POLITICS
Labour's European policies: not in front of the voters, thank you
SIMON HEFFER
Under no illusions about the appeal of her party's policies, Mrs Beckett, Labour's acting leader, played her trump card on the opening morning of the campaign for the European elections. She said there would be 'a referendum on John Major and his Government'. If the voters believe her (and the signs are they will), the annihilation of the Conservative Party on 9 June will take place as predicted. To be on the safe side, though, she might be wise to make sure that neither she nor any of her colleagues mentions the E-word in the next fortnight.
Well might Mr Major lament, as he appeared to do in Bristol on Monday, that this poll was being hijacked by domestic issues when important European ones are at stake. Unfortunately for him one of his most prominent recent political acts — the surrender over qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers — shows that he, too, cannot be trusted to fight our corner in Europe. To give the Labour Party its due, it makes no real pretence of promising to do so. However, as Mrs Beckett and her band- wagon maintain, that is not the issue.
The European Parliament is not a com- plete irrelevance. It has, for example, an important, though rarely-used, veto on European legislation, and an enlargement of the community. All three main parties in this country support the idea of giving it more powers at the expense of the unelect- ed commission. Mrs Edwina Currie, the Tory candidate in Bedfordshire, believes that Strasbourg is where all the power is going, which is why she wants to be there. However, any supercharging of the parlia- ment will be a federalist act, something only the Liberals freely admit.
However many Labour MEPs are elect- ed, the important decisions affecting Britain's future in the EC will, like the rati- fication of Maastricht, have to be taken at Westminster. A socialist dominated Euro- pean Parliament would accentuate the fed- eralist, corporatist tone of the EC, but a Conservative government at Westminster could, if it had the resolve, assert what sovereignty it has left to resist such moves. When it can be persuaded to discuss Europe rather than Mr Major's broken promises, Labour owns up to the fact that nothing will change until it wins a general election. In its manifesto it pledges to sign up to the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty the minute it is elected. It also sup- ports the principle of a managed exchange rate, or what used to be called the ERM. Monetary union is presented as a more dis- tant goal, though one towards which the party is happy to move. In a policy that Tory Euro-sceptics would willingly endorse, the party also claims to want to scrap the Common Agricultural Policy; though, indicative of Labour's vagueness, it has no suggestion of what would happen next.
Where Labour has been specific it has risked alienating precisely the class of sup- porters it needs to attract to win the next general election; the newly prosperous or, rather, the newly ex-prosperous. This class has deserted Mr Major because of the recession, when jobs, homes and businesses were lost as a result of the ERM. The Tories, split on 'managed exchange rates', cannot exploit Labour's weakness on this point without drawing attention to their own, as was the case in 1992. Their only hope is that voters make the connection between Tory mistakes of the past and Labour's promises for the future.
The Social Chapter is a worse problem for Labour. The Tories, for once united on an issue, can exploit it. Labour's manifesto claims that, as well as accepting the social chapter, the party will strive for a national minimum wage, redundancy protection and more regulation, dressed up in the phrase `improved health and safety at work'. Entrepreneurs who realise that competi- tiveness is not so much how we compare with France or Germany, but with South Korea or Indonesia, will appreciate the fatuity of these measures. The Labour manifesto proclaims that we 'can never, and should never, compete with Third World countries on the basis of Third World wages'. Like the alternative to the CAP, the alternative to such cost competi- tiveness is never outlined. Although Labour promises not to introduce legislation to enforce a 35-hour week, it says that it and its fellow socialists must 'meet such challenges' as the 'further changes in traditional approaches to employment'. It admits that `this might involve reductions in working time, to ensure a division of the available work.'
That is, perhaps, the most important remark in the manifesto. It shows nothing has changed among Labour supporters since Jacques Delors opened their eyes to the benefits of trans-European co-opera- tion in his famous speech at Bournemouth in September 1988. The concept of there being a limited amount of work in Europe that an interventionist state — or super- state — must share out among the work- force is one of M. Delors' most cherished, and economically illiterate, beliefs. He has written an unreadable book, Our Europe, about it; however, this has not deterred Labour from swallowing his dirigiste creed whole. As a final bar to competitiveness, stringent environmental measures will be pursued 'inside and outside the workplace', just to make sure no one finds it worth- while going into business.
When Mr Major started to bring out these points this week he was compliment- ed for playing the 'patriotic card'. His own credentials are not good, and he must con- tinue to be judged by his actions, not his words. However, he is not in the same game as Labour. The Opposition's policies may reflect a 'modernising' of its attitude, but it has been brought up-to-date with current European socialist practices, not current commercial ones. Without a proper philosopher of its own, Labour has instead deferred to the superior wisdom of M. Delors. It is just as well, as Mrs Beckett seems determined to make sure, that this election will be about something else.
My report last week of remarks attributed to Lord Tebbit about Michael Heseltine was wrong. I apologise to Lord Tebbit. In a BBC interview Lord Tebbit referred to Mr Heseltine as follows: `Secondly, although I've always got on extremely well with Michael, we've often agreed about many, many things, I think he would not be a particularly good prime minister. I think he does have considerable difficulties in paying sufficient attention to a sufficient number of things at once. He's very, very good on the things he concen- trates on. A prime minister has got to con- centrate on a hell of a lot of things at once.
`We've got two distinct groups of older and much more experienced politicians, like Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine. And then the younger group . . . '
To a point about Mr Heseltine, as a heart attack victim, being compared with John Smith, Lord Tebbit said: 'Well, I think, I think that's true, that's hard and unfair but I think it may also cause a question mark in people's minds about Michael.'
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