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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Are Mandelson, Alexander and Clarke the best pro-Europeans
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Are Mandelson, Alexander and Clarke the best pro-Europeans can do?
This week we’ve seen growing numbers of politicians past and present suggest that they’d be prepared to vote for Britain to leave the European Union in a referendum. Public opinion is currently leaning towards exit.
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Really? Surely the opposite is the case.
I'm puzzled as to why you're doing a smear job on Mandelson, the man who won elections for Labour.
Expense-abusing dinosaurs that may have been valued in past political eras but are now well past their usefulness.
I'd say they're PERFECT to represent the EU.
The muppets who talk of nothing else are after all doing their damndest to make him PM. And then it won't matter what people think because they won't get a vote.
"For; Ken Clark David Cameron Ed Milliband Nick Clegg Paddy Ashdown Shirley Williams Michael Hesseltine Tony Blair Gordon Brown and Richard Branson
Against; Jacob Rees Mogg Nigel Lawson Norman Lamont Peter Bone Nigel Farage John Redwood Rupert Murdoch Bill Cash Michael Gove and Stuart Wheeler
I might have inadvertently missed the odd person but there really is no contest. Those against are for the most part seen as a bunch of freaks and oddballs.
Cameron should have no fear of a referendum because It's a done deal"
(he missed out Michael Portillo and Jamie Oliver for the out campaign, maybe he doesnt think theyre as popular or media friendly as Norman Lamont & Peter Bone)
All Voters Will Remember Is That The Tories Are Giving Them A Referendum - And That Labour Isn't (LabourList)
Three things are blindingly apparent this week.
The first is that the Tories are still hopelessly divided on Europe. Plus ça change.
The second is that Labour’s refusal to match the Tory referendum pledge leaves the party framed as the enemy of choice, refusing to give the public its say.
The third is that a week is a long time in politics and people will forget the messy parliamentary to and fro of the past few days but remember that the Tories are pledged to hold that referendum. And that Labour isn’t.
This is madness. Ed Miliband’s critique of managerial politics and its bureaucratic, top-down remoteness has always been spot on. Yet I can’t think of an issue where the governed and the governing are further apart than on Europe.
And it’s not just our membership of the EU. In voters’ minds, the reason we have so much immigration is because of the EU’s free movement of people. And any number of other grievances, real, exaggerated and imagined – are also attributed to Europe. It is a lightning rod for the malaise at the heart of British political life.
It’s no use railing against these misconceptions. The pro-European cause has failed mightily. It has always been an elite movement that has never managed to popularise – or even normalise – Britain’s membership of the EU. The referendum is a chance to draw that poison.
‘Ah’, goes the theory, ‘why invade on private grief? Keep well clear and let the Tories rip themselves to pieces’. Labour can sit back, look like a responsible party of government and toady up to all those business leaders who are horrified at the prospect of us inching towards the EU’s exit door. Ed will look like the statesman against Cameron’s desperate political hack.
This is wishful thinking. What will happen is that the Tories’ referendum pledge will reclaim ground lost to UKIP. Rather than looking prime ministerial, Ed will be left looking belligerent and elitist – every inch the product of our managerial political class. Europe and immigration will dominate next year’s European elections and possibly the 2015 general election as well. Labour will be flummoxed as its candidates try to explain why giving the public a say is such a bad idea.
And make no mistake, Cameron will get his renegotiation in due course. If EU leaders will bust a gut to save economically peripheral countries like Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Cyprus, then they will not countenance the UK – the second largest economy in the EU – walking away. Cameron will get enough concessions to sell to the electorate.
He can then plausibly head a ‘yes’ campaign on the terms of his successful renegotiation. All those business leaders who are today telling Ed Miliband what a dreadful mistake this referendum pledge is will in due course flock behind Cameron.
Labour will have taken the hit for denying the public a say – for the best of intentions in trying to preserve our EU membership – only for Cameron to sweep in and steal our thunder. The party’s current position makes no strategic sense either viewed as high principle or as low politics.
Thanks for the answer. But isn't this just arbitrary semantics of what you assign the word "domestic" to? EU countries all have different taxation systems to us, different legal systems to us (particularly the civil versus common law split), and, hugely importantly, different languages for marketing products and services. If the UK joined NAFTA after leaving the EU, would the USA count as part of our "domestic" market? In many ways it would be more similar to the UK market than British firms find Romania to operate in.
Ultimately this domestic versus foreign terminology is trying to paint a black and white line in what is a grey continuum. What we need to do is to just reduce as many trade barriers as possible. We have a market of $14trn in the EU, with which only tiny trade barriers would go up if we replaced membership with a free trade deal. But then we could reduce much larger trade barriers with a whole host of other countries, worth a lot more. NAFTA is $16trn, China $7trn, Japan another $6trn. If we signed FTAs with the EU and just those three we would triple the markets our companies have free access to.
Which is one of the reasons it's so unlikely to.
Now, it is also true that, in that period, it has become easier to do business with most non-EU countries as well. In part this is due to technology and the internet in particular, but also better cross-border payment facilities, a general lowering of tariff and non-tariff barriers, and the extension of pro-free-trade mindset to countries which thirty years ago were very protectionist or communist. Ironically, I think one of the main arguments for the EU has been undermined by its very success in negotiating in the WTO (Lord Mandelson, take a bow here!). Even so, it remains true that the EU, and even more the Eurozone, is a pretty good approximation of a large domestic market.
