European mayhem as Treaty triggers UK's exit
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 1:57am BST 04/09/2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/09/03/ccview103.xml
British withdrawal from the EU is coming into sharper focus, with all
the grave consequences that will ensue for the Atlantic order and the
cause of market liberalism.
For this we can thank those who recklessly - or mischievously - chose
to revive the European Constitution after rejection by the French and
Dutch people, when common sense urged Brussels to lie low, lick its
wounds, and rediscover patience.
By reopening this can of worms, they have already let France's Nicolas
Sarkozy excise the clause "free and undistorted competition" from the
core objectives of the Union. Adieu to the single market, the one
incontrovertible benefit of EU membership.
It would never have been easy to win a British referendum on the
original (better) text, which furnishes the EU with the apparatus of a
thrusting state - president, foreign minister, justice department,
supreme court, energy tsar, and treaty-making powers. It will be much
harder now.
Gordon Brown's plan to slip it through Parliament is becoming
untenable in the face of a backbench revolt by Labour MPs, a united
Tory opposition, and likely calls for a vote by the Liberal Democrats.
As David Blunkett said last week, Downing Street has failed to justify
why Labour is violating its manifesto pledge to hold a referendum. "It
is critical for the Government to demonstrate the difference between
the original constitutional treaty and the current treaty," he said.
Well, yes, and how is this to be done when Valery Giscard d'Estaing,
the author, himself says the changes are "more cosmetic than real",
that "the substance is similar or even the same," and that the label
constitution has been dropped to "make a few people happy"?
Should Gordon Brown persist with this charade, he will be chased out
of Downing Street within two years. British debt deflation is not
going to leave him much margin of popularity in any case.
Personally, I might have put a clothes peg on my nose and voted for
the original treaty, if the other big states had already said "Yes",
and if an isolated British "No" risked UK secession.
It would have been a Realpolitik calculus, hoping that a blocking
majority of liberal nations would eviscerate the treaty's effects.
Britain had by then achieved its goal of extending the EU to Eastern
Europe, breaking the Rhineland lock-hold that has caused so much
grief. A British-led constellation of states had begun to emerge -
much to the annoyance of Paris.
The Commission's teeth arms - competition, single market, trade, and
farming - had become engines of Anglo-Saxon reform. The European Court
was finally shedding its crypto-Hegelian bias as liberal judges
swamped the bench.
Having waited so long, and endured such provocation from the Delors
junta, it would have been precipitous to leave just as the bargain
promised more advantage.
But that was then, before the "No" earthquakes. The dispute is no
longer over the meaning of treaty articles. The issue is whether we
wish to let the EU ram through the same project - stripped of its
anthem and visible symbols of statehood - after voters have already
issued their thundering prohibition.
The matter has escalated into a defence of democracy against an
enterprise that has slipped its leash, demonstrated a dangerous will
to accrete power, and forfeited basic trust - as Tony Blair well
knows.
"What you cannot do is have a situation where you get a rejection of
the treaty and bring it back with a few amendments and say, 'have
another go'. You cannot do that," he said in April 2004.
It is unlikely that British voters can be cajoled into endorsing this
Putsch, once debate is joined. No doubt Labour will attempt to turn
any referendum into a ballot on EU withdrawal, hoping to scare enough
fence-sitters into a reluctant "Yes". But this merely ups the ante. So
we await the unstoppable slide into crisis.
Hopes that the French people will rescue us a second time are fading.
Mr Sarkozy has a crushing majority in parliament, and is better able
to duck a referendum than Mr Brown.
His European theatrics have created the impression of restored French
primacy in Brussels, dulling the mood of indignation. The Left - the
nucleus of the "No" vote - is in disarray.
Holland remains eerily silent, watching us. No doubt, there are strong
factions in Paris, Brussels, and Luxembourg that would like to see the
back of Les Rosbifs, and anti-American elements close to power in
Madrid and Rome who agree.
But British withdrawal - so obviously forced upon us - would sent
tremors through Holland, Denmark, and Sweden, among the oldest
democracies in Europe as it happens, and the richest. It would
traumatise Ireland, and dismay Finland.
It would alter the strategic equation for Poland, the Czech Republic,
and Slovakia, and further enflame the poisonous quarrel between Warsaw
and Berlin.
Where all this might end is anybody's guess, but it is a fair
assumption that Mr Sarkozy will quickly press for a core-Europe, one
more willing to entertain his plans for "Community Preference" (a
semi-closed trade bloc), a managed exchange rate, and perhaps capital
controls - as allowed by majority vote under Article 59. By then, the
French, Spanish, Greek, and Italian housing booms will have popped, so
the mood will be receptive.
What we take for granted as the permanent post-War order is more
fragile than it looks. Tug too hard on the British thread, and the
European system quickly starts to unravel.
Jean Monnet would have seen the dangers of this. Germany's Angela
Merkel does not. The provincial and ill-advised Kanzlerin has
over-played a tactical hand, heedless of strategic risk. The die is
caste.
--
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to
escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net
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