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Kamikaze Cameron?
November 17, 2009 12:56 PM
Kevin Hannon asks, in the words of Oscar Wilde, 'Are they all mad or just pretending to be?'
"We were waiting with bated breath for Kamikaze Cameron to lead his heroic eurosceptic band of Brussels-defying Tories in a final furious attack against the Lisbon Treaty. Instead we got the Grand Old Duke of York, who in the old rhyme had ten thousand men. 'He led them up to the top of the hill and he led them down again,' which satirical rhyme, coincidentally, comes from an inept military campaign in Belgium during the 1790s.
"To quell mutinous murmurs in his retreating ranks of Tory anti-Europeans 'General' Cameron promised mighty battles in the future. There would be re-negotiations with the EU and legislation in the UK. The first will go nowhere because the other 26 EU countries have had a belly full of negotiating treaties about institutions but the second promise could be implemented if and when there is a Conservative government.
The second target of Mr Cameron's promised anti-EU attacks is truly startling. He has chosen to attack the powers of Parliament itself. He will do so through two pieces of legislation intended to bind future parliaments. A Sovereignty Bill would be designed to constrain what future parliamentary governments could negotiate over in talks about future EU treaties. A Referendum Bill would be designed to force Parliament to hold a referendum to ratify any future EU treaty that might shift power to EU institutions. Since all such treaties do that and there is no point in having them otherwise, Mr Cameron is in effect proposing laws to take away from Parliament decisions about the final ratification of future EU treaties.
"The implicit assumption behind the promised legislation to curb Parliament is that it cannot be trusted in matters pertaining to the EU; in its weakness it might betray UK interests by slavishly following the policy of the government then in power therefore the powers of Parliament must be clipped. This is astounding stuff. What is Mr Cameron going to promise us next - a written constitution? For such is the logic of the road he is going down of trying to constrain the absolutist powers of governments working through a weak legislature such as the UK presently has.
"To placate his anti-Europeans Mr Cameron has made an extraordinary turn for a so-called Conservative. He will legislate that Parliament will lose its power to ratify EU treaties, leaving the decision to come from popular plebiscites, from referenda. Thus a political device brought into modern politics by Bonapartes to become emperors of France is to replace the normal functioning of parliamentary democracy in the UK. Not a very Conservative policy I'd say.
"Of course the big gainers of power from such a change would be the media. The press barons in particular would consolidate their stranglehold on the eurosceptic stance of UK politics. That will not much matter so long as Tory and Labour politicians are just huffing and puffing about what they will do to the EU continent. But it will matter a lot when the next phase of EU reforms comes along, which will probably be about the EU budget, and which will require another amending treaty. Then the EU will be confronted with a choice between paralysis with the UK in it or progress with the UK out. That's when we'll get the kamikaze attack unless 'General' Cameron is canny enough to do another Grand Old Duke of York manoeuvre. I suspect though that his 'Lieutenant' Hague will be standing behind him, pistol in hand, to make sure there will be no more retreats.
Kevin Hannon. 8.11.2009
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