EU referendum – Page 2 – thinking liberal

Are Eurosceptics suffering from the boiled frog syndrome?

Within two years the United Kingdom will have a referendum to decide whether or not it stays in the European Union. Despite a fair amount of noise in the media, the serious political campaigning hasn’t started yet. But the Ins seem to have the edge. This is an interesting turn of events.

It helps to put your passions to one side to make any sense of the emerging campaign. I heard one commentator suggest that the electorate is split into three roughly equal shares: those who are firmly for In, those firmly for Out, and those who are floating between the two. I don’t know how accurate the numbers are (the firm Ins sound a little high), but it’s a good way of looking at it. The campaign will be decided by the floating third, and these voters do not have the emotional investment in the issue that of either the Europhiles like me, or the Eurosceptics. The arguments the committed supporters on either side find convincing will cut little ice them. The In and Out campaigns will have to concentrate on the sort of arguments that will sway these uncommitted voters, and not those that have already made up their minds.

I think that this is giving the Europhiles the edge. Until recently the Eurosceptics have had the field to themselves. They dominated the media with their passionate arguments about sovereignty, over-regulation, and the general incompetence with which the EU is run. Europhiles were in despair; we never heard somebody coming up with a really convincing argument about why we should stay in – just some rather soft stuff about trade and peace and international prestige. We were losing the argument, it seemed. The Outs raced ahead in the polls. But they also became over confident in the strength of their own arguments. The Europhiles, on the other hand, were forced back to a more realistic assessment what they had to do – and they realised that the main thing going for them was sheer bloody inertia. Passion would not win the day for them.

But the Eurosceptics, or too many of them, still think that their passion and argument is what is needed. But this is no good for the cold, hard job ahead. That they can’t agree to form a single umbrella organisation shows that they haven’t understood this – discipline among the passionate is hard. It reminds me a little about the fable of how to boil a live frog. The story is that if you throw a frog into hot water, it will just jump straight out of the pot. But if you put it into cold water and slowly heat it up it will not notice until too late. I hope nobody has tried this out on real frogs, and it almost certainly wouldn’t work if they did. But makes an important point anyway.

The Eurosceptics have been placed in a favourable media environment, like the frog in cold water. But ever so gradually it has become less favourable. The turning point was probably when the Prime Minister, David Cameron, decided to call his bankbenchers’ bluff and hold a referendum. Then it was clear that leaving was no longer a theoretical proposition, and the quiet voice of inertia started to speak. It was certainly no great push by the In camp in the media. The polls slowly but surely turned against the Outs, though in the last month the Ins have dropped back, after Europe struggled with the refugee crisis. Too many Eurosceptics haven’t noticed how the climate has changed, and are failing to adapt.

This is especially evident with attitudes to Mr Cameron’s “renegotiation” of the UK’s membership terms. This clearly an important part of the In strategy. He plans to flourish some impressive achievements to the electorate as a clinching argument to the floating voter group. This could be a decisive move, but only if he manages to exceed expectations. So a subtle Out campaign should be trying to raise those expectations. Instead most of them pouring scorn on the whole exercise. The Europhiles are egging them on by also playing down expectations – but that is in their interests.

To be fair, some of the Outs understand the problem. Lord Bamford, a notorious Eurosceptic, has reserved judgement on Mr Cameron’s renegotiation, and is wisely holding his fire for now. This was flagged by some of the Eurosceptic newspapers yesterday. That is better than slagging off the whole exercise, but still not quite the position they should be taking.

But things are far from hopeless for the Outs. Three things might work for them. The first is if they can focus anti-establishment anger on the EU. The establishment – mainstream politicians and big business leaders – will largely rally behind the Ins. And yet the public is suspicious of these figures. Anti-establishment-ism played well for the SNP in the Scottish referendum, though it still wasn’t enough. But that was a very different situation.

