PM’S BROKEN PROMISES
ALL that lost sleep, and for what? If you want an eye-opening lesson in why the EU doesn’t work, look at the marathon charade played out this week in Brussels.
Vividly exposed, we’ve seen a body institutionally incapable of reform — 28 disparate nations, each with its own agenda, at loggerheads over clauses and sub-clauses so pettifogging that, frankly, they meant little or nothing in the first place.
Indeed, you have only to read David Cameron’s defiant quotes on this page, applauded by the Mail when he uttered them before the election, to see the chasm between the ‘fundamental changes’ he promised and the pathetic ‘compromise on a compromise’ he has struggled to clinch this week.
Gone are his commitments to ‘full-on treaty change’, war on bureaucracy, sovereignty for Westminster, ‘a complete opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights’, the return of border controls, limits on the jurisdiction of the European Court and more besides. In their place are measures so complex and trifling that they promise only more work for the bureaucrats, who will absurdly have to calculate 27 different rates of child benefit for migrant workers, according to the cost of living in their countries of origin.
As for his vaunted ‘red card’, which would allow blocks of 15 nations to veto Brussels diktats, you have only to witness this week’s infighting to see the difficulty of getting three nations to agree, let alone 15. Indeed, heaping humiliation upon humiliation, the President of the European Parliament has threatened that MEPs will rip to shreds any pact that allows the UK to impose even modest curbs on migrant benefits. No, from the moment Mr Cameron made clear that he was determined to remain in the EU, come what may, any fleeting hopes of an agreement that might have made a real difference flew out of the window. Thus, these talks were doomed from the outset to descend into a morass of pedantic hair- splitting by a deeply unimpressive elite. Psychiatrists might describe it as ‘displacement’ to distract from the awesome problems now facing the EU.
As they bickered over the minutiae of child benefit at their banquets, a tide of migration unseen since 1945 was sweeping over the continent they purport to control, with 6,000 arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos in only three days. And that’s in the depths of winter, months before the peak season. Among them will be unknown numbers of jihadis, posing as war refugees to join the 5,000 IS-trained terrorists estimated by the EU’s police chief to be at large in Europe.
In the fantasy world of the summit, leaders may mouth pious platitudes about the ‘non-negotiable’ principle of free movement. Yet in the real world, razor-wire fences are being erected between member states — while Austria sensibly breaks all the rules by refusing to accept more than 80 asylum-seekers a day. Meanwhile, the eurozone remains paralysed by the single currency, with another banking crisis looming and youth unemployment in some areas at 60 or 70 per cent, blighting the prospects of an entire generation. Yet as the OECD points out this week, Europe’s moribund institutions seem incapable of handling the crisis, their arteries clogged by bureaucracy. No wonder voters across the continent are rising up in anger against Brussels, demanding more powers for individual nations to run their own affairs.
The tragedy is that the renegotiation offered a golden opportunity to address the myriad structural problems afflicting the EU, which have left its over-regulated firms at the mercy of international competitors.
Yet the euro-elite has opted instead for business as usual, tinkering with the small print and fiddling while the founding Treaty of Rome burns.
One thing is clear. Nothing agreed in Brussels will tempt a single voter to cross from the Out to the In camp (though it may swing some people the other way).
Nor will these renegotiations begin to serve the cynical purpose for which Mr Cameron embarked on them. For far from healing the Tory Party’s age-old rift over Europe, it promises only to increase the bitterness.
Indeed, the Prime Minister comes out of this sorry saga badly wounded, just eight months after his surprise election triumph made him look all but invincible on the domestic political battleground.
But it is not too late for him to redeem himself. He should tell voters, humbly and frankly, that he has tried hard but failed to secure a deal worth having. He should then abandon his scaremongering efforts to rig the debate and remove the gags and thumbscrews from eurosceptic ministers (full marks to a brave and principled Michael Gove as he plans to show the courage of his convictions by campaigning for Brexit). Mr Cameron and George Osborne have amused us enough with their risible charade. Let a fully informed people now decide.