Alphen, Netherlands. 14
December. It was strange being with
senior British parliamentarians in London yesterday talking about matters strategy
and defence. There was an elephant in the corner of the room that was ignored –
yesterday’s historic EU summit at which the European Central Bank was given
sweeping new powers to supervise two hundred of the largest European banks and
agreement reached over a banking union.
Interestingly there were only Americans in the room and no Europeans. It
was as though we are already talking about Britain’s future strategy beyond the
EU. The Eurozone has now moved
decisively down the road towards banking, financial and ultimately political
union, with significant areas of national sovereignty now to be passed to
European institutions. EU Commission President
Jose Manuel Barroso put it succinctly.
The summit he said demonstrated the “irreversibility” of the Euro and
economic and monetary union. He also
signalled what is coming next when called for “steps towards a
political union”.
Britain was not alone
with its concerns. Swedish Finance
Minister Anders Borg called the decision to create a banking union, “a sad day
for Europe”. “There is a move now towards
eurobanks, eurotaxes, eurotransfers…We think these are steps in the wrong
direction”. At least Borg called it as
he saw it. PR-Meister Cameron retreated
into the rhetoric of the political scoundrel.
Britain, he said, had insisted upon “safeguards”. Having again roared like a lion before the
summit about protecting the British interest, he squeaked like a mouse at the
summit. This is the classic tactic of
all weak British prime ministers when out-manoeuvred in Europe; they stop
protecting the British interest and begin conspiring with other European
leaders who have what they want to con the British people into believing that
a) nothing very important has happened; and b) in any case Britain has ‘opt-outs’
or ‘safeguards’.
The ‘safeguards’ are
not worth the ink they are written with.
The ‘deal’ is that to prevent being systematically outvoted by the Eurozone any decisions by the new City of London unfriendly European
Banking Authority (EBA) will need to be approved by a majority of the ten EU countries
outside the Euro. Unfortunately for
Cameron eight of the ten ‘outs’ are so-called ‘pre-ins’, i.e. member-states that plan to join
the Euro, and seven of them will always vote with the Eurozone. Britain is now utterly subject to a tyrannous
majority and it is only a matter of time before this new reality becomes all
too apparent.
Cameron, this utterly
weak British prime minister is now on the rocks, politically-damaged at home
and abroad. The sooner he goes the
better. Unable to grasp strategy he now
simply stumbles on from crisis to crisis hoping against hope that his
Eton-honed eloquence can mask his political and strategic shallowness. Never has British influence in Europe been so
low and all because he bought the nonsense pedalled by the Whitehall elite that
London can only exert influence by being at the table. Yesterday demonstrated that Cameron could
have been standing on the table, megaphone to his lips shouting and no-one was listening. It is appalling to watch my once great
country so badly led.
Sure, the Eurozone
would have bypassed Cameron if he had said ‘no’ as he did last year. Sure, it is in Britain’s interest to see the
Eurozone stabilised. However, it is not in Britain’s interest to see the creation of
a bureaucratic, undemocratic political monster.
Cameron did not fight hard enough on a basic principle; what is happening is a danger to European democracy. As Sweden’s finance minister said, “It might be very popular among the
eurocrats, but I think there are very few Europeans actually wanting these
developments”. In email exchanges this
morning with senior European politicians the bustedness of Cameron’s busted
flush is all too apparent.
As former Commission
President Jacques Delors said this week Britain must now decide if it is ‘in’ or ‘out’.
As of yesterday being ‘in’ will mean
joining the Euro as in time there will be no space for Britain to occupy between
a ‘mythical’ single market and a single currency, the real single market. It will also mean that if the British people
are conned by the Establishment's economic
scaremongering, they will also in effect be agreeing to the end of
national self-government and the creation of a European super-state. German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said of yesterday it was the “blueprint” for just such a vision.
The simple truth is
that the EU is now the Eurozone and the Eurozone is now the EU. Those at the heart of the Brussels machine
who saw the crisis they created as an historic opportunity to drive decisively towards
political union have won. The ‘outs’ now face a
choice between; subjugation, integration or in time expulsion.
Make no mistake;
yesterday was the parting of the ways.
It is a sad day for Europe.
Julian Lindley-French
