The marriage of nations a la mode
Michael Portillo
THIS BLESSED PLOT: BRITAIN AND EUROPE FROM CHURCHILL TO BLAIR by Hugo Young Macmillan, £20, pp. 558 Abook of this sort needed to be writ- ten, but this is not it. The story of how the United Kingdom viewed the emergence of the plan for European political union, how it vacillated and ducked and weaved, Protested at being drawn in and yet was drawn in, needs to be told. Hugo Young documents it thoroughly, from the end of the war until today. But he does so from an entirely partisan stance. 'The facts of life are European,' he tells us. He sees Britain struggling with 'the future she could not avoid', hampered by nostalgia for imperial greatness and beset with foolish notions about sovereignty. Naturally, it follows from this view that all the time not spent embracing our European destiny was time wasted, and led us to lose influence in shaping Europe. Young sighs his way through 50 years of history, parodying those who could not see the light, mocking those who gripped old-fashioned notions of nationhood, chuckling at the follies of suc- cessive governments.
This is a book without soul. At no time does Hugo Young attempt to understand Why the British might not want to be swept Up in a United States of Europe. It is a curiously apolitical book. There is no dis- cussion of political forms, of how people relate to those that govern them in nation states or in political unions, of what consti- tutes political culture, of what people need to feel in common to be comfortable about being governed in common. The European project is seen as adjustment to economic reality. Britain has declined. Others have ran their economies better. We have to face reality and join their system. Loss of Political independence is a price well worth Paying for a share in greater economic Prosperity and 'power'.
That emphasis on the primacy of economies shows that socialist views of the world are alive and well, at least when it Comes to planning the new Europe. Any- way, ask the four-and-a-half million Ger- man unemployed how well they think the system works. Time will reveal how Europe With its high taxes and regulated labour markets will compete in the century to come. Young quotes de Gaulle writing in his memoirs:
Now what are the realties of Europe? What are the pillars on which it can be built? The truth is that those pillars are the states of Europe . . . each of which, indeed, has its own genius, history and language, its own sorrows, glories and ambitions; but states that are the only entities with the rights to give orders and the powers to be obeyed.
He quotes him merely as being an influ- ence on John Biffen. The quotation itself seems not to excite his curiosity at all. De Gaulle was not disabled by nostalgia for Britain's imperial past, nor does he fit the usual concept of a Eurosceptic. But his reflection on the nation states of Europe encapsulates the case against the reckless attempt to bind them into an artificial political union. The political cultures of those nations are too diverse, and the union lacks the political authority and accountability to give orders and to be obeyed.
The book that is needed would explore how it was that a nation that had enjoyed all the benefits of a long-established parlia- mentary democracy, that had so signally stood for and fought for tolerance and liberty, came so quickly to lose its self- confidence. It would examine why its politi- cal leaders felt they should pretend — as Gordon Brown pretends to this day — that the questions facing us were economic and not political; why Mrs Thatcher's Bruges speech of ten years ago was really the only serious effort to set out an alternative model for Europe based on the de Gaullean understanding of the legitimacy of the nation states, and why (with the pos- sible exception of Mrs Thatcher's No, no, no) to this day no British leader of a major political party has made a convincing state- ment of determination to maintain British political independence, covering control o our economic, foreign, defence and immi- gration policies.
Britain could have had much more influ-, ence on the development of Europe by,, making clear long ago that we would not proceed to the destination of political union. We could have worked co-opera- tively with our partners to fashion a more flexible model of Europe. Our partners would have respected our straightforward- ness, which would have enabled them t proceed towards their dream without th wailing of a reluctant Britain being dragge along behind. Our arguments against the ERM, the social chapter and economic and monetary union would have been taken more seriously had anyone believed that we had the self-confidence to stick to them, rather than merely fall into line late in the day.
For as long as we were outside the social chapter, for example, we offered Europe the model of how flexible labour markets produced jobs. After a while, our partners would have been bound to ask themselves some searching questions about whether there might not be real advantages in the British (or Anglo-Saxon) way. Now that we are in the social chapter, there will be no example of another way and those troubling questions need not be asked. Similarly, as economic union brings our levels of spending and taxation up to the European norm, there will be no model inside Europe of how smaller government can produce a more dynamic economy.
At a time when all the talk is of globali- sation, and when information technology is breaking down barriers to communication and trade between peoples, the idea of a European bloc is anachronistic As we have watched the collapse of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, the attempt to create a political union in Europe out of so many freedom-hungry nationalities swims against the tide of history. In an age when geogra- phy matters less and less, the European Union ideal is based on the argument that geography is all that matters. It is supposed not to be important that in terms of the nature of our democracy we have more in common with the United States and the Commonwealth. Our raucous free press, our disrespect for establishments and conventional wisdom, our emphasis on the rights of the individual against the state, give us less in common with our European neighbours than with other ancient allies. If we are to talk of political union, these are the things of 'consequence.
Hugo Young says again and again that no alternative has ever been offered by British statesmen to political union. This strikes me as extraordinary. Is a well- functioning, mature political democracy. bound to offer an alternative to the aboli- tion of its currency, and the transfer of its Powers to supranational bodies that are not democratically accountable? Are we obliged to submit an option, other than survival, against the suggestion that our nation state be wound up?
But since you ask, Britain will fare better if our interest rates are set according to local economic conditions, in London not Frankfurt. The economy will be more suc- cessful if it develops its Atlanticist charac- teristics, becoming more entrepreneurial, less regulated and lower taxed. And the people will be happier if they can make Choices about those policies by electing to parliament in the United Kingdom people Who still have responsibility for the nation- al economy.
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