Although a life-long supporter of the Conservative Party, I am dismayed by the party’s conduct on the issue of EU membership. The promise to hold a referendum five years from now will depend on its being re-elected in 2015, which is at best uncertain, since parties do not get re-elected when economies are sour. And the opposition does not want to hold one if they win that election.
We are, therefore, committed to a long period of uncertainty, which can only have harmful effects. Probably, the most serious ones will be to diminish our influence with our EU partners and to discourage foreign investment in Britain. It will be bad for business generally, because it is well-known that it does not like uncertainty.
PM Cameron’s chief concern has been his Parliamentary members, it being reported that some 250 out of 304 Party MPs are delighted. It may be of less interest to the public. The Economist magazine reports that » the voters are less neuralgic about Europe than their representatives at Westminster. When asked which topics most concern them, voters mention Europe much less than they used to. What they worry about is the economy, health care and crime. »
So, by promising a referendum, we may be provoking unnecessary attention to the question, with the risk of a negative vote based on dissatisfaction with Brussels mandates on doctors’ hours of service, convicts’ rights to vote and similar comparatively minor matters, while doing serious harm to our economic interests, a cause of great concern to our business leaders.
And all this to achieve a result to which the leaders of all the political parties,except UKIP, are opposed.
Archive for the ‘Britain in Europe’ Category
« TO BE OR NOT TO BE » IN by Michael Webster
samedi, février 9th, 2013A Referendum on Britain remaining in the European Union – by Michael Webster
vendredi, janvier 11th, 2013I consider the idea of Britain holding a popular referendum on whether to remain in the European Union an unwise and even disconcerting one. This is a matter of primordial importance , probably the most vital one facing the country for decades to come and to have it decided by a referendum has no justification in my mind.
I will cite three reasons for this.
First of all, referenda are highly vulnerable to demagoguery, resulting in emotions and passions taking the place of serious reflection. In Britain the most likely culprits will be our popular press. I find it only too easy to imagine their making hay of some lapse of judgement or a minor scandal in the Brussels Commission and thus influencing perhaps some vital number of votes.
Secondly, how is the question of the phrasing of the question to be put to the vote to be decided and by whom. This could, of course, be simply put. ?Do you want Britain to remain in or to quit the Union?? And on these dozen simple words would depend one of the most fateful decisions to be made by this country. Prime Minister Cameron has just published an article pointing out that there is a third choice: to negotiate a compromise position on the periphery of the Union. The question could thus be further embellished but every additional word would be greatly controversial in its significance.
Lastly and most importantly, this is a travesty of the principle of representative government and of the accepted conventions by which our country has historically been governed. Representative government means that we elect, at least theoretically, the most competent people to represent us in Parliament.
There the issues can be the subject of mature debate by members with more intimate knowledge and experience, with Commissions able to consult authorities on the question. The issues will then be re-considered by the House of Lords, whose members are usually people of wide experience and competence.
This is the correct procedure for this vital matter and the idea of submitting it, with all its profound political and economic implications, to a popular referendum fills me with great concern and even trepidation.
Michael Webster
The Wrong Battle by Michael Webster
jeudi, décembre 27th, 2012Leading figures in the British community in France and in our own British Conservatives in Paris (BCiP) are struggling, to little effect, to obtain voting rights for citizens living abroad but this is of minor importance compared with another struggle which may confront them.
The efforts to gain voting rights are for those who have lived abroad for more than 15 years: not the right to vote for MPs who would defend the rights of expatriates, a privilege which French citizens abroad enjoy, but a vote in whatever constituency with which they may feel an affinity, even though they may not know the MP’s name or the major concerns of his constituents.
No, I write of another threatened struggle. A year ago I was treating threats of Britain voting to leave the European Union as a diverting quirk, typical of my countrymen. Now it is dawning on me that the threat is becoming a real one. The Economist this week also turns its attention to the matter, devoting its cover and two principal articles to the subject.
Both in the populace and in political circles it is taking on an immediacy which should give us serious concern. Apart from all the diplomatic, political, economic and trade issues at stake and whatever your views on them, Britain’s leaving the EU might have considerable repercussions on British citizens living on the Continent. Without being any sort of authority on the subject, I would wager that there would be increased financial difficulties and bureaucratic problems ten years down the road regarding ?cartes de sejours?, importing of household goods, health insurance, pensions etc., all of which would have to be re-negotiated.
