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| David Cameron got a good deal on the EU. Just look at the fine print David Cameron got a good deal on the EU. Just look at the fine print | |
| (3 months later) | |
| David Cameron has been on the wrong end of a media kicking all week over Europe. The polls have turned anti-European in the aftermath. But does all this say more about the prime minister or more about the British press? The answer, overwhelmingly, is the latter. | David Cameron has been on the wrong end of a media kicking all week over Europe. The polls have turned anti-European in the aftermath. But does all this say more about the prime minister or more about the British press? The answer, overwhelmingly, is the latter. |
| Readers should take half an hour this weekend to actually study the document on Britain’s grievances that Cameron and Donald Tusk have produced for this month’s EU summit. Far and away the most obvious thing that emerges is that Europe has made some real concessions and that Cameron has therefore made some equally real gains. | Readers should take half an hour this weekend to actually study the document on Britain’s grievances that Cameron and Donald Tusk have produced for this month’s EU summit. Far and away the most obvious thing that emerges is that Europe has made some real concessions and that Cameron has therefore made some equally real gains. |
| Yet if you read only the accounts of the document that have appeared in the implacably anti-European press, you would get a wholly different impression. There the message is that everything in the Tusk-Cameron document is marginal, even meaningless, though simultaneously a threat to our whole way of life. | Yet if you read only the accounts of the document that have appeared in the implacably anti-European press, you would get a wholly different impression. There the message is that everything in the Tusk-Cameron document is marginal, even meaningless, though simultaneously a threat to our whole way of life. |
| These characterisations are false, going on mendacious. The Tusk-Cameron document is sensible and balanced. The proposals go some way to answering each of the objections that the UK government has put to its partners on the four subjects of political union, competitiveness, non-eurozone rights and control of migrant welfare rights. If what matters to you in the Europe debate is that the EU should raise its game on these questions, then it’s a good deal. | These characterisations are false, going on mendacious. The Tusk-Cameron document is sensible and balanced. The proposals go some way to answering each of the objections that the UK government has put to its partners on the four subjects of political union, competitiveness, non-eurozone rights and control of migrant welfare rights. If what matters to you in the Europe debate is that the EU should raise its game on these questions, then it’s a good deal. |
| That is not to pretend that Cameron has persuaded the rest of the EU to overturn the existing union. He has not. That was not his goal, though it was the goal that some of the press and backbench critics wanted. Nor is it to pretend that the issues covered in the negotiation are the everyday priorities of people in pubs, tavernas and brasseries across Europe. That was never the objective either, though perhaps it should have been. | That is not to pretend that Cameron has persuaded the rest of the EU to overturn the existing union. He has not. That was not his goal, though it was the goal that some of the press and backbench critics wanted. Nor is it to pretend that the issues covered in the negotiation are the everyday priorities of people in pubs, tavernas and brasseries across Europe. That was never the objective either, though perhaps it should have been. |
| Nor, above all, is it to concede that this whole renegotiation was necessary except in terms of Cameron’s relationship with his party and the press. A Britain that was fully engaged in the EU would not have needed to put itself through this whole dangerous distraction. It would be focused on making Europe work better for ordinary people, perhaps in some of the ways that Yanis Varoufakis suggested today. But a Britain fully engaged in Europe seems as distant as a British republic. | Nor, above all, is it to concede that this whole renegotiation was necessary except in terms of Cameron’s relationship with his party and the press. A Britain that was fully engaged in the EU would not have needed to put itself through this whole dangerous distraction. It would be focused on making Europe work better for ordinary people, perhaps in some of the ways that Yanis Varoufakis suggested today. But a Britain fully engaged in Europe seems as distant as a British republic. |
| Nevertheless, read the detail. These are not meaningless proposals. In their diplomatic and lawyerly Eurospeak, they clarify in black and white that the UK has got things that matter to it, and things that will allow its current conditional membership of the EU to continue more securely than before. It is downright lazy and mischievous to pretend otherwise. | Nevertheless, read the detail. These are not meaningless proposals. In their diplomatic and lawyerly Eurospeak, they clarify in black and white that the UK has got things that matter to it, and things that will allow its current conditional membership of the EU to continue more securely than before. It is downright lazy and mischievous to pretend otherwise. |
| On political union, a permanent UK worry, the document states that “ever closer union” is about trust and understanding, not political integration. It should not be used to extend the EU’s powers. Different paths for different states are recognised, specifically in the UK’s case. National parliaments are given more powers to block EU laws. That’s what the UK wanted and it’s what the UK got. | On political union, a permanent UK worry, the document states that “ever closer union” is about trust and understanding, not political integration. It should not be used to extend the EU’s powers. Different paths for different states are recognised, specifically in the UK’s case. National parliaments are given more powers to block EU laws. That’s what the UK wanted and it’s what the UK got. |
