Liberal Vision

Europe: Clegg got it right..and then completely wrong…

Stephen Tall has a really good article over on LDV today on the subject of Europe and Cameron’s decision to reject the proposed ‘Merkozy’ EU treaty. In summary his view is that whilst he is not  going to shed any tears that the UK refused to sign-up to the deal, he says “it’s a crying shame that the UK isn’t trying to lead from within”.

Like Stephen, I consider myself an internationalist first and foremost and whilst I broadly support of the concept of the EU -  but I am not so blind that I can’t see just how fat, corrupt, protectionist and, frankly, undemocratic the EU has become.   Within that, the Euro-zone has become something of a joke – singularly inept at solving problems of its own making – flailing around coming up with one bad idea after another. The latest, (frankly laughable) idea was to introduce a Tobin tax (a tax on financial transactions) . This sought to raise many billions of euros, of which well over half would come from the Britain. Given how important the financial sector is to this country – and the likely outcome of any such move – it  was never going to be acceptable.

So we have to consider whether any other outcome was ever really likely? The truth of the matter (and there is so much that we don’t know about what actually happened during the discussions) is that David Cameron was out-manoeuvred by the French (mainly) and the Germans. The French wanted a policy that would treat the symptoms (debt) not the cause (overspending) and wanted Britain to pay for it. If they couldn’t get that then isolating Britain was the next best option. That’s bad news for the UK – but I suspect even worse news for Europe. And whilst the British Euro-sceptics may be crowing and the French and Germans basking in self-righteous glory – the truth is it’s  a crying shame for everyone.

So what of the Lib Dem’s role in all of this? It seems clear that in the run up to the discussions, Nick did all he could to help facilitate the best possible deal for the UK. Good . That’s what you want the deputy PM to be doing putting the country’s interest first (as he did when he led the party into coalition).

Nick has also shown himself to be “in tune” with the Lib Dem membership. Nick is a Euro-realist. Likewise the Lib Dem members. In a recent poll of members, 51% rejected a move towards an even closer union with Europe.  Yes, we like the concept . No we don’t like what it has become. Here are some of the quotes from that survey….

“refuse closer union UNTIL such time as the EU has been restructured into a less bureaucratic and more Liberal form”

“The right to decide what sovereignty is pooled remains an important one and should sometimes be reversed. We do not for example still need a coal and steel community or agricultural policy”

“Closer union must come with increased accountability and reform”

“We should work towards reform of CAP. We should push for more democracy in EU decision making. We should make every effort to avoid too much legislation coming from Brussels”

“It seems that the UK is not really playing a proper role therefore we should step back and re-negotiate the pressing points, like money, Common Agricultural Policy”

So the idea that we are a party blindly committed to Europe no matter how illiberal, protectionist, bureaucratic and corrupt it becomes is just plain nonsense. Nick and the majority of the party would rather be in Europe than out of it- but recognise that Europe desperately needs reform. We recognise that it isn’t Europe “at all costs”.

Where Nick has made an error – and here I will bang on again about his PR and the party’s PR – is how he has managed the post-veto situation. On Friday Nick is seemingly behind Cameron’s dramatic veto (saying that Cameron’s demands had been ‘modest and reasonable’), and a dreaded “spokesman” confirming that Nick was ‘fully signed-up’ to the veto). Given that William Hague has also stated on the record that “The negotiating position that David Cameron took on Thursday night and Friday morning was agreed in advance with the Lib Dems in the coalition” – it seems reasonable to believe that it is true.

24 hours later Nick is “ bitterly disappointed” with the outcome in Brussels, that the outcome is “bad for Britain” and could leave it “isolated and marginalised“.

Of course the two positions are not mutually exclusive.

UK’s demands probably were “reasonable” and Nick almost certainly would have agreed that Cameron should/could use the veto if all else failed (I can’t imagine that it would have been very plausible to ask David Cameron to “pop out of the room” every five minutes during the negotiations to check if his actions were OK with Nick). It is also true that the outcome was pretty miserable for everyone. What is frustrating it that Nick couldn’t have said all that on Friday in one (somewhat long) breath rather than starting out sounding supportive and getting increasingly angst-ridden about the outcome. This speaks yet again of Nick needing much better media advice that he himself trusts. This did not require a PR guru to get this right. It just required a bit of forward planning and a half decent PR brain. Neither are really much in evidence on this one.