I will not expatiate here on the advantages and disadvantages it would have for Britain. The Economist says our departure from Europe is becoming ?ever more possible?. Despite the fact that the leaders of the three main political parties, business leaders and the trade unions all want to stay in, 80 M.P.s of our Conservative party are pressing for a referendum and the polls say that over 50% of the population would vote in favour of leaving and only 30% would vote for staying.
So, I believe this to be more of an issue (than voting rights) on which we should be considering with great concern.
What do we do about UKIP? by Robin Baker
vendredi, décembre 7th, 2012The biggest danger to the Conservative Party?s chances of winning the general election due in 2015 is unquestionably UKIP. We lost the Corby by-election to Labour, the Conservative candidate only received 9,476 votes, compared with Labour?s 17,267. But the third party was UKIP, with 5,108. That, of course, is less than the Labour majority of 7,791, so UKIP did not cost us the seat. It is, nevertheless, almost 15% of the total vote. This demonstrates the seriousness of the threat to us that UKIP poses and the risk that it could cost us sufficient seats for us to lose the election in 2015.
So what do we do about them?
My own view is clear. We must fight them resolutely. Conservative Party policy on Europe is specific: ?We are committed to playing a leading role in the EU?. So we stay a member of the EU. UKIP?s policy is quite different: ?withdrawal from the European Union (EU) is central to UKIP?s message?. But there are those who take a different view, that is that to avoid UKIP appealing to Conservative Party voters, the Party must become more Eurosceptic. I have two problems with that. One is that the two positions are incompatible. One cannot be in favour of being ?committed to playing a leading role in the EU? and also of withdrawing. So the Conservative Party needs to convince the electorate that our policies on the EU are in the best interest of the country and that UKIP?s policy would be a catastrophe. My second problem is the risk that those members of the Conservative Party arguing for UKIP?s position are simply going to persuade potential Conservative voters to vote for UKIP instead of for us.
Those in favour of UKIP?s policy publish their arguments for it widely. These arguments need to be refuted. Here are some by leading Conservatives taken from the Better Off Out Group website:
The European Union is too diverse, too bureaucratic, too corporatist and too centralist to be a functioning democracy. We are happy to trade with our European friends and the rest of the world ? but we would prefer to govern ourselves. Lord Tebbit, senior cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher and former Chairman of the Conservative Party.
Of course the European Union has become more diverse, it has done so by admitting new member states, a policy strongly advocated by Britain under both Conservative and Labour Governments. The Conservative Party support Turkey?s candidature for membership, i.e. we are seeking to make it even more diverse.
That the EU is too bureaucratic is a common criticism, and one that is very easy to make, particularly if one doesn?t bother to check the details first. In fact the Commission has a staff of 30,000. Other European institutions, i.e. the Parliament and the European Court of Justice (n.b. this is nothing to do with the European Court of Human Rights which was established by the Council of Europe before the EEC was created; this EU court ensures that EU institutions and EU member states respect their obligations under the Treaties), employ a further 18,000 and there are 8,000 in agencies all over Europe. So, a grand total of 50,000. That, by coincidence, is the same number as employed by Birmingham City Council. The number of civil servants employed by the UK Government is 479,000 (out of the 4.4 million total in the public sector costing 23% of total government expenditure). In France, civil servants number 2 million; the Commission only has three quarters of the staff employed by the City of Paris. What is remarkable is that this is achieved despite the fact that the EU has to work in 23 official languages and provide for interpretation between them, which obviously increases staff numbers. But, despite that, it spends only about 6% of its budget on staff, administration and building maintenance.
That it is too corporatist is an extraordinary criticism, particularly from a Conservative. The Commission?s Competition Directorate is highly effective and its work in preventing anti-competitive practices greatly benefits consumers in the EU (perhaps Lord Tebbit should ask Microsoft about that).
That it is too centralist as an argument commonly used by those who do not understand, or who perhaps are not prepared to admit, that a free trade area must have rules to prevent non-tariff barriers to trade being erected as protectionist measures. This has been known from our entry to the then EEC; in the debate on entry on the House of Commons in 1972 the Attorney General (the then Sir Geoffrey Howe) said: ?The concept of a common system of Community law, uniformly expressed, operating and enforced throughout the Community, is integral to the community system. If this country became a Member of the European Communities it would be accepting Community Law?. That was the position when we joined the EEC, it has never been concealed, it has never been in any doubt, and it remains the position now as that is the only way a common market can work. It has worked effectively in Britain?s interest, for example Germany excluded chocolate imports from the UK by an internal regulation on what could be sold as chocolate in Germany which British manufacturers did not meet. That German regulation was struck down by the Commission.
I believe in an independent Britain, Britain would be better off out of the failing European Union. It?s time to campaign for an independent Britain. Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Clacton.
