#Brexit Stop digging: Why Cameron’s reforms and a woolly referendum won’t stop Brits agonizing over Europe

The best thing about repeatedly banging your head against a brick wall is that it’s such a relief to stop. Unfortunately for the United Kingdom, the headbanging over Europe is unlikely to stop any time soon; the EU summit on 18 February certainly won’t bring it to a final conclusion, even if Prime Minister David Cameron gets his way and wins over the doubters among the leaders of Britain’s twenty-seven partner countries in the European Union, writes Jim Gibbons.

The Eurosceptic view in the UK is so deeply entrenched and supported, it would appear, by so much of the mainstream media, that serious debate of the issues is drowned out by the cacophony of outrageous hyperbole, shrilled by the populist press at megaphone-level. The day after the summit, various “out” campaigners plan to stage a rally in the heart of Westminster to whip up support.

After European Council President Donald Tusk announced his proposals to meet British concerns, Mr. Cameron trumpeted it as a success while his Eurosceptic back benchers – those once described by former Prime Minister John Major as “bastards” – derided it as a non-starter. So did most of the British tabloid press, with headlines like 'Who do EU think you’re kidding Mr. Cameron?', a reference to the theme song to the television comedy series Dad’s Army, about the misdeeds and mishaps of a British Home Guard unit during the Second World War.

In fact, the media reaction mainly derives from jingoism and, of course, what newspapers think will appeal to readers¹ and it seems that Europe-bashing is a popular sport. But perhaps more alarming for Mr. Cameron is the effect the proposals had on the opinion polls. Overall, there was a swing of 3.5% towards leaving the EU. The poll, conducted by YouGov before and after the proposed reforms were announced, revealed that 48% of Conservative voters favour leaving compared with just 30% who say they’ll vote to stay. 56% said the reforms were insufficient with only 39% saying it was a good deal. Cameron may take some comfort from the fact that telephone polls produced slightly more positive replies, but he’s undoubtedly in a hole. And the first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.

The Brexit argument is hardly a cerebral one on either side. It’s not about money any more. Even after Tony Blair surrendered part of Mrs. Thatcher’s rebate, acquired with much handbagging at the Fontainbleu summit in June, 1984, Britain’s gross contribution is a little over €25 billion. Once you take into account what Britain receives back, it’s not a lot. Norway pays around 90% of the UK’s payment per head of population just to access the Single Market. Eurosceptics argue that Britain could get a better deal from outside but it threatens to be a messy divorce, with both sides arguing over how to divide up the wedding presents and who gets to keep the cat.

The whole affair puzzles many of the EU’s neighbours to the East who dream of one day joining the club themselves. Mainly mired in corruption and ineffectual government, a majority still hope to be admitted at some distant future date. Moldova, for instance, has had five prime ministers since Vlad Filat stood down in 2013. He has since been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the disappearance of a billion dollars from the country’s banks in a terribly complex bit of embezzlement.

That’s five prime ministers in little over two years, three in the last twelve months. And yet late last year, pro-EU demonstrators camped outside the country’s Parliament demanding that a new prime minister favourable to their view. They got their way – for now – with the appointment of Pavel Filip on 16 January who, like his predecessors, is part of a three-party pro-EU coalition.

It’s worth remembering, though, that a parallel demonstration took place further along the road, favouring Russia, fuelled partly by Vladimir Putin’s clever PR operation. I’ve seen Eurosceptics sneer at the ambitions of former Soviet countries, but maybe their pro-European views are rooted in a remembrance of conflict and hardship, as is the European Union itself. In the wealthy West, we’ve forgotten that and we’ve grown soft, perhaps.

Turning back to that poll, it seems some 72% want to see less red tape and 69% want those countries not using the euro to be protected from decisions taken within the Eurogroup. Which sounds a bit like a keen golfer wanting to influence the policies of a club of which he’s not a member, just because he plays the occasional round there. From a British perspective, it’s just not cricket (or golf). Much of the red tape the Eurosceptics would like to cut is connected with health and safety and consumer protection, but it is often misrepresented. M&S Bank, which runs Marks and Spencer’s credit card scheme, recently wrote to its customers to explain why it’s cutting the loyalty points it awards when using it in places other than Marks and Spencer shops.

