UK’s EU dilemma

Published March 9, 2016
mahir.dawn@gmail.com
mahir.dawn@gmail.com

IT wouldn’t be particularly surprising to discover that French president François Hollande’s warning last week that the refugee encampments in Calais would in all likelihood be relocated to Kent in the event of a British exit from the European Union was prompted by a special request from the British prime minister.

Having led the Conservative Party to a surprisingly decisive victory in last year’s general election, David Cameron now faces the prospect of seeing his tenure as head of government cut short. It is widely assumed that a popular vote in favour of the Brexit option in the referendum scheduled for June 23 would entail the end of his prime ministership, given the British ruling party is deeply divided on the issue, with a number of Cameron’s colleagues vociferously campaigning to undermine his stance.

Among the most prominent of these is his Eton and Oxford chum Boris Johnson, the colourful mayor of London, whose knack for attracting publicity may well be responsible for sleepless nights at No 10 Downing Street. Johnson’s ambition to lead the Tories is bound to have entered his calculations in choosing sides.


Cameron may see his tenure cut short.


The ‘Leave’ camp also includes justice secretary Michael Gove and work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, a former party leader. Michael Howard, another former Conservative leader, is also campaigning for an exit. Cameron has marginally more Tory MPs on his side than against him on this issue, but the party is effectively split down the middle.

The opposition Labour Party is considerably more united, with all but a handful of MPs opting for the ‘Remain’ camp, broadly based on the notion of British clout being deployed to push for EU reform. If that makes it seem that Labour is effectively on Cameron’s side in this tussle, the party is also inclined to share his Tory opponents’ view that the concessions the PM obtained from the EU last month are inconsequential.

In the run-up to Britain’s previous referendum on this question in 1975, it was the Labour Party, in power at the time under Harold Wilson, that was more divided, with cabinet minister Tony Benn campaigning in favour of quitting what was then known as the European Economic Community. Britain had signed up just two years earlier, after its applications to join had been vetoed twice by French president Charles de Gaulle over the previous decade.

Benn was anything but a Little Englander: his objection to the project was based primarily on what he saw as its inherent dearth of democratic structures and safeguards. His opinion remained essentially unchanged over the decades as the EEC evolved into the EU, transforming itself by degrees from a trading community of six states into a supranational behemoth with 28 members, a common currency and passport-free travel. (There are exceptions, though: Britain is, by choice, excluded from the euro and Schengen arrangements.)

As most Europeans would recognise, there are both positives and negatives in the EU structure, and favouring or opposing it depends on perceptions of which of these elements outweighs the other. There can be little doubt, however, that some of the worst aspects of the EU were on display last year when Brussels bludgeoned Greece into accepting conditions that its electorate had decisively rejected and which the democratically chosen government in Athens found hard to swallow. The EU’s will prevailed, however, once prime minister Alexis Tsipras resolved that opting to quit the EU would involve a perilous journey into uncharted waters.

The vacuousness of the EU’s prescriptions returned to haunt Greece once more this week, tho­ugh, when the prospect of a Grexit returned to the agenda. The progenitor of European democracy has, meanwhile, also been burdened with the task of bearing the brunt of the refugee influx into Europe, with Macedonian border controls turning Greece into what Tsipras has poetically described as “a warehouse of souls”.

His former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, is meanwhile advising the British Labour Party and shares its possibly unduly optimistic view that the EU can be reformed from within. Meanwhile, some of the British politicians holding out for a Leave vote appear to believe that a negative referendum result would persuade Brussels to offer more concessions than Cameron was able to wrangle.

A common component of the British debate is the fear factor, in the context of refugees as well as terrorism. Broadly, both sides argue that deterioration would ensue if their concerns are disregarded. Notwithstanding its delusions of grandeur, though, Britain is a small part of the European project. At this juncture, however, it is perfectly conceivable that a Brexit could spark a disintegration of the EU.

At the moment, the notion of any one nation mustering the clout to reform the EU by making it more responsive to democratic imperatives seems fatuous. A Brexit would undoubtedly be a watershed, but whether it would persuade the Brussels bureaucracy to reconsider its excesses remains an open question.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2016

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