The late Julian Critchley was the Conservative MP who invented the concept of the “Garageiste Tendency” to describe hard-line Tory MPs who had made money by selling cars and wanted Margaret Thatcher to be even more right-wing than she was. Now let us all welcome the “Farageiste Tendency” – the group of hardline Tories who want Britain to quit the European Union, seek the unilateral renegotiation of EU treaties to weaken workers’ or women’s rights, or force David Cameron to organise a plebiscite with a view to withdrawal.
One hundred and twenty Tory MPs – a majority of non-payroll Conservative backbenchers – have formed a group calling for a referendum on whether Britain should leave the EU. They echo the UK Independence Party leader and MEP Nigel Farage, to whom it seems the BBC has almost given staff status, so often is he on television and radio as an anti-EU propagandist. Farage is to the Conservatives what Ted Knight was to Labour. Tory MPs may not be paying UKIP membership subscriptions but they are infiltrating Farage’s philosophy deep into their party and government. Conservative ministers are in a bind.
For more than a decade, David Cameron, William Hague and Liam Fox all used vivid language to denounce Europe. Hague made openly xenophobic jokes about Germans or the French. Mocking our European friends is time-honoured and they give as good as they get when describing “les Rosbifs”. But Hague’s language had an uglier edge. It still has. Last week, he used the extreme metaphor of saying the eurozone is a “burning building with no exit.” At a time when German and Polish leaders were meeting in Warsaw to discuss what to do about Ukraine and Russia, a British politician talking of Europe as a “burning building” was tasteless to say the least.
In order to win the Tory leadership, Cameron entered into a pact with Fox’s supporters. Fox’s price was that the Conservatives should quit the main EU centre-right political family where Tories had worked since Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan gave birth to Tory Europeanism 60 years ago.
Nick Clegg was on the button when he described Cameron’s and Hague’s new European allies as “nutters, anti-Semites and homophobes”. So the idea that anyone in Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Madrid, or Warsaw has any interest in anything David Cameron or George Osborne has to say is laughable. For all its problems – and they are many – the EU is the world’s biggest economy. Half the world’s top companies are based in the EU with more coming in to take advantage of its 500 million consumers and £10.3 trillion economy. Of course, China and Brazil, and mono-economies such as Russia and Saudi Arabia, are important. Yet Chinese goods are made in China but by EU or United States firms. The United Kingdom exports more to Ireland than to China – and the Irish are not giving up the euro.
While Greece is in deep trouble, it represents less than 2 per cent of the EU economy. Euro-using countries from Finland to France, Germany to Estonia are out-performing Britain. It is not the currency but the competence of national economic management that is significant.
None of this matters, as far as the Farageiste Tendency is concerned. For 10 years in opposition, its members were told that a Tory government would sort out Europe. Now there is a U-turn as Prime Minister Cameron says Britain will stay in the EU and Foreign Secretary Hague says there will be no referendum.
In government, Tory ministers have to deal with Euro-reality, not the Daily Mail, UKIP or Daily Telegraph myth. The House of Commons Library’s latest report shows that fewer than 7 per cent of British laws are from Europe, not the 80 per cent propagated by anti-EU fanatics. Yes, this country does pay to the EU budget and Poland, a poor country, pays towards the British rebate. But of the
£9 billion the UK pays, we get £8 billion back for agricultural subsidies and regional spending. Compare this to the £10 billion we give to the International Monetary Fund or the £1 billion that the Chancellor has just found for councils to hold down local tax and reinstate weekly bin collections. The entire EU budget is just 1 per cent of Europe’s gross domestic product.
We should welcome the existence of the European Union as Brussels proposes a Robin Hood tax. It is an EU directive that will prevent misogynist bosses formed firing women workers sent by agencies from being mistreated if they chose to have a child and another one tackling trafficking of sex slaves. It is the European Commission that is bringing in controls on derivative trading to prevent the kind of financial disasters arising from the Alan Greenspan bubble economics of recent years.
There are two responses to Tory incoherence on Europe. One is tactical. Instead of mocking and scorning the Conservatives, as a threat to Britain a few on the left act as echo chambers for the Mail and Telegraph. They repeat the bromides against the euro as if a return to competing, devaluing currencies – the EU imitating Latin America – is the answer. They call into question Ernest Bevin’s dream of free movement of workers. They make hurtful – and at times hateful – remarks about Poles, just as in times past there were ugly attacks on Irish, Pakistani or Jewish in incomers.
The other is principled and in the national interest. It to leave Cameron to do battle with his Farageiste Tendency. Labour (and smart Liberal Democrats) should keep away from this open Tory wound save to pour the salt of derision and acerbic truth onto it. Keep reminding voters that he Tories are still in bed with “nutters, anti-Semites, and homophobes”. There is no need to be blindly Europhile, let alone federalist. Major reform of
both the European Parliament and Commission is overdue. The Commission can be too bossy. The EU Human Rights Court needs rethinking.
Labour should work out a new deal for the EU, but do so as internationalists and supporters of the many progressive aspect of European work. So long live the Farageiste Tendency. It will cause great trouble for the Conservatives – unless some on the left also decide to be red Farageistas. If this happens, Labour will be back where the party was in the 1980s.