The letter says – truthfully but somewhat misleadingly – “You may have heard about a new piece of European Union legislation, which came into effect in December 2015, which reduces the income paid by businesses to banks every time a credit card is used. This historically contributed to the running of customer accounts.” So M&S Bank is cutting the points it awards for non-Marks and Spencer purchases from one point per pound spent to one point per five pounds. You’ll be getting a worse deal and it’s all the fault of the European Union. That’s a few more votes for the “out” camp among middle class shoppers, even though the rule change was to stop banks from over-charging small businesses.

It’s perhaps instructive that some of those financing the Brexit campaign are owners of hedge funds and private equity companies who fear EU regulation in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis that a combination of their greed and inadequate bank supervision caused. Yes, I’ve heard Conservative supporters blaming the former Labour government, but that doesn’t explain the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Freddie Mac or Fanny Mae or the global economic collapse. Tony Blair may have believed he could walk on water but his (and Gordon Brown’s) government wasn’t THAT influential. And they didn’t invent Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), which were dreamed up by a Scottish woman working for J.P. Morgan.

There’s much discussion of divisions within Britain’s “out” camp: two separate campaigns, arguing over the details, but the “stay in” side is similarly somewhat fractured, offering little more than horror stories about the risks of leaving, rather than flagging up the positive side. They risk becoming like Cassandra, always warning, never listened to but ultimately found – far too late – to have been right.

The Labour Party seems somewhat lukewarm, too, being itself divided over what’s best. Last week, former shadow chancellor Ed Balls wrote in the Wall Street Journal that he welcomed the return of border controls and in a subsequent BBC interview said he believed most people would welcome the ending of the Schengen border-free movement agreement. I presume when he says “most people” he means “most people who read the Daily Mail, Sun, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph who seldom travel abroad except on holiday”, and not those EU citizens who have consistently voted Schengen as the best thing the European Union has ever done, many of whom cross borders every day for work.

And if, as some Brexit campaigners want, EU migrant workers in Britain are sent home, where do they plan to house the estimated two million British people living elsewhere in Europe when they are obliged to return to their motherland? Despite some media stories, most are far from rich, so would need housing somewhere. How about putting them in the deprived areas favoured by the British government for resettling Syrian refugees, such as Middlesbrough, Rochdale or Stockton? Far from the largely Conservative-voting Home Counties, anyway. And what about the refugee crisis? It may be undermining Angela Merkel’s power in Germany as many Germans (still a minority) turn against the welcome for those fleeing death and war, but it’s hardly touched Britain in real terms.

To read the headlines in papers like the Daily Express, you’d think the refugees were irresponsibly fleeing those who would bomb them or starve them to death because such behaviour is mildly inconvenient and they want to get their undeserving hands on free houses and benefits. Even normally liberal Denmark is seizing the refugees’ assets, a decision that brought uncomfortably to mind how I felt as a visitor, standing on the platform at Auschwitz where German guards took what little the deported Jews had in order to fund the Third Reich before murdering the owners. I’m sure it’s not like that; the Danes are a kindly people. But it made the hairs on my neck stand on end and it left me feeling grubby.

A referendum in the summer for David Cameron? It doesn’t seem any more likely than a plebiscite for turkeys about the benefits of Christmas. He might lose, but then, he might lose anyway. Then the Scots would hold a second referendum and the Nationalists might win, allowing Mr. Cameron to go down in history as the man who not only cut Britain off from mainland Europe (as he partially did when he withdrew the Tories from the centre-right European People’s Party group) but also then waved bye-bye to the Scots, sailing off into the cold, stormy Atlantic in a little boat called England-and-Wales.

He may be remembered like Herbert Morrison, one-time Labour minister in Clement Attlee’s government, who, when told over dinner of France’s last-ditch invitation to join the European Coal and Steel Community, fore-runner of the European Union, said “Oh no, the Durham miners would never forgive us!” It was a decision described by President Truman’s Secretary of State, Dean Acheson – the man who strong-armed Robert Schuman into making his famed 1950 “declaration – as the most stupid decision made by any major nation in the immediate post-war period. I have a feeling President Obama and other world leaders might view David Cameron’s referendum in much the same light.

© Jim Gibbons, February 2016

Share this article: