POLITICS
The real issue for Yoruba tribesmen in the European election
NOEL MALCOLM
It may be rash to claim to have identified the key issues of an election campaign after only the first couple of press conferences, but this time I honestly think I have cracked it. The European election will be fought, above all, on the issue of EMS and ERMs.
I am not referring to the complicated questions of currency regulation and monetary co-operation, which interest such a tiny handful of politicians and economists. There were several enquiries about these matters, but this was signifi- cant only because it showed how few issues of any substance the assembled journalists could think of that had anything to do with the European election.
No, the real ems and erms are the noises politicians make when they are asked to say anything clear, distinct and substantive about any of the following things: the points on which they agree with their party colleagues; the fundamental principles on which they disagree with their opponents in the other parties; and the definitions of any of the basic terms they use, such as `sovereignty', 'power', 'co-operation' and, for that matter, 'Europe'.
At Conservative Central Office on Mon- day, Mrs Thatcher launched a new policy of conceptual emming and erming. Asked about the ever closer union towards which we are already obliged by treaty to aspire, she replied rather cannily that 'European union has never been defined' — and, she implied, jolly well never would be. The Foreign Secretray chipped in with the observation that 'the very phrase, "the ever closer union of the peoples of Europe", implies that those peoples should remain separate as they grow closer together'. In advanced literary circles this is a style of textual analysis known as `deconstruction': the reader begins by thinking that he understands what the text means, and ends by understanding only that he understands nothing. But Sir Geof- frey's skill at conceptual emming is already well practised. The negative definition of `sovereignty' which he recently produced is especially memorable: 'sovereignty is not something you keep in an urn on the mantelpiece.' This statement must have come as a shock to certain Yoruba tribes- men, who are known to carry around boxes covered with Cowrie shells, which they say contain their souls. Sir Geoffrey, a states- man of rare vision, is obviously already preparing the ground for the day when we shall all have to aspire to an even closer union with the Yoruba. The question of what you can or cannot keep in a container is bound to come up, so it is best to set out our negotiating position here and now.
At Transport House on Tuesday, Mr Kinnock boldly denied that there was anything obscure, ambiguous or uncertain about the issues at the heart of this election. The electorate was faced, he said, with 'a clear choice of parties, policies and philosophies'. This claim is not so much a half-truth as two separate untruths jammed together. There is a choice between poli- cies and philosophies: but it is not the same as the choice between parties, and in neither case is the choice particularly clear.
On policies and philosophies, the choice would go like this. Are you for or against yielding more legislative powers from Westminster to Brussels? Do you want an increasingly federalist Europe, or an alliance of sovereign states? Are you in favour (to give some policy examples) of harmonising VAT, or joining the exchange rate mechanism immediately, or incorpor- ating the European Declaration of Human Rights into British law?
The only problem is that having divided people into the sheep and the goats on these questions, when you turn to the Labour and Conservative manifestos you find they have both been written strictly for the sheep. On some of these points they baa almost completely in unison. Mr Kin- nock and Mrs Thatcher stand together in defending what the Labour leader has called 'parliamentary power over those matters which have direct relevance to the quality of life in this country and the quality of justice' — or, at least, what parliamentary power we have left. Off to one side of them stands Mr Benn, who wishes that we had not already yielded any power at all. And off to the other side stands Mr Heath, who would like to see a greater flow of enlightened directives waved through by more majority voting at Brussels. But no one in this election will have the chance to vote for Mr Benn or Mr Heath. The main choice is between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, and what they are offering on the essential nature of Europe is two policies which are almost identical in substance and equally waffly in expression.
Much has been written already about the Conservatives' pretence that they all agree with each other about Europe. Not much has been written yet about the similar (and even more implausible) pretence of the Labour Party. But nothing has been writ- ten about the claim that these two parties fundamentally disagree with each other, which is the most bizarre pretence of all. So perhaps it is not surprising that the Labour campaign managers (led by Mt Bryan Gould, who use to, be such a fervent anti-European that in 1976 he wrote a minority committee report attacking the very idea of direct European elections) should have decided to treat this campaign not as a European election but as a cross between a general election, a by-election and an opinion poll. They want to concen- trate on issues such as the poll tax and the NHS reforms, which are completely irrelevant to the concerns of MEPs, but of great relevance to the stirring up of Vale of Glamorgan-style hostility to the Govern- ment. On these at least, it is clear that to be pro-Kinnock is to be anti-Thatcher. This opinion-poll-cum-by-election ploy is a trap which is difficult for the Tories to avoid. Mrs Thatcher, in any case, cannot conceive of the election as consisisting of anything other than votes for her and votes against her. The real reason for her strangely diffident attitude towards the election campaign is not that she is diffi- dent about Europe (which of course she is), but that she fears the whole election will be a bit of a damp squib and does not want to be too closely associated with it. This, for the Conservatives, will be the worst of both worlds: a campaign with which the Prime Minister is identified whole-heartedly by her opponents and half-heartedly by herself. Nobody in this election is being offered a real chciice between voting for Europe and voting against it. But there is a choice between voting for and voting against the Govern- ment; and while Labour tours the country telling people to vote against Mrs Thatch- er, the Conservatives' reply will not be convincing enough if it just consists (o it seems to have consisted so far) of telling people to vote against M. Delors. The Conservatives will do well only if they can knock some real holes in Labour's new European policy, and persuade voters that Mrs Thatcher's ems and erms on Eurolepe are a bit more forceful, and slightly ss hypocritical, than Mr Kinnock's.
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