Of course Nick has not been helped by the party grandees – and may indeed explain his faltering media stance… Talk of Vince resigning, coalition splits, even questions regarding Nick’s future as leader are unhelpful and show that we still have an awful long way to go if we want to convince the electorate that we are “fit to govern”. We have enough on our plate with the hysterical right wing press having a pop at Nick without our own doing the same. It’s odd that some Lib Dems complain at the Tories being only “half-in” Europe when some of them are only “half-in” the Lib Dems.

UPDATE:  Nick’s absence from parliament this afternoon has created a furore across the media. He says its because he did not want to be a distraction.  But in actual fact his absence seems to have created a much larger distraction. Further evidence that he needs better media advice?

FURTHER UPDATE: Watch BBC News at Ten and tell me that Nick staying away was a “good idea”

Tags: EU, Europe, lib dems, Nick Clegg, Veto

Graham Watson and a liberal narrative

In a recent post, I argued that the Lib Dems need to ensure that they have a clear identity.

In his piece congratulating Sir Graham Watson, Barry Stocker has drawn attention to a speech that Graham has given on liberalism.

The speech frames liberalism within a rich political tradition and shows why it is relevant today.

This is a welcome contribution to the ongoing discussion about where the party is going and where it should be going.

Tags: Classical Liberalism

Ordinary folks just don’t care about Europe

Given the bile spewed out almost daily by certain national newspapers over recent years, telling us why the European Union is at the heart of every problem facing Britain today, it is perhaps surprising that most people in the UK do not give a stuff about Europe. Indeed, people actually care more about drug abuse, morality or the environment than they do about Europe!

I say this with confidence. The monthly Ipsos MORI issues tracker ,which is probably one of the best trackers of the state of the nation’s collective mind, shows that only about 3% of the population think that Europe is an important issue whereas some 60% think that our economic situation is important, 30% think that unemployment is an important issue, and 20% think immigration is important.

I have always liked this survey. Ask people if Europe is important they will say yes. Ask people if they want a referendum they will say yes (who says no to a referendum I wonder? ). Read the papers and you would think it was the subject of every single chat at the office water cooler every day. Hmm right. But ask them to spontaneously indicate which things they think are important and now we are getting to what people are really thinking about – not what some push poll or newspaper wants us to believe.

And yet here I am watching the ludicrous parliamentary debate on the EU referendum. An hour or two ago they were honestly arguing about the difficulties of deciding whether any referendum should be under a FTP voting system or a preferential voting system. OH the irony!

Had David Cameron left this as a back bench debate he could have focused today on the good news coming out Libya, his scrap with Sarkozy, his trip to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting etc. His ill-judged attempt to whip the Conservative MPs has backfired monumentally. MPs we have never heard of are threatening  to resign from  jobs we have never heard of over the issue. This story is not about Europe it is ” a test of Cameron’s authority”, or  “a test of whether the Conservative party trust their leader on Europe”…..

And there can only be one outcome from this…. On a matter that only a tiny minority of us ordinary folk think important, the nation will come out of this concluding that  David Cameron is leading a divided Conservative party. That’s not good news for him or his party.  Where has David Cameron’s political antennae gone?  It left with Andy Coulson. Further evidence that someone more in touch with the mood of the nation, the way stories gather momentum, twist and turn, is needed at NO10.

Nick Clegg has not come out of this without criticism (read Simon McGrath’s excellent article on “Why won’t Nick Clegg trust the people..”). We stand for democracy, claim to be in favour of parliamentary reform and at the first sniff of democracy in action (the EU referendum brigade’s so-called e-petition) whips his party into voting against it. Better, I suppose, than whipping the party to abstain.

Tags: David Cameron, EU referendum, Europe, Nick Clegg

Should the Liberal Democrats embrace Euroscepticism?

