Alas, I fear Mr Blair is neither so reckless nor so stupid as to risk a referendum
ANDREW GIMSON
The Labour party has started a campaign to 'reconnect', as Philip Gould puts it, with the working-class voters who have deserted it since 1997. Mr Gould, whose latest report to the Prime Minister was given wider circulation in last week's Daily Telegraph, has discovered (by methods so painstaking that they hardly bear thinking about) the existence of an 'alienated and disengaged segment' of the working class which has given up voting in general elections. He regards this 'working-class world' as 'the primary battleground' in the forthcoming euro referendum campaign, and he argues that to win the campaign Labour has got to win back that class — a task which 'is also necessary if we are to keep alienated and perhaps rebellious anti-euro voters from rushing back into the electorate and wrecking the referendum'.
It is always a pleasure to be able to congratulate a fellow researcher, no matter how pedestrian his style, on detecting a trend. The fact that any normal person could have picked up this trend by spending an hour or two talking to the drinkers in any downmarket pub should not be taken to invalidate Mr Gould's findings, though it may lead the Prime Minister to wonder if the same results could be obtained more cheaply, thus sparing Labour the need to accept donations from porn merchants. Going to the pub might also have saved Mr Gould from the error of referring to 'perhaps rebellious antieuro voters'. There is no 'perhaps' about it. These traditional Labour voters loathe Tony Blair and New Labour with a passion. That, rather than the 'apathy' which newspaper pundits ascribe to them, is why they have stopped voting at general elections.
A referendum on the euro would be the perfect opportunity for millions of disillusioned Labour voters to give Mr Blair and his fancy Islington friends a drubbing without having to vote for the Tories. Unless the 'no' campaigners behave with quite amazing ineptitude, they will win any referendum on the euro by a mile, or 1.60934 kilometres. And so far the 'no' campaign has been highly astute. It sounds relaxed, cosmopolitan, not especially political. There is no way in which it can be written off as a front organisation for the Conservative party, which has preserved a refreshing silence on the subject of Europe.
One result of that silence might be to embolden Mr Blair to take the, for him, fatal step of calling a euro referendum. I wish he would, for it would be a glorious way for us to assert our liberties against those who wish to destroy us as a self-governing nation. But I do not think the Prime Minister is so reckless or so stupid as to risk such a showdown. He will only call a referendum if he has managed to change public opinion first. Yet all his efforts to do so are likely to prove counterproductive, for if there is one thing which a free-born Briton cannot stomach, it is the feeling that he is being manipulated by a smooth-talking lawyer-politician into selling his birthright.
Which is where Gordon Brown becomes the crucial figure. If that Calvinist told us that the euro would be good for the economy, some of us might be inclined in our limitless venality to believe him. As the late T.E. (Peter) Utley observed, our rulers managed to persuade us that we should become part of the Common Market by assuring us that the economic arguments for it were incontrovertible, a tactic which worked because 'nobody understands economic arguments'. But whether we are now prepared to accept economic arguments for what is quite plainly a political project is questionable, especially as the memory is still green among older voters of how the Common Market was sold with atrocious dishonesty to them, in the referendum of 1975, as nothing more than a free-trade area.
Much the strongest economic argument for the Common Market in the 1970s was that we seemed to be doing so badly outside it. A senior Treasury official has suggested that only a 'burning platform' — a British economy which is in crisis — will now persuade us to jump into the euro. But Mr Brown can hardly decide to set our economy on fire simply in order to make us give up sterling. The longer we thrive out side the euro, the less necessary the whole thing looks.
In the five years since it took office, Labour has separated itself from that part of the British people which is relatively unsuccessful and poor, which is also that part of the people to whom being British matters most. This separation from the working class was something the Conservatives had already achieved by giving the impression that, as far as they were concerned, the devil could take the hindmost. A competition between the two main parties has now opened up to reclaim this lost constituency. The Home Secretary has borrowed the word 'swamp' from Margaret Thatcher to demonstrate that he understands the fears of the white working class, while Mr Blair has called for the European Union to defend itself more rigorously against illegal immigration. Meanwhile, kin Duncan Smith has declared his desire to help the most vulnerable members of society. It is an interesting inversion of roles, but one which leaves Mr Duncan Smith with the stronger cards. In his patient, unglib way, he is the politician who wants to preserve the British nation, while Mr Blair, with his endless scheming to cajole us into giving up the pound, is the one who wishes to yield to the tide of political integration which still flows fast in Brussels, however resistant the French or the Dutch or the German or the Polish people may be becoming to it.
Utley, a High Tory of distinguished intellect, once described himself as representing 'a brand of Toryism, at once traditionalist and populist, which holds sway in every public bar in the kingdom and is almost entirely denied parliamentary expression by the Establishment'. The modern Conservative party has much to learn from him as it tries to relearn a decent, humane language in which to express a decent, humane patriotism, more inclusive than all New Labour's cant. Utley could generally be found in the Kings and Keys pub next to the old Telegraph building in Fleet Street, where he would talk on terms of perfect equality with anyone, including innumerable stuttering young men and women who hoped to make their way in journalism. He died in 1988, but a prize to encourage young journalists helps to keep his memory alive, for which a fundraising party will be held in Middle Temple on 21 June. Tickets cost £20 and can be obtained from the Secretary, T.E. Utley Memorial Fund, 111 Sugden Road, London SW11 5ED.
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