 A curious consensus is emerging among the British political classes. It is said both by Government ministers and Europhile Conservatives that following the French - and now the Dutch - rejection of the European constitution, "Europe" is no longer an important domestic political topic.
| The bubble has burst. The "pop" will be louder in some places than in others... |
In fact, far from eliminating the issue of European integration, the French and Dutch votes throw it into sharp relief. Assuming that Tony Blair cancels our own referendum on the constitution, Britain still has to host the EU presidency for the six months from July. And in the absence of an agreed text on the way ahead, the period will be fraught with conflict.
| He should cancel the referendumb. If not, the Brits should join the Frenchies and the Dutch in rejecting it... |
Already moves are being made to press on with reforms whose implementation does not require a new treaty, most importantly changes to the voting rules to dilute further the blocking power of individual nation states. European leaders are keen to replace the rotating six-month presidency by national governments with an individual president appointed for five years, and to create a "foreign minister" to represent us all internationally. There is also the possibility that defence policy will be "supranationalised" without a new treaty.
| I don't think anybody expects the Brusselscrats to go softly into that good night. For one thing, they have their new sauna. But the twin rejections pull the red carpet out from under them. |
But even if - and it is unlikely - Mr Blair chooses to brave the wrath of his continental colleagues and resist these initiatives, it is not enough for him to argue that the EU can remain as it is. Before the French referendum, the Prime Minister repeatedly averred that the constitution merely codified existing arrangements, and that to reject it would be to reject the EU itself. He should now live up to the implication of this rhetoric.
| ... since it's now already rejected. |
For the collapse of the edifice of the new EU has exposed the faults in the existing architecture. The rejection of the constitution by two of the three electorates which have been given a say on the matter (the Spanish people voted for it) amounts to a crisis of legitimacy for the entire project. Never mind that many of the groupings within the international No coalition give different reasons for their resistance: the very fact that some have a horror of Anglo-Saxon libéralisme, while others object that the EU is not liberal enough, demonstrates the impossibility of uniting the continent under a single state.
| The Holy Roman Empire wasn't holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. The European Union, as a free trade zone is a good idea. As a government stretching from Finland to Portugal to Greece and maybe Turkey is a crummy idea, a mass marriage of convenience without any choice in who you conveniently marry. |
The challenge for Britain now is to disengage from many of the obligations that successive governments have entered into, unasked, on our behalf. There has been talk of "repatriating" powers. Let us now see it happen. Britain should seek to recover control over all those aspects of domestic policy which do not directly impact on the internal affairs of another member state. These include taxation, industrial policy, social policy, asylum and immigration policy and employment law. This would, of course, represent a startling volte-face for Mr Blair. And yet the Prime Minister's particular skill is the performance of the graceful U-turn, couched in the language of the moral imperative. His current crusade is to make African poverty history. Let him start by withdrawing from the two commitments most harmful to that continent: the EU common policies on overseas aid and agriculture. |