ANOTHER VOICE

Why I, though a Eurosceptic, will not vote with Mr Hague on this one

MATTHEW PARRIS

So the Conservative party is to enter the next election on a pledge to remove the electorate's right to decide on a single cur- rency. What daftness is this?

These are difficult days for Eurosceptics. Now William Hague has dealt us another blow. He wants us to take a leap of faith. He wants the Conservative party to divest itself of the warily unpersuaded approach to European Monetary Union adopted by Margaret Thatcher's and John Major's gov- ernments, and put on the armour of cer- tainty. We are to crusade. Seized with a conviction that we know the future, we are to declare that a single European currency is necessarily and in principle and in all cir- cumstances wrong, will not work, cannot work, and must be resisted come what may. That is what we party members are asked to endorse in the coming ballot.

I will not do so, because I am a Euroscep- tic. I shy at articles of faith. I am a doubter. I am unconvinced. I don't buy the swivel- eyed tendency on either side of this subtle, difficult and complex question. Being a conservative, I am disposed to stick with the status quo unless someone shows me something obviously better. When refusing an invitation, whether to dinner or to mon- etary union, some little voice of self-preser- vation within me whispers that it is wiser to refuse on the grounds of inconvenience than on principle. Being a sceptic, I do not oppose the faith of others with a faith of my own, but with doubt. I don't like parties or politicians who cannot honour doubt.

I think the European single currency will not work. I suspect it will come to nothing. I would be inclined to stay out of it for a good ten years or more, even if it does work — just to make sure. And I do not expect a Conservative administration (if after the next election there were one) to judge it prudent to join.

But I do not know, for pity's sake! I have considered — as Cromwell beseeched an opponent 'in the bowels of Christ' to con- sider — the possibility that I might be wrong. Lacking the gift of prophecy, I do not wish to tether my leader to my own guesses, even if he asks me so to bind him. I do not want him disabled in coping with the unforeseen. That he asks me to instruct him to promise Britain that he will absolutely not do some specified future thing, regard- less of whether this seems right at the time, strikes me as bizarre. This European ballot is too clever by half and will hurt Mr Hague. It is not without benefits and he will have weighed them; but the benefits are fewer than he thinks, the costs far greater.

The benefits first. He thinks his ballot will be overwhelmingly won. He could just be wrong. It will be won, but already his people are talking of only a derisory vote against. This is foolish. A decent little show of opposition, a large abstention, will now be represented by the press as a setback.

He thinks this will shut the Tory Euro- peanists up. It will inflame them. He thinks this will satisfy the Tory anti-Europeans. It will titillate them; next they will be calling for the expulsion of two former foreign sec- retaries and a former prime minister.

He thinks the policy will be popular with the electorate. Up to a point, Lord Tebbit, but do we really suppose Tony Blair is like- ly to go in, all guns blazing, for a single cur- rency, if the focus groupies say the polls look dodgy? If, as Hague hopes, the fight against the euro really does catch fire, Blair will scuttle for cover faster than you can say 'welfare reform'. We shall learn, via 'sources', that Tony has always been a doubter, but Gordon had to be chivvied round first. There will be an article by Blair in the Sun. Thinkers in politics, and Mr Hague is one of these, always overestimate the electoral benefits of getting there first.

And now the costs. Far from drawing the sting from the debate on Europe at Bournemouth next month, Mr Hague has shoved it onto the centre-stage of national attention and ensured that Tory Euro- peanists feel they have nothing left to lose. Every senior Tory who rejects the new cate- chism must now feel duty-bound to come to Bournemouth and say so. They would any- way have been passionate; now they will be bitter and angry too. Nor will they go away. And in the longer term he has made our Conservative party look a meaner thing. It is a mistake to describe this as 'stamping his authority' on his party. Hague may find those damnably irrational poll respondents telling canvassers both that they support his European policy and that they do not like the look of his party.

Whatever he says in public, John Major is most unlikely to agree with the new line: indeed, it is Hague's lieutenants' explicit boast that their master has now rejected Majorite fudge. A dutiful man, Major will not shaft his successor as his successor's friends shafted him, but we will guess his views. And you cannot just tell a whole roomful of former Tory prime ministers, foreign secretaries, chancellors, presidents of the Board of Trade, party chairmen and European commissioners to belt up. That they call this 'leadership' is a mark of how the new Tory Likud has degraded that term. This is not Cuba. Leadership in Eng- land is not just about ideology but about people. Some of the Tories' best people ask leave to keep a question open, no more, and Hague wants to take that away.

There is a good chance that he will be proved right about the euro — but how can that really be a certainty? Upon the narrow sceptical territory staked out for Britain by John Major at Maastricht, upon that fine English phrase 'wait and see' it was possible for good people on one side of our party to find common ground with good people on the other. Hague now quits that ground.

But some of us are still there — a great many more ordinary Conservatives than he thinks — and so is most of Britain. What an irony: to be forced to throw in my lot with people whose enthusiasms I do not share, rather than sign up to the harsh catechisms of the other side. I did not think we would have to choose.

Now we do. I am sorry Kenneth Clarke says he will not fight this. Somebody should.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and a columnist of the Times.