal to its own prosperity.
The much-trumpeted veto proved nothing of the sort. The others are going ahead regardless, and Britain has been denied any safeguards for the City. Mr Cameron’s coalition with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats has been brought close to breaking point. Certainly, the popular mood is with the Tory sceptics. But will Mr Cameron win plaudits for seeking special arrangements for City bankers at the expense of Britain’s wider industrial interests?
All this adds up to what was an avoidable disaster. There was no great plan for a rupture. What some Tories now see as Mr Cameron’s Churchillian moment was rather the result of an inept negotiating strategy placed in the hands of an inexperienced prime minister.
Sir Jon Cunliffe, Mr Cameron’s Treasury adviser, is being blamed. He decreed that the Foreign Office be locked out of summit preparations. This precluded any serious diplomatic groundwork in other European capitals.
Sir Jon insisted that the eurozone could be “bounced” at the 11th hour into accepting a British protocol to protect the City. This was a negotiating tactic he picked up while working for Gordon Brown. The possibility that the other leaders might simply say No was discounted. The Treasury, as one of its own once memorably remarked, has never really understood “foreigners”.
As things turned out, Mr Cameron had misread Angela Merkel’s intentions following a meeting in Berlin; and Nicolas Sarkozy had a score to settle after George Osborne recently compared France’s predicament with that of Greece.
Mr Clegg was as surprised as everyone else in Downing Street with the outcome. He had been assured that the Treasury paper was an opening gambit, but in the event it was presented as an ultimatum; and presented at an hour when European leaders wanted only to retire to their hotel beds. There was no plan B. All in all, as negotiating fiascos go, this one was at the top of the A-list.
Mr Clegg thinks there might yet be a way back. So, if they are permitted to try, do some senior diplomats. The deal on a fiscal compact is less solid than it first seemed. Does Ms Merkel really want to see Britain forever outside the room? And hasn’t Mr Cameron privately agreed his demands are negotiable? This hope explains Mr Clegg’s insistence that Mr Cameron must not deepen the rift by seeking to block the eurozone’s use of Brussels institutions. It may also account for an absence of any obvious triumphalism on Mr Cameron’s part.
The problem with all this is that it ignores the political dynamic in the Tory party. Last week’s summit was an opening shot. The hardline sceptics want to see Britain out of the European Union altogether. Many others want at the very least comprehensive opt-outs in areas as diverse as social and fisheries policies. Mr Cameron calls himself a sceptic. He has also been heard to remark that some of his own MPs are “frankly barmy”. Uppermost in his mind in Brussels was the anxiety to forestall a Tory rebellion.
Much of the Conservative party now speaks the language of English nationalism – driven to fury by Europe and increasingly driven out by the voters from Britain’s Celtic fringes. Mr Cameron’s party has only one MP in Scotland and just a handful in Wales.
This suits no one more than Alex Salmond. As Tory MPs demand a referendum on Europe, the Scottish National party leader promises one on Scottish independence.
Mr Salmond has an unchallenged grip on Scottish politics. Scotland’s first minister dominates the Edinburgh parliament in a way its architects thought would be impossible. If the Tories in Scotland are moribund, Labour and the Liberal Democrats are all but invisible. The polls show support for the SNP now above 50 per cent.
English nationalism feeds Scottish nationalism. The more a Tory-led government in London detaches Britain from Europe, the more easily the pro-European SNP points to a divergence of English and Scottish national interests.
Not a few in Mr Cameron’s party celebrate both prospects. They hanker after an Elizabethan England that would make its own way in the world. The Tories could forever dominate a nation that would indeed be splendid again in its isolation. Such are the pinched politics of nationalist delusion.