| On competitiveness, the document says the internal market is an essential objective, that costs for small businesses should be lowered and that an ambitious trade policy must be pursued. Yes, it is a bit woolly. But it is something the UK wanted and something the UK has got. | On competitiveness, the document says the internal market is an essential objective, that costs for small businesses should be lowered and that an ambitious trade policy must be pursued. Yes, it is a bit woolly. But it is something the UK wanted and something the UK has got. |
| On economic governance, a genuine UK concern, the document says economic and monetary union is voluntary, not compulsory, while making clear that the eurozone is a fundamental objective for its members. But countries outside the eurozone will not be discriminated against. That’s a serious acknowledgment that the EU is not, and will not be, the same as the eurozone. Once again, this was a UK demand and a UK achievement. | On economic governance, a genuine UK concern, the document says economic and monetary union is voluntary, not compulsory, while making clear that the eurozone is a fundamental objective for its members. But countries outside the eurozone will not be discriminated against. That’s a serious acknowledgment that the EU is not, and will not be, the same as the eurozone. Once again, this was a UK demand and a UK achievement. |
| And on EU migration and benefits, an undoubted if often exaggerated UK public concern, the document accepts, not just in theory but also in practice, that EU migrant workers cannot have an unconditional right to welfare benefits in other member states. Tusk has stood firm in defence of freedom of movement, but the proposal to index some payments to a claimant’s country of origin and the plan for a so-called emergency brake on migration are practical concessions to an often overheated concern. This also is what the UK wanted and what it has now got. | And on EU migration and benefits, an undoubted if often exaggerated UK public concern, the document accepts, not just in theory but also in practice, that EU migrant workers cannot have an unconditional right to welfare benefits in other member states. Tusk has stood firm in defence of freedom of movement, but the proposal to index some payments to a claimant’s country of origin and the plan for a so-called emergency brake on migration are practical concessions to an often overheated concern. This also is what the UK wanted and what it has now got. |
| So, why has Cameron been put through the wringer? The answer is simply that the anti-European press is appalled that a Conservative government is about to recommend staying in Europe. The cocktail of fury, pomposity and hyperbole that reached a climax in the Daily Mail’s preposterous but historic front-page cry “Who will speak for England?” isn’t practical or rational but visceral. | So, why has Cameron been put through the wringer? The answer is simply that the anti-European press is appalled that a Conservative government is about to recommend staying in Europe. The cocktail of fury, pomposity and hyperbole that reached a climax in the Daily Mail’s preposterous but historic front-page cry “Who will speak for England?” isn’t practical or rational but visceral. |
| Behind it, though, is something genuinely significant. For a generation of rightwing Conservatives, press owners, editors and writers, whose post-imperial worldview was hardened into dogmatic Europhobia in the Margaret Thatcher era to which they dream intoxicatedly of returning, the EU referendum is a climactic opportunity to stop all the clocks and return to an imaginary 1940, Daily Mail version. Cameron threatens to deny them that moment. | Behind it, though, is something genuinely significant. For a generation of rightwing Conservatives, press owners, editors and writers, whose post-imperial worldview was hardened into dogmatic Europhobia in the Margaret Thatcher era to which they dream intoxicatedly of returning, the EU referendum is a climactic opportunity to stop all the clocks and return to an imaginary 1940, Daily Mail version. Cameron threatens to deny them that moment. |
| So it is possible to see this week’s extraordinary scenes on several levels of reality, though they all lead to the same immediate conclusion. Most basically and fundamentally, the EU referendum is about improving the practical ways in which Europe and Britain can make their mutual dependency work best. For this reason alone, Cameron should be supported. | So it is possible to see this week’s extraordinary scenes on several levels of reality, though they all lead to the same immediate conclusion. Most basically and fundamentally, the EU referendum is about improving the practical ways in which Europe and Britain can make their mutual dependency work best. For this reason alone, Cameron should be supported. |
| On another level, the referendum is also about the trajectory of the modern Tory party, whose pragmatism remains vulnerable to the anachronistic heresies about British greatness laced with small state liberalism that Thatcher bequeathed to her successors. Even non-Tories have a dog in this fight. Once again, with all the necessary caveats, his name is Cameron. | On another level, the referendum is also about the trajectory of the modern Tory party, whose pragmatism remains vulnerable to the anachronistic heresies about British greatness laced with small state liberalism that Thatcher bequeathed to her successors. Even non-Tories have a dog in this fight. Once again, with all the necessary caveats, his name is Cameron. |
| But it will also decide who is to be master in the British press’s war against British government and politics. Parts of the media have a collective self-interest in discrediting and diminishing government and politics at every turn in order, ultimately, to protect the autonomy of their interests from any form of accountability. In that contest too it is important to be clear whose side we are on. | But it will also decide who is to be master in the British press’s war against British government and politics. Parts of the media have a collective self-interest in discrediting and diminishing government and politics at every turn in order, ultimately, to protect the autonomy of their interests from any form of accountability. In that contest too it is important to be clear whose side we are on. |