Read an interesting article in this month’s Red Pepper. It seemed to bear out what I’ve long suspected: behind their anti-European rhetoric British prime ministers, both Labour and Tory, know that European integration is essential if this country is to survive. Thatcher, seemingly the Daily Mail incarnate, signed up to the ERM, Major signed the Maastricht Treaty, and Brown the Lisbon Treaty.
Since Heath, there’s only been one overtly pro-European premier and he chickened out of joining the Euro, a policy in which he believed but was too frightened by Murdoch to carry out. Such a shame John Smith succumbed to a heart attack: according to Francis Beckett things might have been very different if he’d survived.
The Red Pepper article points out that the fact that ‘the EU has signed up for … centralisation under the aegis of Brussels of national budgetary decision making for all member states as of 2011’ has received very little coverage in the British tabloid press. Instead they rouse their readers to fury with stories of ‘how the EU allegedly wants to harmonise condom sizes, ban smoky bacon crisps because the woodsmoke seasoning may cause cancer, and rename chocolate “vegelate”.’
Red Pepper, like many on the left, deplores the way in which the inexorable growth in Brussel’s power is hidden from the public. So do I, but for rather different reasons. Unlike Red Pepper I think the EU is our future. But like Red Pepper, Ukip, the BNP and the Daily Mail I’m opposed to rule by ‘unelected bureaucrats’. And there’s a simple answer: give the real power to the European Parliament not the Commission. But that, of course, wouldn’t suit those running Westminster whether they’re Labour or Tory. Far better to continually carp about the EU to keep the Murdoch press and the Daily Mail onside whilst in reality supporting rule by unelected bureaucrats because it’s the national governments who put them in post.
There is an alternative vision: to rejoice in being European, to cherish that common culture, depicted in the map above, which gave us peace and prosperity for half a millennium. And to strive for the day when we once again have the political and economic union which might give us a chance of surviving in a world dominated by China, India and Brazil. As someone much more eloquent than I once put it:
“We British are as much heirs to the legacy of European culture as any other nation. Our links to the rest of Europe, the continent of Europe, have been the dominant factor in our history…Too often, the history of Europe is described as a series of interminable wars and quarrels. Yet from our perspective today surely what strikes us most is our common experience… It is the record of nearly two thousand years of British involvement in Europe, cooperation with Europe and contribution to Europe, contribution which today is as valid and as strong as ever…
Britain does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the European Community. Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community.” [Margaret Thatcher, September 20th, 1988]
