The prime minister of the United Kingdom, Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, is much given to affirming his ‘iron resolve.’ He demonstrates the iron character of his resolve by assuming an expression of bulldog pugnacity and speaking in tones of barely concealed fury. He has learned much from Britain’s theatrical ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was apt to strike the pose of being the most serious and purposeful man on earth.
Yet ‘iron resolve’ is not exactly the impression Cameron has conveyed by his handling of Britain’s bitterly contested relationship with the European Union. The other day, when Cameron belatedly set out his position on his country’s relationship with the EU, vouchsafing British people an eventual ‘in/out’ referendum, it was after months of procrastination during which he was suspected of lacking the nerve to deliver his long-promised statement on the matter.
Cameron’s problem is that he is at the mercy of Conservative Europhobes, the large and obstreperous body of free marketeers in his party who believe that Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union will herald a bounteous new era in British affairs and who claim to represent majority public opinion. At the same time he has to contend with the many people in and outside the Conservative Party who wish to remain part of the EU. The latter body encompasses most of the Liberal Democratic Party led by Nick Clegg, with whom Cameron’s Conservatives are in coalition government, and most of the opposition Labor Party, led by Ed Miliband.
What is more, it now includes US President Barack Obama, who makes no secret that the US sees zero merit in British exit from the Union.
If Cameron has increasingly felt obliged to defer to his party’s ‘Europhobes,’ it is out of fear that they will seek to replace him with a leader committed to taking Britain out of Europe. The more uncompromising Conservative anti-Europeans have already defected to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) led by the populist right-winger, Nigel Farage.
Cameron’s answer to the fix he is in — a referendum on EU membership 4 or more years hence, provided that he remains prime minister and can in the interim re-negotiate the terms of Britain’s membership — is a monumental gamble. His EU partners are unlikely to let him re-negotiate those terms and in any case he may fall from power before getting the chance to do so. Still, it means that for the moment Cameron, himself moderately pro-European, has placated hardline Conservative Europhobes; it means, too, that the Labor Party led by Ed Miliband has been put on the defensive over Europe, for Labor, mindful of public pressure to hold a referendum, is loath to give the impression that it rules one out altogether. But it also means that UKIP can behave as if they are now a power in the land, even though they have as yet not a single British MP.
Not long ago, the UKIP leader — who is a member of the European Parliament — underwent a near-death experience in a plane crash. Now Nigel Farage is pluming himself on dictating the British political agenda. Cameron’s capitulation to anti-European sentiment ensures that Farage will enjoy a greatly enhanced public profile during the run-up to the proposed referendum, with opportunities galore to champion his brand of right-wing, xenophobic politics. It is a prospect that bodes ill for British immigrants and racial minorities, not least Britain’s Muslims — though among those minorities are some who share Farage’s hostility to Europe.
Cameron’s appeasement of EU rejectionists also comes at the cost of generating vast confusion about the long-term political direction of Britain — confusion that the wider world may not be able to live with. The financial markets could yet react to the climate of chronic uncertainty Cameron has laid in store by issuing a damning verdict on Britain’s already precarious credit-worthiness. It is questionable whether a referendum of such import can realistically be delayed for several years.
Strange to recall that Britain was once pressing to join the European Union; having lost its empire, the country appeared ever less viable as an independent entity. Yet even when, in 1973, it was admitted to what was then the European Common Market, a vociferous section of British opinion was forever complaining about the drawbacks of being in Europe, and by 1975 had forced an earlier referendum on the issue. What British people have seldom heard about are the benefits of EU membership — the fact, for example, that whole regions of the UK would have died but for massive EU subsidies. Instead they are bombarded with endless anti-EU propaganda by free-market-fixated, foreign-owned London newspapers.
No small part of Britain’s problem with the EU is psychological; the widespread native tendency to regard it as a German conspiracy to achieve the total dominance over Europe that Britain fought two world wars to prevent. The Europhobic Conservative ideologue, Simon Heffer, who is much gratified by Cameron’s promise of an EU referendum, recently presented a television documentary in which he celebrated 1950s films depicting British World War II heroes overcoming Nazi Germany. Throughout the program, Heffer referred to the German enemy as the ‘beast.’
Cameron has quickened the pulses of rabid British nationalists who are forever fighting the Second World War in their heads. Yet if the likes of Farage and Heffer get what they want, the significance of their ‘victory’ may reverberate far beyond the UK. British exit from the EU could conceivably destabilize a project of political co-operation designed to ensure that never again would Europe fall prey to the catastrophic military conflicts that marked the first part of the twentieth century. In projecting a British referendum on EU membership, David Cameron has taken a self-serving gamble whose implications are as disquieting as they are imponderable.