To use the term ?failing? without any justification or even specifying in which sense he considers it failing is a very cheap rhetorical trick and, frankly, a dishonest one that insults the intelligence of Mr Carswell?s audience. In my view, a reasonable way of measuring success or failure in such a context is growth in GDP. The figures for percentage annual growth over the last three years (total 2012 is obviously a forecast at present) are:
…………………2010………………..2011………………….2012
EU………………2.1…………………..1.5…………………..-0.3
Euro zone….2.0…………………..1.4…………………..-0.4
UK………………1.8…………………..0.9…………………..-.03
Where is the EU failing Mr Carswell, particularly in comparison with the UK?
I believe we should leave the European Union and instead have free trade agreements with EU countries just as we do with many non-EU countries. David Nuttall, Conservative MP for Bury North.
That statement betrays an astonishing degree of ignorance. The UK has no free trade agreements with non-EU countries, apart from those that have been negotiated and agreed by the EU as a whole. Under the original Treaty of Rome there is a common external tariff for each non-EU country that all EU member states have to apply. Clearly a single market cannot operate without a common external tariff. So no EU member state could negotiate a free trade agreement with us were we to leave the EU. By staying as a member of the European Economic Area we could have such an agreement with the EU as a whole, but there are disadvantages in that explained below. However it is unthinkable that the EU would agree to a free trade area with us were we to refuse to remain in the EEA, because that would permit us to erect non-tariff barriers to EU imports.
Our country built our prosperity as world traders. Our future prosperity depends on us trading with China, India and the rest of the Commonwealth. It does not depend on being tied up in a backward-looking, inward facing, protection racket designed to prop up inefficient continental farmers and businesses. We want free trade with the EU, but we do not need to be members of it to have that. Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley.
Mr. Davies is correct in saying that we do not have to be members of the EU to have free trade with them. But, for the reasons already given, he would be being rather more honest were he to say that we do have to be members of the European Economic Area. The non EU countries who are EEA members (Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway), together with Switzerland that has a similar agreement with the EU, participate in the EU single market. To do that they have agreed to enact all EU legislation (except agriculture and fisheries) adopted by the EU, without any participation in the decision making process. They also make a substantial financial contribution to social and economic cohesion in the Internal Market but they receive no finance from EU funds. In Norway, this agreement is known as being a fax democracy, because it is said that the latest legislation that their parliament has to adopt is faxed to them by the European Commission. Is that what Mr. Davies wants for the UK?
Of course we would not have to be a member of the EEA. But were we not a member we would face the common external tariff being applied to what in the first three quarters of 2012 amounted to 51% of our exports. I would be interested to know how long Mr Davies thinks it would take us to increase exports to China and India (both of which the UK individually and the EU collectively are trying to do anyway) sufficiently to make up the trade that this would cost us.
Millions of British people have never had the chance to vote on whether or not to be in the EU. Philip Hollobone, Conservative MP for Kettering.
No, they have not. But neither have they had had the chance to vote on whether or not to be in NATO which, for example, commits us to going to war should another NATO partner be attacked, nor whether or not to be in the United Nations, nor the World Trade Organisation, nor the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development or the International Energy Agency, both of these last two imposing important obligations on the UK. Why does not Mr Hollobone point out that, of all the 97 international organisations of which the UK is a member, the EU is the only one where our membership has been subject to a referendum and that, in that referendum, 67% of the votes were in favour of membership?
I agree with Margaret Thatcher on referenda. She approvingly quoted Clement Attlee as saying that they are ?a device of demagogues and dictators?. I am proud of the British tradition of parliamentary democracy; I think it the best way to be governed. And that has traditionally been the view of the Conservative Party. Those espousing referenda only do so because they know that they cannot get what they want any other way.
I am particularly opposed to referenda in relationship to membership of international organisations. Such organisations are a key part of the way in which relationships between different nation states function. For most of them, membership is thought of as permanent within the foreseeable future. To make the continuation of membership subject to periodical referenda would be a grave disruption of the current pattern of international relationships. Further, there is no provision in the Treaty of Rome for a member state to leave the organisation and, were we to do so, we would be in breach of the international treaty we signed in 1972. Does anyone really believe that the then members would have agreed to our entry had we told them that we would have occasional referenda to determine whether or not we stayed as members? Has the Conservative Party sunk so low that it has adopted the view of the Kaiser and regards an international treaty as nothing but a scrap of paper?
