David Cameron’s crass diplomacy may stop him getting what he wants

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/26/david-cameron-diplomacy-eu-referendum

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If you see your neighbour’s house on fire, it is probably not the best time to turn up asking to borrow a cup of sugar. This is the problem that David Cameron has at today’s European summit in Brussels. His fellow heads of government are not unreceptive to a renegotiation of UK membership. They are just a lot more concerned with the problem of Greek debt and the threat it poses to the integrity of the single currency. The flames are rising; the prime minister’s domestic political tea can go un-sugared for now.

As a result, all Cameron can secure from the discussions is technical agreement on how his renegotiation will work – the institutional framework within which officials will later hammer out the details. Downing Street knew this in advance and tried to keep expectations low. It is the start of a process that will take “several months” and be conducted mostly behind closed doors. This is how European diplomacy happens. It is also how delicate negotiations must be conducted. Each side has an interest in keeping its demands discreet given the cost of being seen to climb down. Everyone has to be able to emerge, blinking into the daylight, declaring the deal mutually satisfactory. That is harder if leaks and advance briefings portray one party as the obvious loser.

In other European capitals there is some sympathy with the prime minister’s domestic predicament

But already the prime minister has been forced into a public retreat. He conceded last night that no EU treaty will be changed to accommodate his renegotiation before the British public votes in a referendum. This was obvious long ago to anyone who thought about the practicality of enacting serious treaty change before autumn 2017 – Cameron’s deadline. Several member states are constitutionally obliged to hold referendums on new treaties and none want to go through that process, let alone hurry it, just to satisfy British demands.

The warnings came loud and clear, at home and abroad, which is what made it so rash for Cameron to confidently assert that his ambition was “proper, full-on treaty change”. It baffled European diplomats. Why ramp up impossible expectations? What better way to aggravate Eurosceptic tempers than setting up a wholly predictable symbolic capitulation before the substance of the talks has even begun?

In other European capitals there is some sympathy with the prime minister’s domestic predicament – the need to deliver on an election manifesto pledge and to satisfy a party whose Eurosceptic appetites are famously insatiable. And there is considerable will to keep the UK in the EU. The concern is that Cameron will make it hard for fellow European leaders to help him; that he will play the game so badly that even those who want to accommodate his needs will lose patience because his needs are really dictated by people in his party who don’t want a deal at all. Readiness to negotiate with Cameron shrinks if it starts to feel like a negotiation with the backbench of the Conservative party using Cameron as a proxy.

The prime minister could well misjudge this mood, as he did when opposing the nomination of Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission. Cameron had a compelling argument – that Juncker was a bad candidate, representing the worst of the union’s complacent, stale bureaucratic culture – and he thought others supported him. But he read the dynamics of the situation wrong, forced the matter to a vote and ended up being defeated 26 to 2. Referring to this episode, one official from a key partner state in the negotiations recently told me: “Our biggest concern is that Cameron will do another Juncker.” In other words, through crass diplomacy, he will make it impossible for some countries to support some aspect of the renegotiation, and even without a new treaty some changes will require unanimous approval.

This is exactly what hardline Tory sceptics are counting on. They knew all along that a “post-dated cheque” – a commitment to accommodate British needs in some future treaty amendment – was the best that Cameron could hope for. But they are glad of a chance to devalue the currency of that offer by holding it up against the theoretical “proper” treaty change that the prime minister himself advertised. This is also why the sceptics demand that Cameron set out his EU reform priorities in time for the next Tory party conference. If he refuses, they accuse him of a back-room stitch-up. If he acquiesces, they can say, first, that he has set his sights too low and then, when the deal is done, that he has failed to deliver exactly what he promised.

Related: Cameron set to go to referendum without EU ratifying treaty changes

It all lays the ground for the no camp to argue in the referendum campaign that the renegotiation is a sham, that the EU has proved itself beyond redemption and that the Europhile “establishment” is up to its old tricks trying to con the nation into signing away its economic and political liberty.

This device is obvious to all of Cameron’s negotiating partners in the rest of Europe. What confuses them is that the prime minister marches so blithely into the trap. He would be better off playing down the scope of the renegotiation and talking up the bigger strategic picture: that Britain is working with its neighbours to overcome some technical problems that have needlessly plagued relations for too long because both sides see it in their interests for the partnership to be rebalanced and renewed. The argument needs to be made over the heads of Tory backbenchers to the electorate.

That is the case he will have to make eventually. Yet he seems determined to postpone the moment of admitting as much. Perhaps there is some ingenious reason for this delay. Maybe the appearance of playing straight into the hands of his enemies on the Tory back benches is part of some cunning ruse. If so, it must be very clever indeed, being so effectively camouflaged as the opposite.