Brussels, Britain, Brittan and Bunting
In Brussels for what is the 22nd crisis meeting of heads of government since 2010. Amongst the topics: banking union including how to cater for the 10 countries including the UK who don’t use the euro (though the detail on this may wait for the December summit).
This summit is to some extent trying to resolve what was actually agreed at the June summit when Francois Hollande came away saying the world had changed and Angela Merkel ended the summit saying nothing had changed.
Whether it was clever-clever elastic bandaging language that let them both think different things had been agreed, wilful blindness or wishful thinking the end result is that there’s a bit of bad faith in the air between France and Germany and you get more than a whiff of it in Francois Hollande’s interview for Le Monde and The Guardian and others. Britain’s role is not on the agenda but it is on people’s minds.
David Cameron yesterday repeated his current formulation on a referendum – here’s an interesting Tory take on how that’s seen by some in his party. Here’s James Forsyth’s piece on the referendum too.
What are the chances of David Cameron getting the sort of king-sized concessions and repatriation of EU powers that would satisfy Tory troops? In his Guardian/LeMonde interview Francois Hollande fires an opening shot saying: “… I see they (the British) want to be more in retreat. The British are tied by the accords they have signed up to. They can’t detach from them.”
Harold Wilson did a token renegotiation of powers before the only previous referendum on Europe. David Cameron wants something much meatier and fundamental. He is gambling a huge amount on getting it and it’s not clear he will.
Tighter integration
His approach until now has been to say to Europe: we won’t let you have the tighter eurozone integration you want unless you give us looser ties. But the UK government position is that it thinks tighter integration is the best hope of saving the euro and avoiding financial Armageddon so you have to wonder how much weight that approach would carry.
Hence Michael Gove and other ministers weighing in with an alternative approach: tell Europe we’re actually perfectly relaxed about walking out on Europe altogether so you’d better make us an offer if you want us to stay. But that’s a gigantic leap for someone like David Cameron to take, an even bigger leap for some of the FCO officials around him to contemplate.
It would mark a massive shift in the British stance even if it strikes some as a logical way of strengthening your bargaining power.
Happy Birthday bunting
I saw a reminder yesterday, by the way, of what a lonely business pro-Europeanism is. Just after Prime Minister’s Questions in front of Parliament, I watched a ceremony to mark the 40th anniversary of Britain’s accession to the EU. It wasn’t exactly VE day. Once there might’ve been a Westminster Abbey service of Thanksgiving.
But here were two youthful pro-EU organisers with slightly outsized birthday card for the EU, joined by 3 Labour MPs, 2 Labour peers and one Tory peer.
Lord Howe had signed the card earlier on his way to lunch. Former EU Commissioner Lord Brittan did turn up but looked a little wary of the celebrations.
He was asked to sign but said “I don’t think so.” Someone struggled to get a Tesco birthday cake out of its wrapper while another EU enthusiast unbundled “happy birthday” bunting.
At this point Lord Brittan decided to leave.
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