If the elephant in the living room in the May 5 British election from the past has been Iraq, the hippopotamus of the future is Europe. And hippopotamuses, as visitors to game reserves know, are both unpredictable and liable to upset even the most stable vessel.
Europe will be the first big issue on any new prime minister’s desk, not only because of Blair’s casual, and opportunistic (at the time), decision to hold a referendum but because the French will be holding theirs at the end of next month, and it will be Britain, as the next president of the EU, who will have to pick up the pieces whatever the result.
Is Blair really hoping that the result will be a no, as most people assume. Yes, in the logical sense that a French negative will stop the new constitution in its tracks and, whatever Blair says for public consumption during the election, relieve the UK of the burden of holding its own vote next year.
But that’s not actually how Blair seems to view things. The British prime minister doesn’t commit himself even in his own mind to one cause or another.
For that, you need a view of what you want to see in the future and Blair is too pragmatic for that, preferring to cope with any situation as it comes. If anything, I suspect he might even like the challenge of a French yes vote. At least it would give him a grand and dramatic occasion on which to end his prime ministership.
For once, he may be the right man in the job, should he win the election. Whatever the outcome of the French vote, Britain is going to have to play the role at the center of Europe which Blair has so often promised and so singularly failed to act out.
If the vote is yes then the UK will have to assume that the Dutch, Poles and others will follow suit, leaving us bringing up the rear with a referendum that looks distinctly unwinnable for the government.
France will be in the ascendant, and the prime minister will have to use the British presidency to get back into the front rank and prepare for his vote. In a sense, he will have to become more European than the continentals.
That, in a curious way, could be just as true if the French vote no. The dismal prospect of a British vote would be removed, but the British would also be faced by a Europe in crisis in which the UK could very easily find itself isolated again as the French, Germans and core European members move to form a tighter ring around themselves and their imperative of a more integrated Europe.