The second thing that could play well for the Outs is panic about immigration. Free movement rights within the EU is one of its great glories, and has been of enormous benefit to Britain – and Britons make use of it themselves with glee. But immigration makes most Britons nervous. If this nervousness is raised to panic proportions, the Ins have no really convincing answer. Unfortunately it makes no difference whether or not the panic is actually relevant to Britain’s membership of the EU. The media storm over migrants at Calais earlier this year had nothing to do with British EU membership (the situation would be just the same, perhaps worse, if Britain was out) – but it still dented people’s confidence in EU membership.

And the third thing is chaos within the EU itself. This might arise from the ongoing refugee crisis, or from another Euro zone crisis. It makes no difference that both these crises show that Britain’s already-negotiated opt-outs allow us to stand on one side. It still reduces the comparative advantage of staying in over leaving.

For all that the Ins need to hold their nerve. The best case for In is an unspectacular one. Britain has prospered by and large in its years as part of the EU (even if you can’t prove it would have been worse off out); EU processes are deeply embedded into our way of life – as the passport controls when travelling to EU countries shows. Leaving the EU would create a colossal mess which would, incidentally, put the Union at risk. It is up to the Outs to make a convincing case that life would be actually better outside. Not that things wouldn’t change much. And in concrete terms that affect daily lives, not in terms of abstract ideas like parliamentary sovereignty. That will be more than hard for the Outs to do.

So that is why I’m not that bothered that the launch of the In campaign this week was a bit anaemic, and is chairman a bit colourless. The task in hand is bit like that of a defence lawyer: not to prove his clients’ innocence, but to make the prosecution stew. in its own contradictions. Like that boiled frog.

Immigration remains the top issue in British politics

As the left chatters away about the Labour leadership contest, and the economic and diplomatic implications of a Jeremy Corbyn leadership, the real stuff of politics in Britain goes on. And there is no doubting the top issue: immigration.

Immigration has, as in many developed countries, become a lightning-rod issue for general discontent. Grumpy conservatives, especially those of lower middle class and working class standing and white origin, have decided that it is at the seat of most ills. They see a world changing around them, with middle ranking jobs disappearing, house prices and rents escalating beyond reach, public services under stress, and strange terrorist threats at home and on holiday beaches. The racist attitudes that could be taken for granted in my youth linger too, albeit in “I’m not racist but…” form. “We’re full up” is what people tell each other, and this all seems to be plain common sense. That immigration continues is simply evidence that Britain’s ruling elite is not up to the job.

Meanwhile a refugee crisis strikes Europe. The utter collapse of once-stable Syria is the most important cause. But the dire situation in Libya, Somalia, Eritrea and even Nigeria all contribute to numbers of escapees who are prepared to risk their lives in pursuit of something better. This keeps the flow of desperate people in the news, and stokes up a sense of threat. Sadly, instead of, or perhaps alongside, compassion, many people seem to think “I don’t want these people turning up in my street”. And now net migration to the UK is at record – something that has little to do with the refugee crisis, and much more to do with the relative success of the British economy. A number of right-wing newspapers are happy to keep the pot boiling, drawing connections where there aren’t any and generally playing on a sense of crisis and discontent. It is difficult not to see this as a malign intervention by media oligarchs with an agenda of their own: but this stuff clearly sells newspapers.

Mainstream politicians know full well that how firmly held these views are amongst the public at large, and feel obliged by the process of democracy to do some something. The trouble is that doing anything substantive is likely to damage other things that the public hold dear – such as the economy or public services.

Ordinarily a bit tokenism, followed by some ducking an weaving would be all that is called for. A prosperous growing economy would help distract people, and, in the classic public way, many people don’t really want to go further than have a good whinge.

But behind all this is an issue of real importance: Britain’s membership of the European Union. And behind that lurks another issue: whether or not the United Kingdom survives, or whether the kingdoms of England and Scotland go their separate ways. The government is committed to a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in 2016 or 2017. Superficially things are going quite well for those that want Britain to stay in the EU. The polls that once showed solid majorities for exit have now switched the other way.

But Britain’s exit campaigners are a determined bunch. For many it is the most important issue in current politics; for them there is no ill that does not have Britain’s membership of the EU at its heart. It plays the same role as Communism did in my youth: something that provides unity and coherence to an otherwise disparate movement. Large parts of the Conservative Party think this way, perhaps most of its grassroots membership; and they are being harried by the insurgent Ukip. They know that support for the EU is lukewarm, and there is one issue that could turn it: immigration.

