POLITICS
One good reason to have the European elections
SIMON HEFFER
Following Mr Major's assault on mendi- cants, and his passionate plea that the sen- tence on the murderers of James Bulger be not appealed against, one begins to wonder how much lower the Government's popu- larity must sink before Mr Major announces the return of the death penalty, the restoration of Rutland and the aboli- tion of the decimal coinage. At times, some of us have wondered whether Mr Major, pursuing as he does half-baked policies with graphic ineptitude and grinning insou- ciance, has any idea of just how dire things are for himself and his party. The spasms of recent days suggest that, at last, the mes- sage has started to get through. The ulti- mate proof, at the 59th minute of the 11th hour, was his claim on Tuesday that he wanted precisely the sort of two-speed' Europe he has spent the last three years attacking his party's sceptics for wanting.
Next Thursday the voters of Britain have a choice, or perhaps two choices, to make: whether they vote at all in the European elections and, if they do, for whom. Mr Major's flailings have been prompted by warnings that normally loyal Tory support- ers are 'on strike'. The atmosphere in most constituencies is sulphurous. Knowing the tenor of these people, Mr Major has decid- ed (or, more likely, has had it decided for him) to make a series of populist observa- tions. You can probably smell the panic as far away as Shetland.
`If he thinks the landscape has changed because of John Smith's death,' says one of those backbenchers, 'he must be mad.' Most Tories are expecting carnage, not just at the hands of Labour, but more particu- larly from the Liberals. 'If we couldn't get our vote out last month in elections that meant something,' says one MP, 'how the hell are we going to mobilise it in elections that most people don't even know are hap- pening?' If Labour improves on its 1989 result of 45 seats without having elected a leader, the thought of what it might start to do when it has (especially if it chooses that user-friendly Mr Blair) turns many Tories pale. If the Conservatives do as badly as everyone is expecting next week, the con- clusion about Mr Major will be obvious, and unpleasant. 'Judging from the feedback we're getting,' a senior party official told me, 'it won't be a question of whether we can put out a football team, but whether we'll have enough to play mixed doubles.' Attempts by the Tory Party to seduce its erstwhile voters back have been embarrass- ing. Cabinet ministers — well, some of them — have claimed that the party's drea- ry and vacuous manifesto is one on which it is united. It is nothing of the sort. Even before last Sunday's newspapers showed that anything up to 16 of the party's candi- dates were federalists, it was clear that even those who weren't (or who claimed they weren't) had widely differing views on the long-term policy aims of Britain in the European Community. Most shocking of all was the small, but significant, minority who answered 'don't know' to questions about the need for a single currency. Either these candidates are stupid or dishonest. When one sees the unemployables, gravy- train jumpers, spivs and assorted fruitcakes who are offering themselves in the so- called Conservative interest, one has the horrible realisation that many are both.
There is, as Simon Jenkins argues on page 29, a strong case for not voting. The `parliament' in Strasbourg is an abomina- tion to our constitution, and it ill behoves anyone to lend it credence by voting in the elections to it. No party, with the exception of the United Kingdom Independence Party (whose candidates pledge, if elected, not to take their seats) has a programme that remotely coincides with the wishes of the British people. Polls show that we, as a nation, are deeply sceptical about Europe. We abhor its wastefulness, its remoteness, its cultural antipathy. The Labour and Lib- eral parties pay no attention whatever to those feelings, but rather — the Liberals especially — seek closer ties that would fur- ther dilute our sovereignty and re-impose socialism from without. The Conservative Party is, sadly, no better. The record of the Conservative group at Strasbourg since 1989 has been shocking. Some say that the strong vein of scepticism in the parliamen- tary Conservative Party at Westminster has been caused by Mr Major's stubbornness and deceit over Maastricht; but that made not nearly so much impact as the antics of alleged Conservatives at Strasbourg, whose freelance policy operations on federalism and currency union were watched with stunned disbelief from this side of the channel. Some Tory MEPs not outed as federalists during this campaign have been in close liaison with the European Peoples' Party, whose programme of superstate con- struction makes the ambitions of our oppo- sition parties look retarded. Though there is the odd sceptic standing for election next week, most Tory candidates have in public toned down their fanaticism for European union because they know it is electoral poi- son. As a result, you cannot believe a word most of them say. You will be lucky to see any who are elected doing anything even slightly 'Conservative' in their five years on the gravy train. Just as the voters were conned in 1992, so now there is an attempt (albeit more half-hearted, such is the state of demoralisation) to repeat the trick now.
The British public is not being offered a choice in these elections, but rather three variants of the same main course. In that case, it is probably better to go without. If enough Britons do the same, two important messages will be sent out from the ballot- boxes. To Brussels, we should signal that until the Community takes proper notice of the feelings of all its peoples, even those who are not French and German, then some of those peoples will simply refuse to take it seriously. The second message, though, is even more significant.
It is obvious to most voters, so the opin- ion polls tell us, that Mr Major has exhaust- ed his credit with them. A concatenation of immoral, incompetent, self-serving, and incoherent acts deeply damaging to the national interest has left him beneath the contempt of most of those he purports to govern. His most recent debacle, on quali- fied majority voting, proved he is no guardian of British interests. His close col- leagues are regarded with almost universal derision and distaste. Worst of all, millions of Conservatives — the millions who will not vote next Thursday — feel betrayed and, at this moment in particular, disen- franchised. There is, in their eyes, no Con- servative Party, with a proper Conservative programme to speak of, worth voting for. On taxation, devaluation, public spending and Europe a supposedly Conservative gov- ernment has followed, time and again, what appear to be Labour or Liberal Democrat Party policies. No wonder the people who gave the Tories their much-abused man- date in 1992 are 'on strike'. Given what has happened since the last election, no punish- ment by the voters against the Conservative Party can be sufficiently severe. To an elec- torate that has had enough, that is real point of next Thursday.
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