The Liberal Democrats’ German cousins, the Free Democratic Party, in an attempt to gain votes and differentiate themselves from their conservative coalition partners tried to entice voters by dabbling in a little Euroscepticism in recent state elections. With falling poll ratings and a population increasingly doubtful at picking up the tab for spendthrift Mediterranean states, it appeared to be a strategy that was destined to succeed. Yet in Berlin, they polled 1.8% of the vote.

Sound familiar? Like the FDP, Liberal Democrat members are fretting about retaining their identity whilst in coalition. However, the plight of Philipp Rösler’s FDP has shown that differentiation for the sake of it is risky.

A reoccurring theme in the comments section of this blog is incredulity at how libertarians or classical liberals can support Britain’s continuing membership of the European Union. So perhaps LV should persuade our fellow Lib Dems to re-invent themselves as fully fledged Eurosceptics by following these online Cassandras basking in self-congratulation at the demise of the Euro? Like the German electorate’s response to the FDP’s Eurosceptic flirtation, for me it would have to be a resounding ‘Nein Danke’. Being populist doesn’t make you popular.

At its heart, the European Union is a liberal project: the four fundamental principles of the EU are, after all, the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital. Our purpose should be to make our European partners stick to these principles and the EDLR has a good record in fighting for liberalism in Europe:

“One of the core elements that bind European liberal democrats together is the belief in and strive for an economy that is based on market principles where individual economic and political freedoms are guaranteed as the most effective system for ensuring future prosperity, encouraging competiveness and ensuring longer-term employment.”

And if Bob Crow wants the UK to leave the EU, it must be doing something right…

Nonetheless, I acknowledge that the theory doesn’t always become reality. Like Simon Goldie, I believe that Nick Clegg should flesh out a reforming liberal narrative for the EU. Clegg already has a good template on which to build – his contribution to The Orange Book entitled ‘Europe: A Liberal Future’:

“…it is essential that Liberal Democrats demonstrate that being pro-European is perfectly compatible with the legitimate doubts and quibbles which many people harbour about the EU…to be pro-European does not require an abandonment of basic critical faculties. A true pro-European stance should be creative, innovative and bold…It represents the height of political pessimism to believe that pro-Europeans must automatically cede all ground on the reform and improvement of the EU to the anti-Europeans.”

Thus, our party should be at the forefront at speaking out against expensive interventionist follies such as the CAP and the new EU financial transaction tax which will hit Britain disproportionately. Such an approach is necessary to illustrate that we can be pro-European but not slavish to every policy that emanates from Brussels. A Eurosceptic approach advocating withdrawal would be wrongheaded, misguided and ideologically inconsistent for a liberal party.

The Liberal Democrats can still retain their enthusiasm for the European Union – highlighting the political, economic, social and cultural benefits – though criticising its excesses and mistakes. We don’t need to jettison our liberal, internationalist and European credentials to gain a few crumbs off the table of the Eurosceptics.

Anyway, would we want to share a platform with Peter Obore after his ‘idiotic’ showing on Newsnight?

Talking about Europe

Everyone knows that members of the Liberal Democrats are pro-Europe. There are many reasons why this is the case. The party has a long-standing international tradition. It supports free trade and the removal of protectionist barriers. The party is a product of a merger between the Liberal party and the SDP. The SDP founders left Labour because of that party’s anti-European position. And finally, there is a practical side that says it is better to be part of an organisation that impacts on how the UK operates than trying to influence that entity from the outside.

The recent Euro zone crisis has led many Euro-sceptics to argue that the Euro will be dead soon and that possibly the whole European project is coming to an end.

Nick Clegg has said made the case that the rules that were meant to apply to countries joining the Euro were not implemented. If they had been, he believes, the problems we are facing may have been avoided.

It is doubtful that this technical point will be enough to win over those voters who are beginning to question how things are being run in the EU.

Clegg has talked in the past of making the EU more liberal. Now would be a good time to set out what that means and what the party is going to do to try and influence European policymakers so that the EU pursues a more liberal policy agenda.

Offering voters a reforming liberal agenda for Europe would help differentiate the party and develop Clegg’s liberal narrative.

 

Tags: liberalism