Free movement of people lies at the heart of the EU treaties, something that many Britons have taken advantage of with alacrity. Not that that affects the public debate: Britons abroad are benign “expats”, while those coming to this country from other places are malign “migrants”. Many other EU citizens are as sceptical about free movement as Britons are, but securing a treaty change, even if desirable, is not feasible in the next two years. Treaty changes require ratification by all member states, a process that often requires a referendum. Each treaty change has become more difficult than the last; there is now no prospect of securing this. And without treaty change the main features of free movement will remain in place – something that is thoroughly good for the EU economies, including Britain’s, but of no help to those who want to present a “reformed” EU to the electorate.

And so the antis are keeping immigration up on the agenda. The refugee crisis helps: even though this has no bearing on Britain’s membership question, it serves to raise public unease. And slowly but surely the anti-EU campaigners are drawing a connection between EU membership and high immigration. The most conspicuous recent example came from the Home Secretary, Theresa May, no less. She suggested that EU migration be limited to those already with jobs to move too. This is half-baked, but that’s not the point. It is something an EU renegotiation cannot deliver, and this will help stoke discontent.

But leaving the EU would be a disaster for Britain. It would mire the country’s political leadership in many years of painful negotiation, and would give the Scottish independence movement a sound reason to rerun the independence referendum, and an excellent reason for Scots voters to vote for independence. Regardless of whether the Britain would be better off or not outside the EU in the long run, years of negotiation and uncertainty will damage investment, and no doubt slow down other areas of economic and political reform.

So what to do? Moderate Conservatives, led by the Prime Minister David Cameron, are trying to accommodate the anti-immigration movement, both in tightening rules, and in negotiations with the EU. This simply looks ineffectual – as well as damaging as the country’s demographic crisis slowly begins to bight, as well as the need for the country’s education sector to bring in foreign, fee-paying customers.

Labour have tried to find a middle ground too; this is an issue that bothers its working class core vote, now being picked off by Ukip. It has declared that its laissez-faire approach in the 2000s was a mistake. But it wasn’t, and this is intellectually dishonest. Amid such contortions it is difficult to sound convincing.

Nick Clegg, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, also tried to stake a middle ground. He wanted to combine clear and well-enforced rules on migration with a generally liberal attitude. The public wasn’t listening, though, and it sounded too much like liberal fence-sitting.

Which leaves liberals, left and right, in a bit of a bind. For now standing up for the principles of free movement and diversity is the only honest thing to do. But alongside the fictional problems that flow from this are quite a few genuine ones, that need real solutions. And anti-immigrant feeling is a sign of a deeper discontent, which liberals must address.

I think it has a lot to do with the hollowing out of society, as big institutions, from public ones like the NHS, to national commercial chains, take control. This provides the sort of rootless milieu in which outsiders seem much more of a threat to people’s security. It allows organisations that thrive on cheap, disempowered labour, often recruited abroad, to thrive.

But reversing that trend is a huge task. it means looking again at the standard language of economic growth and productivity. It is a cause that this blogger is increasingly devoting himself to.

That speech: just a ripple on the surface of British politics?

Last week I commented on David Cameron’s speech on Britain and the EU, where he promised an in-out referendum, following a “renegotiation” if the Conservatives win the next General Election in 2015. For some days after I though this was a decisive moment in British politics, in which Mr Cameron seized the initiative, and the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, lost his chance to win the next election. A week on, the dust has settled and the news is dominated by other stories. Was is such a decisive moment, or a mere ripple, a failing prime minister making a promise he can’t deliver?

