The Conservatives are determined to be seen as the anti-Europe party, but an EU referendum that took Britain out of the union would be a disaster for the party
Island nation … leaving the EU won’t isolate the UK. It will isolate England. Photograph: David Parry / PA Wire
Having a referendum on membership of the EU is a bit like having a referendum on membership of the moon's gravitational pull. You can vote to leave it all you like, but it will still be there, exerting the natural influence of its mass. Even China has EU regulations on its statute book, because it needs them to trade with Europe. The best that can be said of a possible withdrawal is that at last Westminster will have only itself to blame. Oh, and of course there will be an end to the regular convulsions of drama over the possibility of having a referendum on membership of the EU. Which admittedly does sound nice.
The poor old Tories – Europe drives them so bonkers. They're like cartoon characters whose eyes turn into pound-signs, except their pupils are shaped like crosses, for votes. The Conservatives are keen to be seen as the anti-Europe party. But Ukip has stolen their thunder. This is a disaster for the Tories for two reasons.
First, it destroys a carefully cultivated Tory image, whereby they can make tough-looking gestures to play to the grassroots.
Second, it destroys the second most important electoral advantage the Conservatives have left (the most important being the first-past-the-post voting system). The coalition has weakened the left's long-standing electoral problem, which was that the leftish vote was split while the rightish vote was a one-stop shop. Ukip has provided a protest vote for disenchanted Tories, just as – up until the moment when David Cameron promised Nick Clegg a rose garden – the Lib Dems provided an alternative to Labour. Now, they are more likely, if anything, to provide another alternative to the Conservatives. Oh, the irony.
Beyond party politics, however, there is not much logic in Conservative Europhobia. In fact, it runs contrary to many of the Conservatives' other long-cherished beliefs. How can people who were so against devolution for the UK's member states be so determinedly in favour of devolving away from Brussels? That's an easy one, isn't it? Devolution within the UK takes power away from Westminster, while leaving the EU will, the poor darlings imagine, give it more. But Scotland will want to stay in Europe, as Nigel Farage's short shrift in Edinburgh this week demonstrated. Wales will want to stay in Europe. Northern Ireland will want to stay in Europe. Withdrawal from the EU won't isolate the UK. It will isolate England, making lukewarm support for full independence, especially in Scotland, a great deal more attractive. The Conservatives, despite their interminable resentment of Europe, really haven't thought this through.
More intractable is the Conservatives' supposed commitment to globalisation and free trade, and supposed horror of protectionism and restrictive practices. Europe, for all its reputation as some kind of dastardly machine for the promotion of crypto-communism, is really just a hothouse environment in which the promised fruits of neoliberalism are forced into ripening more quickly. Whether or not it was right to huddle under the glass with so much of the rest of the continent (and at the risk of labouring a metaphor to death), the process of hardening off out in the global garden is likely to kill a few tubers.
Not Conservative tubers, though. The most deep hypocrisy of the right is seen in its attitude to immigration. The Conservatives are keen to promote themselves as the anti-immigration party, and shake their heads in disgust over the mass immigration that took place under Blair and Brown. However, Labour policy on immigration dates back to the "prawn cocktail offensive", under which New Labour persuaded the City of London that it would look after its interests. Look after them, Labour did, not only turning a blind eye to all kinds of tax dodges, but also obliging the Confederation of British Industry and the Institute of Directors, both of which are institutions stuffed with Tories whose political views took a poor second place to their passion for keeping wages down. Were the Tories to manage to get a referendum on Europe, win it, and put a curb on EU immigration, then, yes, there would be British jobs for British workers, probably alongside a nice non-EU regulation setting the minimum wage at the same level as universal benefit in order to make employing someone pay. People are told that immigrants stole their jobs. In truth, it was employers who wanted a ready supply of workers unused to the living conditions that it took the second world war for the ordinary people of Britain to achieve. The goal of neoliberal globalisation is supposedly a redistribution of wealth around the planet. It also, as the EU itself is discovering, redistributes poverty.
There can be no doubt that the EU is not an entirely successful experiment. It most definitely went too far, too fast. Certainly, there can be few people in Britain who are not now relieved to be outside the eurozone. But, even within Britain one can see the trouble with having disparate parts of the country, with disparate economic needs, all dancing to the same economic tune. Only too well.
The truth is that what's needed is for devolved and local government to be strengthened, and given more fiscal powers. But although the Conservatives like to proclaim their hatred of centralised and distant government, they are not too keen on that. Again, of course, it's all about power. If local government were to become more powerful, then Westminster would find itself either the government of the home counties or simply a mini-EU, passing legislation that allowed the regions of Britain to trade fairly and equally; legislation that would no doubt look uncannily similar to EU legislation. Because it's not the EU that is an extra layer of government that no one really needs – it's Westminster. The European parliament is an institution with a democratic deficit precisely because it exists only to enact what the heads of member states have agreed. Local government in Britain is similarly hampered by the directives of Westminster. Across Europe, national governments are struggling against the advent of their own irrelevance, desperate to stop the leak of any more power either above or below, even as countries fall to government by technocrat. The nation state itself is in crisis, and the denizens of Westminster are the people least likely to see or accept that.
A Britain outside Europe would be governed by multinationals, who would be attracted by low taxes and a population compelled to work, however disabled or ill or elderly they may be. Of course, the Conservatives are keen on a referendum. But they fail to understand that if they got their way, it would be a pyrrhic victory. All those who believe that mass immigration was some sort of politically correct leftwing conspiracy would soon get wise to the fact that they'd been had. In the end, if the Conservatives got their wish, and took Britain out of Europe, they'd be finished.
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