The Coalition has blown it on the things that count

Today’s Torygraph contains an Opinion piece from Foreign Secretary William Hague which must rank as the purest example I’ve ever read of a floored boxer urging the crowd to knock out his opponent.

It’s tub-thumping stuff, make no mistake about that. Phrases like ‘sheer undemocratic arrogance’, ‘morally bankrupt’, and my favourite, ‘It is our firm belief and our policy that no more powers should be moved from Britain to the EU but that is not enough – if any Government ever again attempted to change the EU Treaties to transfer further powers the British people must rightfully have their say’.

Nice to see some tumescent firmness at last from Mr Hague – as indeed we heard a few days back from Draper Osborne on the subject of the EU ‘sorting itself out’. There is of course a bit of political shuffling going on here: the Graham Brady tendency on the Tory Right has been making life precarious for the Coalition’s leaders of late, and this campaignette of tough talking is the result. But that’s all it is.

That there will be no walking the walk is obvious from the Coalition’s EU track-record to date. Bizarrely, the Prime Minister sees Europe entirely as an issue that might split his Party, rather than one that might sink his country. Hague is not that interested, and sticks to the delusional Conservative belief in the Special Relationship. The Chancellor, meanwhile, sees the EU as an irksome fact of life – no more and no less: calling Christine Lagarde ‘my distinguished colleague’ does however show us that Mr Osborne is willing to say anything if the occasion requires it. Only Oliver Letwin is a true Europhile who sees our future as inextricably tied to the 27.

Where I take most issue with Hague’s Telegraph piece, however, is in his utterly specious suggestion that the Europe Bill about to come before the Commons will (to quote his weasel words exactly) ‘put into the British people’s hands a referendum lock on any further changes to the EU’s Treaties that hand over powers from Britain to the EU, a lock to which only they will hold the key’.

First of all, this isn’t a pledge to block all further power transfers: it was before the General Election, but it isn’t now. The key phrase is any further changes to the EU’s Treaties. As neither the French nor the Germans have the slightest intention of allowing changes to Lisbon, the lock we are being handed is for a door alright, but the windows either side are wide-open. As Theresa May’s abysmal performance at the Home Office has already demonstrated, changes to our whole legal system can be effected without any treaty changes at all.

Secondly, this also works the other way round for the cynics: we can have lots of treaty changes, just so long as they don’t transfer powers. In many ways – especially the devious ways of Brussels – this could prove to be even more dangerous. The danger will become very real as and when Merkel and Sarkozy lose power in their respective countries.

Last but not least, Brady Bunch Conservative MPs of all ages are angry that the bill’s detail fails to deliver proper safeguards against future transfers of sovereignty to Brussels, as were promised in the Conservative election manifesto. “It is a disgrace. This bill does not do what it says on the tin,” said one enraged sceptic last Thursday.

To try and block any unholy alliance between the Tory Right and Ed’s Miliband of Hope, Hague’s article ends with the accusation that such would represent a horrible hypocrisy by the Opposition. I can’t imagine either Tory rebels, Labour MPs or indeed electors buying that. But I can see the Conservative Party losing a lot of 50+ voter support on the issue at the next Election. And unless an alternative Opposition to Labour has been formed by then, that’s not an outcome I even want to think about.

 

By contrast, the best article in any quality paper this week was the one by Philip Aldrick in the weekend Telegraph. It points out concisely what most reasonable British people think about capitalism today: we need more reform, more entrepreneurs, and a lot more proper risk lending to the new generation of business.

When even Mervyn King is moved to describe the state of banking as “about the worst place from which any system might start”, then you know the financing of capitalism needs to be the subject of radical new ideas. There are many who still bleat on about the financial sector being the golden egg-laying goose, but the truth is it is a Dodo. The best analogy would be GM in the States before it was bailed out: seemingly invincible, but actually maintaining an increasingly irelevant status quo.

But such radically creative thinking is nowhere to be seen or heard at Westminster. Once more this Sunday, we are faced with the dull reality of our political landscape. The Progressives will never tackle the educationalists, social workers, trade unions and Islamists whose avowed intent is for the present to be the future – only more so; and the Tories will never tackle the banking culture and big business dominance that is destroying both our entrepreneurs, our communities, and our family life.

People are far more likely to get irate about commercial stupidity than they are about being part of a neo-Fascist EU. But then, the urgent nearly always displaces the important in the voters’ minds. Plus ca change.