The weekend polls show no decisive shift, with the coalition parties trending up a tad, but Labour still comfortably ahead, following a trend already evident before the speech. One poll seemed to show a big advance by the Conservatives at the expense of UKIP – but on further examination it looks as if this has more to do with polling methodology than people changing their voting preferences. Mr Miliband’s calculation appears to be that the main issue for British politics is the economy, and so the best thing to do is to change the subject back to this issue. His line that the speech hurts the economy because it creates uncertainty, that old argument against any form of decisive leadership, seems to be carrying weight with the British public, according to a further poll published by The Independent – though this also showed Tory support rising. And in the ephemeral world of British political commentary that should be enough to say that this is just a small tactical victory for Mr Cameron, making his party less vulnerable to UKIP, and not much more. But I think two big things have changed, and a big problem has opened up.

Firstly, Mr Miliband has made a serious strategic error, even if its significance will not show up much before 2015. His strategy should be to focus the political debate onto a small number of subjects and overwhelm the opposition there. This is a strategy I have called “the same, only different” following a 20th Century advertising campaign for a product I have long forgotten. It was used by Tony Blair’s New Labour to devastating effect in 1997. Basically you shadow your opponent’s policies in almost every detail except for a small number carefully chosen issues, plus a big investment in mood music to make your party appear more caring and more competent. I remember the exasperation of Tories; whenever they came up with a new policy to try and get an edge on Labour, Labour promptly adopted it as their own. It prevented the other side from changing the agenda. This seems to have been what Mr Miliband is trying to do, albeit without actually committing to any policies just yet (again following Mr Blair’s example). He is not creating sharp policy differences with the government, and making the main focus of his attack the economy. He is trying to create the right mood music by painting the government as by turns gratuitously nasty, and shambolic and incompetant. This strategy was slowly paying off.

But Mr Cameron has hit Labour below the waterline. He has created a clear area of policy difference, where he is probably more in tune with the British public than Mr Miliband, and one in which he can guarantee coverage from Britain’s still-important press. But also the issue makes Mr Miliband look weak, indecisive and un-prime ministerial. That could be fatal. What Mr Miliband actually should have done was welcomed Mr Cameron’s speech and adopted his policies as his own. That would have taken the wind totally out of the Tory sails.

The second way that Mr Cameron’s move may be decisive is that it may have turned the advancing tide of British Euroscepticism, while at the same time unifying his bitterly Eurosceptic party. I have read Mr Cameron’s speech, and the most striking thing about it is how Europhile it is. He has well understood the arguments for Britain staying in, and put them forward. Britons are a suspicious, conservative bunch as the 2011 AV referendum showed. Leaving the EU would be a big step into the unknown, and the more people think about it, the more nervous they are likely to become. And yet the sceptics are happy because they have their precious in-out referendum.

Mr Cameron’s speech was a genuine act of decisive political leadership. There are risks, but there always are. There is also a risk that the EU needs to take forward a treaty change that we are forced to put to a referendum that is then lost. This risk has now been sidestepped, because we now have the opportunity to package it up with more popular changes and put it too an in-out referendum.

But there is a big problem with Mr Cameron’s speech, which I did not pick up last week. Aside from its tactical genius, it is intellectually vacuous. Its economics is based on a fatuous understanding of international competition and the fear of Europe falling behind the developing economies. Its analysis of how the EU needs to be changed is hot air with no concrete proposals. A single market without harmonised rules may sound good, but what does it mean in practice? I really don’t understand how this wishful vision breaks down into nitty-gritty negotiating points. Mr Cameron badly need somebody with intellectual heft to lead the negotiation – the job the Lord Cockfield did for Mrs Thatcher in developing the original European Single Market in 1992. The risk is that he will make no headway in the negotiations, and waste an opportunity to improve both Britain’s role with the EU, and the stability of the EU itself. That’s the big problem the speech opens up.

Cameron may yet win his gamble on the EU

This morning the British Prime Minister David Cameron gave his long awaited speech on the European Union. I didn’t listen to it, or read it, so you won’t get any light on the nuances of his argument here. I’m interested in the political dynamics, which, as usual, do not depend on exactly what he said. From the BBC report his speech was fairly much as the last two weeks’ briefing had suggested. We wants to “renegotiate” Britain’s terms of membership, and then offer the British public an in/out referendum, after the next General Election, by the end of 2017. Mr Cameron’s political reputation is mixed. He showed brilliant footwork when he first took over leadership of the Conservative Party, but rather fluffed the 2010 General Election with his incomprehensible idea of the “the Big Society”. He restored his reputation with the assured manner in which he put together the Coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. After that he seemed lack vision and grasp. Will today’s move restore his reputation? It might.

