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Britain at sixes and sevens over EU treaty

In British politics, there is perhaps no other two-letter word that packs so much provocation as the term, European Union. The idea of a strong and democratic EU in which Britain is merely an equal partner, sharing powers with other member-states rather than being allowed to wield the big stick, is anathema to British “nationalists,” especially of the Tory variety, whose politics derives from a slightly archaic notion of nationalism. They see the EU as a hostile project — indeed an anti-U.K. conspiracy — souped up by Germany and France to dominate Europe.

No wonder, the Euro-sceptics, mostly the Tories and right-wing media, have kicked up a storm over the EU Reform Treaty that Prime Minister Gordon Brown endorsed at a summit of European leaders in Lisbon last week. The treaty, which will be formally signed in December, will replace the aborted EU constitution scrapped after France and the Netherlands rejected it in referendums in 2005. But it will not come into force until all the 27 member-states have ratified it — hopefully by 2009.

Architects of the treaty claim that it is designed simply to streamline decision-making and formalise the current arrangements. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair famously described it as a “tidying up” exercise to bring together the existing treaties and protocols under one roof, as it were.

But its opponents (and there are many in the Labour Party, as well as on the Left) argue that the treaty transfers substantial powers from Westminster to Brussels, compromising Britain’s national sovereignty in key areas. Among other things, it creates a new longer-term president of the European Council to replace the current six-month rotating presidency, an EU foreign policy chief, an EU diplomatic service and more EU-wide social and legal provisions. Euro-sceptics see it as the same old defunct constitution in a new bottle and want a referendum arguing that the treaty will fundamentally change Britain’s relations with EU. The Tory leader, David Cameron, has written to Mr. Brown citing Labour’s manifesto promise of a referendum on the EU constitution and claiming that since the treaty is a rehash of the constitution, it should be put to a vote of the people.

Mr. Brown’s boast, in rather a different context, that honouring the party’s manifesto was an “issue of trust with me and the electorate” has come to haunt him. Mr. Cameron, in his widely-publicised letter, reminded him: “This is indeed a matter of trust with the electorate. So, will you now honour the promise you made to the British people to hold a referendum?”

The sight of Mr. Brown saying “yes” to the treaty so upset the Europhobic Murdoch press that The Sun compared the occasion to the Last Supper, accusing him of “betraying” Britain. “The PM transformed the lavish banquet (of EU leaders) into a sordid Last Supper for Britain as an independent state,” it moaned prompting The Guardian to note that it was a “hysterical reaction even from a newspaper with a history of exaggerating the implications of European Union membership.”

The Sun, with its propensity to cause offence, may have gone overboard, as usual, but other cheerleaders for the anti-EU lobby such as the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph were hardly more restrained. The Mail charged Mr. Brown with “stripping this nation of its sovereignty in crucial areas — and denying future generations of Britons the right, hard-won by our ancestors, to choose who should govern them and how.” The Telegraph, which has launched a referendum petition and is urging its readers to pester their local MPs on the issue, warned Mr. Brown that he would be committing an “offensively anti-democratic” act if he continued to resist calls for a referendum.

The anti-EU groups have mushroomed in recent days, launching online petitions, taking out advertisements, conducting opinion polls, and getting “independent” think-tanks to publish reports on the “adverse” effects of Britain’s closer economic and political integration with Europe. Sections of the normally pro-EU Left, also, have reservations about the treaty which, they believe, is heavily pro-corporate sector. Labour-affiliated Trades Union Congress has joined calls for a referendum claiming that the treaty is bad for British workers

More embarrassingly for the government, many Labour MPs are reportedly planning to vote against it in Parliament. A virtual “revolt” is said to be brewing among Labour backbenchers prompting comparisons with the rebellion that the then Conservative Prime Minister, John Major, faced from his party MPs over the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.

Among the prominent Labour MPs who have come out openly against the treaty are Gisela Stuart who helped draft the original constitution, and Keith Vaz, a former Europe minister. Ms. Stuart, in particular, has used exceptionally strong language to attack Mr. Brown for refusing to call a referendum. She has accused him of “lying” over the treaty which, according to her, is not fundamentally different from the constitution that the Labour Party had promised to put to a referendum.

“Sticking to your guns in defence of a patently dishonest position is not leadership but the soft option and a cop-out from a specific promise made to voters,” she says.

There was the strange spectacle of Michael Connarty, a senior Labour MP and chairman of Parliament’s European Scrutiny Committee, likening the government’s stance on the treaty to Neville Chamberlain’s “appeasement” of Hitler in the 1930s. His remarks, while taking evidence from Foreign Secretary David Miliband, so incensed the latter that he wanted an apology.

“You are saying this [the treaty] is the equivalent of Neville Chamberlain coming back in the late 1930s from Munich claiming to have an agreement with Adolf Hitler. That is not worthy of any of you,” he retorted.

Mr. Connarty reluctantly offered an apology but remained unconvinced of the government’s rosy view and his committee rejected the official claim that the treaty is substantially different from the failed constitution.

Mr. Brown remains defiant insisting that there is no case for a referendum as many of the controversial provisions contained in the original constitution, and which would have warranted a referendum, have been abandoned. The treaty, he says, fully protects Britain’s national interests.

“The changes … include all the protections to the national British interest we demanded. I said before the summit that if we secured all these protections then in my view there was going to be no need for a referendum,” he declared after approving the treaty.

The government line is that the fears about loss of British national sovereignty are, at best, exaggerated and, at worst, manufactured by its critics. It claims to have secured an “opt-out” on as many as 10 provisions — ranging from social and labour legislation to judicial processes and foreign policy — that threatened British sovereignty. Ministers accuse its opponents of misrepresenting facts and manipulating opinion polls to whip up a referendum “hysteria.”

The problem is that few on either side of the debate have fully read the constitution or the treaty, both written in dense prose and riddled with jargon; and those who have interpret them in a way that suits them. According to the BBC, which compared the two, the defunct constitution and the reform treaty are “quite different to read” but “the practical outcome of both treaties is pretty much the same.” Some believe that the treaty contains more than 90 per cent of the constitution.

To the extent that there is widespread ignorance about what the treaty exactly contains and most of the claims and counter-claims are based on hearsay, the government is right in treating pro-referendum polls with scepticism. But who is to blame for this state of affairs?

Although the controversy over Europe has been raging for years, the government, which came to power promising to put Britain at the “heart” of Europe, has done little to create awareness about the benefits of a strong British-EU relationship; or to put forward its case with any amount of clarity and coherence. Indeed, Mr. Brown himself is rather a reluctant European and, as Chancellor, was instrumental in making sure that Britain did not join the single-currency regime.

The debate in Parliament is expected to be almost as stormy as the one on the Maastricht Treaty, dubbed the “mother of all parliamentary debates.” In the end, though, despite the threat of a rebellion from its own MPs, the government is likely to romp home thanks to support from Liberal Democrats and a few pro-Europe Tory MPs. But the agonising debate on Europe will not end until Britain is able to shed the historical baggage that fuels so much of the prevailing Euro-scepticism in the country. And that’s a tall order.

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