POLITICS
Mr Heseltine gets up full steam and plunges of the rails
NOEL MALCOLM
There is a book waiting to be written. If well done, it would rank with the works of, say, Dr Krafft-Ebing, as a study which opened up a whole new field of enquiry. My provisional title for it is The Psycho- pathology of Euro-enthusiasm.
It would analyse, for example, the anxie- ty dreams and their curious fixation traceable, perhaps, to some early trauma with a train set — on forms of transport: all those buses and boats we risk missing, all those platforms on which we shall be left behind, all those second-class carriages, at the back of the train, in which we shall be condemned to travel. And it would give special attention to the compulsive urge, felt by many prominent Euro-enthusiasts, to make assertions with a negative truth- value — or, as we psychoanalysts prefer to call them in our technical jargon, whop- ping fibs.
Mr Michael Heseltine's most recent pub- lished statement, an article in last week's Daily Telegraph entitled 'Moving with the force of our destiny', offers an example. `Those who argue', he writes, 'that the European Community is a hidden plot to impose centralised European federalism simply do not understand the thinking of our Continental partners. Federalism is out of the question . . .'
Well, there is one element of truth in that disclaimer. The plan to achieve feder- alism is not a hidden plot. It has been openly avowed by numerous European federalists. Some of the elements of a federal Europe are already in place: cen- tral legislative powers, for example, mak- ing laws which are directly binding on citizens of member states. Some of the elements are already agreed to in a rudimentary form, such as the 'European Foreign Policy' outlined in Title III of the Single European Act. Other elements, such as full economic and monetary union, or a European Parliament with direct legislative powers, are openly campaigned for. Federalism is 'hidden' only in the sense that some people are inclined to look at the components of federalism without looking at what they all add up to.
In fact the only source I can find for the idea that federalism is a 'hidden plot' is Mr Heseltine's recent book, The Challenge of Europe, of which Chapter Two entitled `Creeping Federalism', contains the follow- ing statements:
We have federalism by stealth, whether
because national electorates cannot be told the truth or are not trusted to understand it, or because their elected leaders have failed to comprehend what they have. assented to. There is no escaping the fact that a fledgling federalism is emerging, however the diction- ary definition of this emotive word may be stretched to pretend otherwise. Many may not like it but it cannot be wished away. It would be better to understand and come to terms with the changes which have already come about, and which continue apace. . . .
The only way to explain these apparent contradictions is to suppose that the Euro- enthusiast's behaviour is dictated not so much by any concern with the truth-value of his own statements, as by the over- whelming need to contradict whatever his political opponent may say. If the oppo- nent argues that Europe is drifting towards federalism, he will deny it, and will add for good measure that nobody is even dream- ing of such a thing. If, on the other hand, his opponent argues that some aspects of this drift to federalism are unnecessary or undesirable, he will reply that they are all indivisible parts of the same great historical development, with which we must 'come to terms' willy nilly.
When we take these two general claims together — that federalism is not going to happen, and that it is going to happen anyway — they are obviously contradic- tory. But if we break them down a little and adapt them to the real world, we may find that each contains some small ele- ments of truth. Some parts of the federal blueprints which are being handed round at the moment, such as stages two and three of the Delors Plan for economic and monetary union, are probably not going to be realised. This plan will be eroded here and there by political objections, and some aspects of it may be rendered obsolete by the new ways in which the economies of Eastern Europe will become linked to the economies of the West. And on the other hand it is true that there is a general drift towards federalism (encouraged by several vague phrases to which we have committed ourselves by treaty: 'an ever closer union', `making concrete progress towards Euro- pean unity') which tends to set both the tone and the agenda of any discussions about what to do next.
Both of these lines of thought offer inducements to quietism: reasons for not worrying too much about what is prop- osed, or for not wanting to kick too hard
against the pricks. Either of them may help explain, then, the surprising quietness and complaisance of Mrs Thatcher at Stras- bourg last weekend. Admittedly, this is not the first time that she has surprised us in this way — Madrid was another example. But something has changed. In the past, she has sweetly signed the agreements and then, alarmingly, contradicted them in public. This time she sweetly refused to agree on the main points, and then in- formed the public, as she did through her statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday, that the whole thing had been a splendid success.
That Mrs Thatcher thinks the later stages of the Delors Plan will fall apart is already clear. That she has become sud- denly unwilling to kick against the Euro- pean pricks is less obviotis. So what are we to make of her new Euro-complaisance, her boasting, even, about how many direc- tives Britain has already obeyed? Is it a new charm offensive, based merely on a resolve to out-fib the fibbers? I think not. The true explanation, I believe, is more extraordinary. It is that, unlike the Euro- enthusiasts, she really does mean what she says. Her advocacy of the Single Market is not a grudging pretence: she regards it as something of crucial importance for the future of this country's economy. That is why she pushed through the Single Euro- pean Act at Westminster, believing that the Single Market (the main aim of the Act) was so important that the other changes proposed in that Act should be swallowed for its sake. If she were the Machiavellian wrecker she is often por- trayed as, she would be keen to speed up, for example, the admission of as many new members of the EEC as possible. (Accord- ing to this theory, Brussels will grind to a standstill when every document has to be translated into Maltese.) Yet whenever she is asked about this, she says that no further applications to join the Community should be considered until after the Single Market has been established in 1993.
Once the final parts of the blueprint for the Single Market are in place, however, we can expect her to change her tune dramatically. She will go to the inter- governmental conference at Rome next year demanding documents which really mean what they say — and, if they say what the federalists really mean, refusing to sign them.
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