A couple of weeks ago I thought he was onto a hiding to nothing, and in the process of leading his party to defeat at the next election, set for 2015. Various shades of Euroscepticism seem to define the rank and file of the Conservative Party, right up to Parliamentary level. It seems impossible to satisfy them. On the other hand assorted Europhiles (in deed rather than word in most cases) amongst the deeply conservative British establishment don’t want to rock the boat. He risks isolation and an almighty mess. His own view seems to be that the UK is better off inside the EU, but it would be really nice if its institutions were less intrusive.

But Mr Cameron has two things going for him. First is that his personal view on the matter probably represents what most of the British public thinks: a very grumpy “well yes I suppose so” to the EU. From this he should be able to build a bond of trust, unlike other participants in the debate, whose firm views one way or the other are not shared by the public. And second, Mr Cameron is a vital swing voter in the debate. It is highly unlikely that either side can win a referendum without his support. The smart thing for the various players here and abroad is to build bridges with him, rather than try to isolate and vilify him. This could put him into the driving seat.

Things are now starting to get very interesting. In spite of the very long time they have been given to develop a party line, the Labour opposition is completely at sea. They are trying to paint a picture of a PM beholden to his backbenchers, and who, by creating uncertainty, is making things worse for the national interest. This is desperately unconvincing. The British public probably rather agree with what their PM is saying, while Labour are merely offering obfuscation and procrastination. Uncertainty over Britain’s future in the EU is already a fact of life.

Meanwhile, those who are in favour of the UK staying in the EU are at long last starting to stir. Their silence to date has been one of the main frustrations of the public discussion so far. The Eurosceptics have had the field pretty much to themselves, unchallenged. What these EU supporters – from outside and inside the country – have to say is pretty ugly, it has to be said. They aren’t trying to sell the EU as a positive vision. They are stoking fears about what life would be like outside. Real Europhiles, like me, really dislike this negative stuff, a lot of which is intellectually unconvincing. But elections are won on the ugly stuff – just look at the 2011 referendum on a fairly minor tweak to Britian’s electoral system, which was portrayed as the end to life as we know it. The Eurosceptic arguments are being given much greater scrutiny, and many will wilt.

The big problem for Mr Cameron is how the “renegotiation” will work out. I use quotation marks because ever since Harold Wilson used it in the 1970s (in my formative political years) I have felt it to be an sham concept, used by armchair commentators. Either you enter into an honest negotiation about matters that need fixing, or you are going back on your promises; you should be honest about which it is. The difficulty is that our existing treaty terms are a carefully balanced whole, and if you change one bit it unbalances others. The favourite Eurosceptic idea of opting out of the social standards bits we don’t like, and then use this to give British businesses a competitive edge over their foreign rivals, has a rather obvious flaw as a negotiating stance. What’s in it for them? The country’s European partners would mainly rather have us in than out, and we do have a trade deficit with them, but this does not add up to a strong negotiating position. Mr Cameron might simply do what Mr Wilson did: get a few token concessions and try to big them up. That would be risky for Mr Cameron’s reputation, though he might still win.

But Mr Cameron has set quite a long time frame for his negotiation. In that time it is quite likely that the EU will want to alter its treaties to make the Eurozone more stable. Under Britain’s “referendum lock” legislation this could trigger the need for approval by referendum in the UK anyway. If Mr Cameron can tie these treaty changes into his “renegotiation”, and then use his in/out referendum to endorse it as a package, then he does have something to negotiate with – and can paint himself as doing the EU a favour. The transfer of powers between EU institutions and the UK might actually be two-way traffic. If he pulls that stunt off, his political legacy will be secure, in my book anyway.

The tricky politics of an EU referendum

Last night’s drama in the UK parliament over the call for an EU referendum is over. Will it all blow over? For now, maybe, but the issue will come back. Wise politicians will be thinking ahead about what they should do when it does. For David Cameron, it looks like trouble.

