LITTLE EUROPEANS

Daniel Hannan on the ignorance and

narrow-mindedness of federalists who dismiss sceptics as xenophobes

I THINK I finally understand where these Euro-zealots are coming from. The moment of gnosis came when a pro-European colleague asked me to sign some declaration or other against French beef. Now I, like other Tories, have spent the best part of five years arguing that, regardless of BSE, British beef is safe and wholesome, I couldn't see how raising new doubts about the issue would help our farmers, and I told him so.

He looked at me incredulously. 'But you're a Eurosceptic!' he said, jabbing an accusing finger. 'I had you down as a definite supporter. I mean — it's against the French.'

And then it hit me: Europhiles really do believe that we sceptics are slightly xenophobic. The accusation is not, as I had always assumed, a debating point, but a sincerely held conviction.

Looking back, I realise that this is by no means the only occasion that federalists have imputed strange opinions to me. MEPs usually assume, for example, that I support the proposal to make English the EU's common working language. In fact, the idea fills me with horror. The right of every European citizen to deal with Brussels in his national tongue is one of the few remaining signs that the EU is an association of nationstates. Take that entitlement away and you simultaneously remove the largest obstacle in the path of full integration.

Similarly, I am forever being expected to intervene on behalf of British citizens seeking professional recognition on the Continent. In some cases, the country concerned is in flagrant violation of its treaty obligations. But, more often, I am being asked to tell a sovereign government to change its domestic employment legislation.

It's the same with state aid to foreign companies. We understandably object when Brussels tells us how to administer our economy. So why should we complain when, say, the French government firehoses money at Air France? If French voters, who are also French taxpayers, choose to prop up their own airline, that is their loss — and, indeed, our gain, since every time we fly Air France, we are effectively receiving a subsidy from the French exche quer. And yet, on all these questions, I and other sceptics are routinely expected to adopt the most inconsistent and parochial position possible.

In part, of course, this is clever politics. Supporters of European integration have conducted their focus groups. They know that hostility to Brussels, although certainly broad, is not particularly deep. Many people oppose the euro without really knowing why, and fret that their opposition may be based on ignorance. By constantly going on about 'Europhobes' and 'isolationists', the 'philes are working on this sense of unease. 'Look,' they are saying to the undecided voter, 'these anti-Europeans are little better than football hooligans. You're not like that, are you? Well then, you must be in favour of EMU.'

I can't say I blame them; it's an obvious tactic. In fact, it is an exact mirror of the sceptics' charge that the 'philes lack patriotism: unfair, but probably effective.

But there is more to it than that. When bien-pensant Europeans attack their critics as blimps, they are not just engaging in name-calling. They are also asserting what they see as the moral superiority of their vision.

This was neatly illustrated by this magazine's interview with Neil Kinnock in December. British critics of the EU, said our senior commissioner, were xenophobes — and none the less so 'just because they happen to speak fluent Catalan or whatever'. I would have thought that bothering to learn Catalan is a pretty good indication that you respect other European cultures. Mr Kinnock, too, might reasonably be expected to understand this: as someone who used to favour withdrawal from the Common Market, he surely sees that you can be culturally pro-European without supporting the Brussels system. And yet he is capable of saying, with evident conviction, that criticising the EU is ipso facto proof of xenophobia.

What a reassuring thing to think, By placing himself on a higher ethical plane than his opponents, Mr Kinnock invalidates — at least in his own eyes — their criticism. Sceptics claim that the EU is riddled with fraud? Well, they would, wouldn't they? They claim that he hasn't done enough to tackle inefficiency and over-staffing in the Commission? That's just their way of saying that they hate foreigners.

Imputing base motives to your opponents is a kind of displacement activity: it gets you out of having to defend, say, the Common Agricultural Policy. I recently took part in a debate in Brussels with a leading New Labour think-tanker and Euro-enthusiast. He was a highly intelligent man. Yet he began his speech by telling his audience to ignore what he was generous enough to call my well-reasoned call for inter-governmentalism, since 'the true Eurosceptic case is represented by the Sun, with such headlines as "Hop off, Frogs!" ' It is an argument I have heard again and again from Europhiles. Indeed, it sometimes seems to be the basis of their entire position. Some years ago, a friend who worked for the European Movement told me that, although the case for keeping the pound might be perfectly reasonable, the people making it were repulsive. There may be some truth in that: every cause attracts its share of cranks and obsessives. But I am left wondering how many Euroenthusiasts are genuinely actuated by a calculation of economic advantage, and how many by a desire to be 'against nationalism'.

Remove the stereotype of the Eurosceptic bonehead, and the case for Europe suddenly seems rather dull. To take up arms against prejudice and ignorance no doubt makes you feel rather virtuous; but, once the argument is reduced to interest rates and fishing quotas, it loses much of its moral force.

You can see this clearly in that most authoritative and enjoyable of Europhile tomes, Hugo Young's This Blessed Plot. When he considers them as individuals, MT Young rather likes his sceptic subjects. From Anthony Eden ('he was a man of European culture, spoke French and a little German') to Bill Cash ('no xenophobe he'), he paints friendly enough portraits of them. And yet, whenever he writes of them collectively, the sceptics become 'paranoid', 'ranting', 'cantankerous'.

Some of us, no doubt, are all of those things. But no cause can be held responsible for every single person who advocates it. Surely pro-Europeans are broad-minded enough to grasp this.

Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for South-east England.