POLITICS
How they spun the good news from Bruges to Ghent
BRUCE ANDERSON
In Ghent, Mr Blair had no intention of addressing the big questions. His aim was to blur them. So he set out to dissolve Margaret Thatcher's antitheses into a new Blairite synthesis. Mrs Thatcher had been right to warn of the dangers of Euro-centralisation, but she made the mistake of withdrawing into isolation. Jacques Delors was a good European, but perhaps he was 'un petit peu' keen on centralisation. There was a simple solution, however: a third way, as it were. You simply choose the best of both.
This is a Prime Minister who has always used words to obscure meaning, but in Ghent he excelled himself. That was appro- priate, because his speech was the climax of the government's recent initiative to restore the public's faith in the European single currency. Needless to say, this was a covert operation, in which no attempt was made to argue the case. Instead, the euro and Europe were conflated, to convey the impression that anyone opposed to the cur- rency was also against the EU.
But the anti-EU case is still at the mar- gins of British political debate, unlike the anti-euro one, which is dominant. So the inference is clear. The government and its Tory federalist allies have no faith in their ability to persuade the British electorate of the merits of the euro, so they will not even waste time making the argument. Instead, they will try to confuse the voters by invent- ing a phoney opponent whom they believe they can defeat. The hope is that at some future stage, having seen off the anti-EU forces which they themselves invented, they could gull the voters along the following lines: 'You're against the anti-EUs, so you must also be against the anti-euros. Same thing, you know.' In allowing themselves to become Mr Blair's useful idiots, Ken Clarke, Chris Patten and others are making a miscalculation. Just because clever men are prepared to abandon all scruples in their resort to intellectual dishonesty, it does not follow that the electorate is infinitely credulous. Despite Mr Blair's pop- ularity, dumbing down has its limits.
Not, however, in the federalists' use of statistics. Britain in Europe (BiE), the princi- pal pro-euro organisation, has been in charge of promoting the Big Lie: that those opposed to the euro are also opposed to EU-wide free trade. It sought to buttress this wholly untruthful proposition with a number of little lies. BiE persuaded the Express — which will print anything these days — to claim that withdrawal from the EU would cost eight million jobs, a figure which was said to emanate from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Within hours, NIESR's director, Martin Weale, was describing those figures as 'absurd' and a complete distortion of NIESR's research; NIESR was not convinced that withdrawal from the EU would depress long-term employment levels. Mr Weale used the word `Goebbels'; in BiE and No. 10, they would have taken that as a compliment.
Then Gordon Brown joined in the fun, declaring that 750,000 British firms were currently exporting to the EU. That is a curious claim. According to most indepen- dent estimates, only around 100,000 to 115,000 firms export at all. Then again, the Chancellor might well conclude that a few transient statistical embarrassments were a small price to pay for keeping the Euro- pean debate focused on fantasies such as the end of Britain's trade links with the Continent, rather than on realities such as the European Commission's plans for tax harmonisation.
During last November's Helsinki Summit, the PM said: 'There's no way that the rest of Europe wants to be standardising all the income and corporate tax rates across Europe.' That statement is literally true, and wholly misleading. It is true that hardly any- one is in favour of standardising all the tax rates — yet. In Brussels, they merely want to harmonise the taxes which matter and to remove the right of national veto on tax. While Tony Blair was prevaricating, Romano Prodi was telling the truth: 'The unanimity requirement [for taxes] means either com- plete paralysis or reducing everything to the lowest common denominator . . . As long as the veto exists, the EU will be like a soldier trying to march with a ball and chain around his leg.'
The Commission does have the veto in its sights, which is understandable. Almost everyone in Brussels agrees that a single monetary policy will need to be under- pinned by a single fiscal policy. In the USA, the conditions for running a single currency are much more favourable than they are in Europe, yet Uncle Sam still needs to spend about 20 per cent of his GDP making sure that it works. In the longer term — and not too long at that — Europe will have to do something similar.
Helmut Kohl and the single currency's other progenitors knew that it would not be stable until it was buttressed by fiscal measures. They also knew that until the Euro- pean Parliament was strengthened, there would be a democratic deficit. Their aim was to use the euro to force the EU to strengthen its institutions and to acquire more powers. Everyone in Brussels agrees that the euro is primarily a political project: monetary union today, political union tomorrow. Those in Britain who favour a single currency really ought to explain why everyone else is wrong — and if so, why they are so keen to join forces with persons labouring under such fundamental misconceptions.
The EU already has a court, a civil service and a Parliament. It also has an executive (the Commission) and a head of state: the Commission's president. It has a currency and a central bank. It even has a flag and a national anthem, as well as a diplomatic ser- vice and a passport. It has already acquired many of the powers and trappings of state- hood; its next goal is to have its own army.
So this is the question which ought to dominate British politics. Do we wish to look to Europe for our laws and our liberties, our interest rates and our tax rates? Or would we rather preserve as much as possible of our own national sovereignty? There is an honest and an honourable case to be made in favour of a federal Europe. But in Britain, it has rarely been heard. For a gen- eration, almost all of those who support European integration have preferred to conceal their intentions.
That is shameful, and there is also an irony. The federal case is better than the men who make it. But they prefer to trot along at Tony Blair's stirrup, while he spins the good news from Bruges to Ghent.
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