The starting point is that there is mounting pressure for a referendum on the European Union in the UK. Why should this be? We operate a representative democracy, after all, and the issues are complex – not the sort of thing that referendums are supposed to be particularly good at sorting out. But there is a substantial body of public opinion who believe the country’s membership of the Union is an outrage to our constitution. This has always been so – but while in the 1970s these were overwhelmingly older people, scepticism is now more widespread. The Tory Eurosceptics who entered Parliament last year are a younger breed, and to many a focus on Europe has reached obsessive proportions.

This scepticism has been fanned by the press. Why? Clearly newspaper proprietors don’t like the EU for their own reasons – but surely it goes deeper than this. The EU is an easy target for our frustrations, in much the same way as ethnic or religious minorities used to be. They don’t answer back. Exploiting this is one way to sell newspapers. Add to this the growing frustration with the Union right across Europe, and the steady fading of European idealism, and you have a ready explanation for rising scepticism.

It all looks very different, of course, once you are responsible for running the government. Here the thought of operating outside the EU, or even taking a detached stand within it, looks plain silly. And so you have a tension between the governing elite and a substantial body of public opinion. A referendum campaign seems to be one of the best ways of bringing this to a head. A campaign in the right circumstances has the support of many Europhiles too. They are sick of their steady retreat in face of the Eurosceptic onslaught, and long to turn and fight, even at seemingly hopeless odds – like the British soldiers retreating to the Marne in 1914.

So far so good. Now it gets complicated. Europhiles want a straight in-out referendum. This would force pragmatic sceptics, including large parts of the Tory hierarchy, into the “in” camp. To them, this is the basic question of principle anyway. Trying to have referendums on carefully negotiated treaty changes is a misuse of this method of democracy. Extreme Eurosceptics would be happy enough to go along with this, convinced as they are that the country would be much better off out, and that the public would rally to their cause.

But pragmatic Eurosceptics don’t want this, for exactly the reason that the Europhiles want it. What they aim for is a changed relationship between the UK and the EU – and that a pre-emptive referendum on an in-out question would weaken their negotiating position. For them the main job of a referendum is to put a spanner in the works of the EU itself, by blocking any changes they dislike to the treaties. Pretty much everybody accepts that a UK referendum would have rejected any of the previous treaties (Maastricht or Lisbon in particular – though the former might have been quite close, in my view). The idea of a three way referendum, with a renegotiation option, in yesterday’s motion was an attempt to win over these pragmatic sceptics. But it didn’t really stand up to close examination – one of the bigger reasons why the motion fell so heavily.

But it is possible to see a the outlines of a deal coming out of this. First negotiate a new deal with the EU, then have an in/out referendum on its outcome. Sounds simple enough, but the renegotiation idea is fraught. Is it a new deal for Britain, or a more general rebalancing of Europe? I think the government has in mind the latter, drawing in allies from across northern and eastern Europe. The idea would be to use the Eurozone crisis as leverage. If the Union’s constitution needs to be changed to make the Euro work, then this can be made conditional on other changes.

The trouble is that it is difficult to understand what the shape of this deal might look like. To the the EU core members (Germany, France, Italy and so on) the EU constitution is carefully balanced, with a free trade area on the one hand, and regulation to prevent a disorderly race to the bottom on the other. Besides a treaty change will have to go through referendums right across the Union – a nightmare as European politicians learn that a rejection of a treaty can earn them extra goodies.

And so the risk is that the government returns from the “renegotiation” without very much to show for it, and then be forced to hold a referendum on it. The prospects for a Britain-only renegotiation are even bleaker, as our bargaining position is so weak. This will place the pragmatic sceptics, like David Cameron and William Hague, in an impossible position. Yesterday’s debate has reduced their room for manoeuvre, as the Economist’s Bagehot column points out. They will have to produce something relatively soon.

One of Mr Cameron’s main achievements has been to de-toxify the issue of Europe for the Tories. But the issue could yet return to destroy him, his government and his party. It will be the greatest test of his leadership.