THE COMMON MARKET
The party politics of the EEC
A STUDENT OF POLITICS
In relation to the Common Market the newspapers have over the last two months been talking us into thinking almost exclusively about two short-term events: the ' terms ' which we now know, and the vote on accession in October. In fact these are not the whole story, but just episodes in the story. They are perhaps the only episodes in the whole story which may go rather well for Mr Heath, which is why the doctrinaire anti-Marketeers have been foolish to place so much reliance on them. Mr Heath may fairly soon have scored a distinct success in showing that the specific terms are not highly objectionable, provided one accepts the principle of increased foreign control and doesn't mind doing irreparable damage to Tory relations with the electorate. The question is not whether Mr Heath will succeed on 'the terms' and 'the vote' but whether those will be his last successes. The only way to grasp the political problem aright is to see it over the whole life of the present Parliament, and in particular to consider what will happen if the advantages anticipated from the EEC enterprise prove to be solely long-term ones.
There is no need, for the purposes of the present argument, to deny that the EEC might serve Britain well in the long-term. The precise problem is what the effects on British politics are going to be in the medium term. Support for entry as a permanent policy must mean believing that the Tory party has enough' strength not only to take us in, which may be fairly easy, but to keep us in, which, even in the medium term, may be less easy. The electoral factor is therefore not just another factor, or a matter of self-interest, it is the essence of a successful European policy.
The Tory party is now happier than it was a few weeks ago. It is uniting behind a short-term attempt to split the Labour leadership. This will see them through till October, with luck. And Mr Roy Jenkins is playing his part magnificently.
Unfortunately, after October the reality will intrude. Tories may well be induced to get Mr Heath safely through their party conference by being offered the prospect of a Labour split to sugar their own political suicide. Undoubtedly the Tory party managers are now showing as good a bedside manner to their patient as Mr Heath and Mr Rippon were earlier showing a bad one. The patient however is still dying.
By dying in this context we mean simply the evidence, which no fortitude can conceal, that the by-elections have been ghastly not just in terms of votes but because electors have been saying " no " to Mr Heath's Tory party in a way that deserves examination.
What, we must ask, is Mr Heath doing with his party? With whom is he identifying it? The answer is that he is marching it into the dawn of a better (but very long-term) future. Marching into the dawn, however, is a socialist style: it is not what Tories want and it is not what the country wants. The Tories who identify with the future are the ambitious young men who see Europe (correctly and unfortunately) as meaning bigger and better jobs for ambitious young men. Hence their fervour, hence their metropolitanism, hence their willingness to sacrifice everything (i.e. the Tory party and provincial economic stability) for a good shake-up. We all know how the Liberal party has been sacrificed to the exhibitionism of its Young Liberals. There is a danger that the Tories will become involved in a similar public identification with the kind of eager-beaver, everything will-be-all-right-on-the-day mentality shown by the Greater London Young Conservatives. (I use the latter body not because of their intrinsic significance, but simply as a metaphor for those who are young, ambitious, and acting in a metropolitan context, and who prefer the values of the Economist to the interests of their party.) The Tory party, and the country at large, is not young, not ambitious, not metropolitan, identifies with the past and not with the future, and wants stability, normality and a reasonably settled life (even if this means rejecting the values of the Economist). Mr Heath just does not seem to remember this, and it is necessary that the party of which he Is one of the greater assets should exert themselves inconspicuously to make sure that it is remembered.
Indeed, 1972 will be the trough of despond. But can 1973 and 1974 be better? The object of the Common Market game is that the weakest go to the wall, and there should be plenty of time before the next election for us to see just that. It is not clear that there will be enough time for conspicuous gratitude to influence the next contests at, say, Yeovil or Barnet. Another of the rules is that deflation must be continued throughout the entry period.
This can mean almost anything but it can hardly mean popular politics in quite the same sense as in previous pre-election situations. An adventurer might hope that by the spring of 1975 things would somehow turn out all right: but the adventurer, even if it were proper for such a person to advise a party whose job Is to embody sanity, would have to admit that things would probably not turn out all right. There is, for instance, a perfectly real possibility of a forced dissolution, at the most inconvenient possible time, not over the so-called ' key vote ' this winter, but at any odd moment in 1972-3-4, with the prospect of Labour coming back committed to repeal or modification of the Treaty, in which case Tory backbencher will have been asked to sacrifice the.
places in public life for nothing at all; indeed, for worse than nothing, for or. :e out, out for a long time, and the situation in 1975 from a Marketeer's standpoint would be far worse than it is today. Even if the Labour leadership had the will to maintain Mr Heath's European commitments in the face , of general hostility, they could only do so by propitiatory gestures in other directions: and these might take a form distinctly disagreeable even to moderate Conservatives.
Finally, there is the effect of all this on Mr Heath's authority. He has emerged this year as a true leader of his party. He has his own domestic programme which ought not to be submerged beneath that of Brussels, and which still promises reasonably well on a five-year view. But even Mr Heath, if he entered 1973 with a shattering defeat at the next election looming closer, would lose his authority. Two years of waiting for electoral disaster (i.e. 1973-5), with a lame-duck premier being considered for replacement, yet with all regular replacements associated in the public mind with the Heath regime, is not a happy prospect for the party. What in fact it needs is a good alternative man in reserve if the worst comes to the worst so that, if Mr Heath after a long run simply proves unacceptable, one could then turn to someone in the Carr/Whitelaw,' Maudling range to continue the objectives of the party, while being given the fresh start which the public gives to a new man at the top. If all these potential successors, however, have been deeply committed to an EEC policy for three or four years, then the leadership situation becomes very difficult indeed. Powell could not really be turned to for help in pursuing courses he had opposed a l'outrance. And, given the number of disgusted Tories floating around if a policy of disturbing intransigence is followed out, the 3,000 votes won at the Southampton by-election this year by Mr Bray may herald the rise of competing bodies seeking the traditional Tory vote. (Mr Bray was advertised as a speaker at a recent meeting of the National Front, which now has exactly the compelling populist thetotic that cannot be found in the Tory party. It is a potentially dangerous situation, though probably, like most such things, it will never actually materialize.) " What did she say?, just what she ought. A lady always does," wrote Miss Austen of a previous proposal. The Tory party knows what it wants and its political judgment is instinctively good. It wants the kind of national domestic reconstruction that Mr Heath can provide. It wants it in a context of stability. It does not want a Labour landslide which might give unforeseen power to left-wing elements in the Labour party, and it does not want to commit Labour to taking Britain out of Europe on regaining office. It wants a Tory programme, and it wants it from Mr Heath. It has no wish to consign its years in office to uninterrupted European grand opera.
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