ANOTHER VOICE
Now Mr Major is against Europe, he will, I suppose, have to go
CHARLES MOORE
Mr Major himself always showed a keen- er appreciation that not being Margaret Thatcher was not an unmixed blessing. (I am sorry that there are so many negatives in that sentence, but negatives are more expressive of the mood than positives would be.) He knew that he won the Tory leadership because Mrs Thatcher declared for him. When his general election cam- paign of 1992 was failing, he got in Mrs Thatcher to back him, and he made his tone more right-wing. When he wanted a standing ovation at the party conference last autumn he went Back to Basics. His speech about a multi-speed, multi-track Europe, made during the European elec- tions, was copied from hers on the same subject in the Hague. And in Corfu, on Sat- urday, he explicitly compared his isolation in opposing M. Dehaene with the earlier isolations of the Iron Lady.
The wheel has come full circle. When the Tory bigwigs decided that Mrs Thatcher must go, Europe was the issue they picked. They manoeuvred her into taking Britain into the ERM, which tied her to a policy she hated, and then they set up a great complaint about her style of European diplomacy, which was supposed to be 'isolating' Britain. After the Rome Summit in the autumn of 1990, Mrs Thatcher spoke to the House of Commons and famously said 'No, no, no' to M. Delors' notion of a European Parliament resembling the House of Representatives, the Council of Ministers resembling the Sen- ate and the Commission acting as the execu- tive. Sir Geoffrey Howe could bear it no longer and resigned, complaining about the `mood' she created in Europe and about cap- tains who break the bat of the opening bats- man before he enters the crease.
And now Mr Major, often considered a `No no' in another sense, has become a `No, no, no' himself. His vetoing of M. Dehaene's candidacy for the presidency of the Commission was more extreme than any action of Mrs Thatcher's at any Euro- pean summit. There is no deputy prime minister today, and therefore no direct equivalent of Sir Geoffrey to kick up a fuss, but Mr Douglas Hurd is the nearest thing. Doesn't he feel his bat was broken? Won't he resign? Apparently not. Apparently this Thatcherish behaviour is now all right. We can use the veto after all; being isolated does not matter. The Foreign Office was at particular pains last weekend to emphasise that it was not at odds with No. 10 on the point. Instead of worrying as usual about missing the European bus, it is happy to hold up all the other passengers until it gets the driver it wants.
The immediate reason for Mr 'Major's conduct, and possibly, knowing his political character, the only one, is to avoid a serious challenge to his leadership in the autumn. Lady Thatcher is known to favour his con- tinuing in office for the present. He has to make sure that the rest of the Right feels that way too. He will also have been told that the biggest problem in the European elections was not any defection to Labour, but the large number of hard-core Conser- vatives who stayed at home. All this Euro- toughness is aimed at them.
But there is also what might grandly be called an historical inevitability in the busi- ness. Mrs Thatcher and Mr Major original- ly entered the European arena in similar frames of mind, that is to say, in good faith and without expert knowledge. They had a British, practical approach to Europe. In this spirit, she accepted the Single Euro- pean Act, believing that it would improve free trade within the Community. In the same spirit, he accepted and modified Maastricht, believing that it was an anti- centralising treaty (though on what evi- dence it is impossible to see). Both acts were hailed by most of the party and press as triumphs and both quite quickly curdled into disappointments. Once Mrs Thatcher saw how the Single European Act was used to claim more power for Brussels she dug in against any advance on it. Now that Mr Major has seen how his once dear friend Helmut Kohl tries to run the Community, he is digging in too. Every British prime minister ends up saying 'No, no, no' to `Europe' if he takes his job of defending
Britain's interests seriously.
Unfortunately it is very difficult to know exactly when to resist. I am one of the devi- ous party that wants M. Dehaene to suc- ceed M. Delors. Since every possible candi- date for the job will be, to greater or lesser degrees, a European integrationist, it seems better to have a fat Belgian whom we can all freely oppose than someone else, particularly an Englishman, whose candida- cy Britain actively supported. The prospect of Sir Leon Brittan in sheep's clothing was grim. No good candidate, from a Euro- sceptic point of view, will emerge. But at least the psychological barrier is now bro- ken. Mr Major has said no once, so he can say it again. Perhaps the best policy would be to veto every candidate for the presiden- cy. This would be a new version of the chaise vide once employed by France, and a cleverer one. Instead of vacating one's own chaise, and so missing the fun, one keepS the chaise of the Commission vide until the other member states agree to reduce its powers. If Mr Major merely accepts Mr Lubbers, or Mr Sutherland, or one of the apparently inexhaustible numbers of top- drawer Belgians pushing for preferment, when the Germans call the next meeting on the subject, he might as well have saved his breath to cool his moussaka.
Should one pursue the analogy between Thatcher and Major one step further? If she fell because the establishment decided she was too 'anti-Europe', will he? I do believe in a conspiracy theory here. I do believe that senior civil servants, central bankers, most Cabinet ministers, most of the chairmen of the largest companies etc. are determined that anyone 'anti-Euro- pean' should not be prime minister, and, like all the best conspirators, are so deter- mined that they do not need any formal plot to set them to work. If they think Mr Major is sincere they will try to get him out. But they have two difficulties. The first, which did not apply to Mrs Thatcher, is that it is so hard to know whether he is sin- cere. Is the man who condemned the Cabi- net 'bastards' really one himself? Blowed if I know. Blowed if anyone does. The second is that the conspirators recognise that their European view is unpopular. They need a good domestic issue to exploit. With Mrs Thatcher they had the poll tax. What will it be with Mr Major? I don't know, but I am sure that some of the nation's finest minds are working on it, even as we speak.
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