The politicians I have quoted above are persuading voters to support the policy of a political party that, as I have pointed out, is the Conservative Party?s enemy and a major threat to us at the next general election. They are totally wrong to think that this will make potential UKIP voters vote for us; those voters who are convinced by them will vote for UKIP.
Conservatives Abroad have recently asked their branches to adopt a rule to the effect that their members may only be members of a sister party, even in the country where that member lives, provided that that party has been approved by the Party Board but even if it is so approved, such members may not hold office. How is that compatible with prominent Conservatives holding public office being members of the Better Off Out Group?
So I have two conclusions. The first is that we must fight UKIP by explaining why Britain needs to remain in the EU:
1. We are an important part of a major trading block with a GDP exceeding that of the USA. That enables us and all EU member states to punch well above our weight in international trade negotiations.
2. Within that we are part of a single European market, largely created by the initiative of a British Commissioner in Brussels with Margaret Thatcher?s backing, in which British companies can trade freely without the disadvantages of tariff or non-tariff barriers.
3. That access to that single European market is particularly valuable for the UK because of the importance of our financial sector. It enables us to play a leading role and earn a leading share of financial sector profitability, a benefit that our European partners look at with envy. As a result, the financial sector contributes over 11% of UK Government tax receipts.
4. We are part of a group of countries with a common cultural and historical heritage co-operating together for the greater benefit of all.
5. Co-operation within the EU covers areas where action by individual nations within the limits of their national boundaries would be at best ineffective and at worst meaningless. An obvious example is environmental protection. Competition policy applied across the EU is another example giving wide benefits.
6. As citizens of the European Union we entitled to move freely, to live and to be employed anywhere within the Union. Also we can hold and transfer funds freely within the Union.
7. Citizens of the European Union living in a member state other than their own, are protected against discrimination against them by their own government in relation to social benefits. For example, British state pensioners living outside the EU have their pensions frozen, despite having paid the same contribution as those living in the UK whose pensions are increased to allow for inflation. Pensions of Britons resident in the EU cannot be frozen.
All these are real benefits, but we are allowing the case for them to go by default. We must trumpet them to defend Conservative Party policy.
Secondly we must take steps to prevent Party members prominent in public life giving public support to the policies of UKIP. The Better Off Out Group is a tool of UKIP, its purpose is to advance UKIP?s policy. UKIP is the enemy of the Conservative Party. So the Party must make membership of the Better Off Out Group incompatible with Conservative Party membership. Any MP, member of the Lords, MEP, member of the Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly or local councillor who is and remains a Better Off Out Group member must have the Party whip withdrawn, be expelled from the Conservative Party and their constituency association or equivalent must be told that they are not eligible for re-selection.
That is how we must fight UKIP and increase our chances of winning the next election.
Robin Baker
President, BCiP
Britain in Europe: Some thoughts on an exit by Michael Webster
samedi, novembre 24th, 2012I have been inspired by a recently published article by one of our French members, Sophie Loussouarn, to write about something which should be a matter of grave concern to all of us and to which we risk paying too little attention.
This is the increasing likelihood that, in a few years, Britain will cease to be a member of the European Union. The Prime Minister has finally been compelled to accept the principle of holding a referendum on whether Britain stays in the Union or not. A recent opinion poll shows that 56% of the population, (68% of Conservatives), would vote in favour of leaving it. According to the poll, the better-educated part of the populace had a good-sized majority for staying in, the others for leaving it. This probably reflects the influence of the Europe-bashing of the popular Press. The leaders of the three political parties show a rare unanimity in believing Britain should remain a member (UKIP being opposed.)
As always, the phrasing of the questions asked in the referendum will be subjected to intense Party squabbling and powerfully influence the result. The matter is of such complication and portent that it is a very ill-suited one to be put to a popular vote.
The consequences are difficult to predict but what would be at stake would obviously be of great moment to the country. The issues at stake are diplomatic, political and economic. Isolated from the European Union, and isolated is the word for it, Britain’s role in world affairs would be greatly diminished. Politically, it would have a weak voice in European affairs. Economically, it would be bound to suffer as an outsider, unable to react to economic decisions being taken against its interests.
In the vital sphere of finance, it seems more likely that it would suffer, rather than profit from leaving; the same thing is presumably true of its trade.
Unable to play its role as a foothold and sounding-board for the United States in Europe, it is to be feared that in a generation its role in world affairs will be of no more importance than, say, that of a South Korea.
I have begun to realise, only recently, that the threat of our leaving the European Union is no longer a theoretical one but of immediate concern and one that should be of far greater concern to all of us.
Sophie, in her article, points out what a loss it would be to the Union in the event that Britain were to leave it but that is not a concern of this article.