ANOTHER VOICE
Why is Mr Waugh on the Continental shelf?
CHARLES MOORE
We young people are notoriously hesi- tant to question the wisdom of our elders, but as The Spectator's spokesman for my generation, I feel I must answer Mr Auberon Waugh's answer to me.
In this space last week, Mr Waugh (as one always, with instinctive deference, thinks of him) explained 'Why the over-50s are quite happy with Europe'. By 'Europe', he meant the EEC, rather than the great Continent that stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals. He advanced several reasons. One was that 'the United States . . . is rapidly disintegrating into terminal self- absorption' and into 'a market with which no outside country will be able to do busi- ness on anything like equal terms', so we must not allow ourselves to be dominated by America. Therefore we need to protect ourselves by an 'economic merger' with the EEC. There are a good many answers to this, but I shall content myself with one. Britain has a trade surplus with North America of £2.5 billion; it has a trade deficit with the rest of the EEC of £9.9 bil- lion, so where does the threat of domina- tion come from?
Another of Mr Waugh's reasons was the `observable fact' that the governments of the 'old Six' regulate their affairs better than we do. I am not at all sure that this is an observable fact, rather than an impres- sion collected by the observation of a tourist naturally disposed to like places which are hotter and where the food is nicer and where he is out to enjoy himself, but let that pass. Let us accept that Bel- gium has good government and Italy has no bureaucracy and France protects civil liber- ties and Dutch euthanasia is a wonderful thing. If the 'old Six' do regulate their affairs better than we do, what has that got to do with a federal Europe? Until recent- ly, the only important way in which the EEC governed its members was in the Common Agricultural Policy, and no one thinks that that is well regulated. Even now, most of the power of Brussels and Stras- bourg has yet to be applied (hence the push for new treaties at Maastricht). So to observe smiling plenty and the rule of right reason in Paris or Bonn and to conclude that this shows how good a United States of Europe would be is a non-sequitur.
Mr Waugh's chief point concerns power. `One of the most attractive aspects of the federal idea', he writes, 'is precisely the lim- itations it sets on the influence of British politicians and the British electorate.' And the best thing about the single currency, in his view, is that no single national govern- ment will be able to inflate by printing money or overspending at will. . . . No longer will our moronic electorate be able to decide that everyone should have all the health care he needs regardless of cost.'
But if Mr Waugh is right, which he prob- ably is, that most politicians are chiefly con- cerned with power, doesn't it give him pause for thought that most of our politi- cians favour greater EEC integration? They must have considered whether they will win or lose out of the deal, and concluded that they will win. That is what the endlessly repeated phrases about how we must not miss the bus and we must have a seat at the top table mean — they mean that a fittingly grand and powerful future for politicians is assured by a semi-federal EEC and the chance must not be missed.
Anyway, why single out the dangers of too much power for politicians in Britain? I do not wish to romanticise the British peo- ple or their elected representatives, but if you -are seeking examples of the evils of popular will and the effects of power mania in this century, you will find rather more dramatic ones on the Continent than here. In fact, Britain is the only important coun- try in the EEC where parliamentary democracy has been vindicated. Elsewhere, it has either permitted the rise of dictators, as in Germany, or proved at crucial moments too weak, as in France. This, not ours, is the historical experience on which the scheme for a federal Europe is based.
It is a scheme for avoiding fascist or corn- `Does the Queen look more European to you?'
munist dictatorship and popular power, for the two are seen as almost inextricably linked. M. Delors wants to run Europe as Colbert ran France, as the great bureaucrat who does not enact laws made by a parlia- ment, but devises and imposes them him- self. If he succeeds in increasing the power of the Commission as he intends, he will have created the greatest mandarinate in modern history, made all the more power- ful by the fact that the mandarins, like M. Delors himself, will be politicians, not career civil servants freed from the dreary business of having to get votes to retain their jobs. Now one can see some good effects of this. It probably will be harder for the sin- gle currency to be debauched by politicians than it is for them to destroy their national currencies. But it will also be easier for the men who control that currency to impover- ish a country, and to do so without fear of electoral wrath. Poorer nations will be bound to a currency which sets them impossibly high standards (as has happened with East Germany since unification) and so puts their people out of work. They will then live only on subsidies, and therefore at the whim of others. One or two incidents in history suggest that this can lead to dis- agreeable expressions of the popular will. I would rather have a pre-election boom than a fascist coup. Some might wonder at the prejudices underlying Mr Waugh's arguments. Does he despise everyone who speaks English as a first language? Is there something about a Roman Catholic upbringing which makes one mistrust British institutions? I do not know, and it would be impertinent of me to speculate about such a venerable figure. But it is odd in this whole business that people keep on saying how awful the British political system is. It isn't. It has clearer lines of responsibility, a greater closeness to voters, a more important and franker forum for debate, a better ability to implement decisions, a wider public acceP- tance of its legitimacy than do its Continen- tal counterparts. For two days last week the House of Commons discussed Europe, and did so with a thoroughness and sharpness and drama which has no foreign equal. I do not think our politicians are any more megalomaniac or our electors any more moronic than anyone else's, and I do think our constitution is better than that being concocted in the test tube of Maastricht.
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