There'll be no referendum before 2020. But it doesn't matter becuae the Eurozone will have detroyed itself by then anyway.
His reasoning being that we should renegotiate from within but if an IN vote won a referendum the government would feel it had a mandate to enter a single currency, join the Eurozone etc..
any thoughts?
That said, given the completely arbitrary date chosen, Dave could well find himself having to bring to an end painstaking negotiations and then having to make a big call on whether to campaign for In or Out.
That will focus the minds of our EU friends, who otherwise would drag it out for decades.
Looks like this negotiating stance is working a treat:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/16/berlin-opposition-policing-optout-britain
"The British have always been like that. They've always asked for an extra sausage," said a senior German government official. "The mistake we made was we gave it to them … I find that not good. We will make that clear. You can depend on that."
"We will make problems if there is no consistency in cherrypicking on trying to fight organised crime," said a senior official in Brussels."
And this is on stuff we've ALREADY negotiated opt outs to!
Seeing this lot together (especially Mandelson and Clarke) is a real case of déjà vu. Could have been a Euro campaign in the nineties. They didn't convince the public then, why would they know?
Unless the pro-EU teams can put forward some "in the EU but not the Euro" new faces there'll be more trouble than I expected.
I agree with a lot of that, but the vast majority of tariff and non-tariff barriers could remain down in an FTA. Why should we prioritise the handful that wouldn't for the opportunity to reduce much larger barriers with North America, Asia, etc?
"Labour will have taken the hit for denying the public a say"
That assumes that the public cares less. What are the chances that an EU referendum will attract more voters than the referenda for Mayors?
About 10% if I remember which means either that the other 90% don't care less or alternatively they're happy to let the 10% speak for them.
The problem for the pro-EU side is that most of the important people who would campaign for it, such as these three, have a nice long history of telling us that we'd all die of plague if we didn't join the Euro. They were wrong then (and aren't keen to admit it even now it's blatantly obvious to anyone with half a brain) and they're wrong now.
I suspect there aren't many people available who were against the Euro and are now whole-heartedly in favour of staying in the EU as it is now. That leaves the pro-EU side with a selection of people who are wrong and some people saying, as Cameron will be, "well we've managed to make it slightly less bad, so we should stay in".
That's even before we get on to why there's never been a proper cost-benefit analysis of EU membership.
Completely agree with your article
As an author Im sure you have read this but your article reminded me of Ursula Le Guins story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"
http://harelbarzilai.org/words/omelas.txt
Also, Peter Hitchens has similar views on the cognitive dissonance we have when it comes to executing guilty murderers and killing innocent civililans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0wAA8RKzvc
He'd be sacked if he waited much longer than the end of 2017. If it was set in stone for the first six months of 2018 he might be able to wing it, but nothing beyond that.
I think this is a bit of a silly argument. There's clearly a different between those that are beyond our control and at-large threats, and those that we have incapacitated in custody.
The Iraqi children argument is even sillier. Clearly they're not the ones targeted.
Aka 'The Salmond Option'.
Talking of whom, I see he passed comment on Farage's Big Day Out in 'Edinburgh, City of Peace' yesterday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22571722
Clearly all of Cameron's instincts are to hope he can get enough of a good deal to recommend staying in. For various reasons, notably the fact that Germany will be horrified at the idea of us leaving, plus the inevitable changes in the Eurozone/EU relationship, I think most pundits are under-estimating the chances of him getting a good result.
Is your new job Daily Telegraph shitstirrer in chief? Good job!
Do we know what happens to the referendum if Dave has to go into coalition with the LDs? Presumably the bill to hold it will require formal government time.
Too late to change now, though.
It wouldn't happen because if there was a terrorist loose in Britain, we'd make sure we'd secure them. The Pakistani and Afghan governments don't do the same thing.
In any case, what you seem to be saying is that really there are no significant benefits to us staying in the EU. We can afford to give an arbitrary deadline and leave if our EU friends are not prepared to play to our timetable. If that is the case, surely Cameron should just be saying now he wants to pull us out and will seek referendum approval to do so immediately after an election.
So they have the referendum, then the treaty dies, as it almost certainly will. Do we then have to have another referendum, or do the voters end up stuck with an option they weren't allowed to vote on?
Give me a break. Cameron's going to recommend staying in if all we get back is a Working Time Directive opt out and a Ferrero Rocher.
"Killing innocent civilians". This is a mad comparison, it's as if intent doesn't matter.
In addition, it would be good to close the issue down one way or the other (and not only for party-political reasons!)
1. Dave wants to withdraw but does not have the guts to say so.
2. The whole referendum plan is a ploy to postpone a full Tory civil war until after 2015 (if they are re-elected) or until after he resigns should they be defeated.
If the City guarantees are not forthcoming you say we should leave. Again, what that says to me is that we may as well leave now. We do not have the guarantees now, clearly the Tories believe leaving will not affect the City's position in any dramatic way or they would not be threatening it, so what is the point of staying in? We could leave in save ourselves billions each year. Farage is 100% correct.
Unless, of course, this is all a ploy.
I think the rest of the EU assumes that if it's Out or Stay In (even on current terms) we will vote to stay in and therefore there's no incentive to renegotiate anything. They can also see that the chances of Cameron being in power after 2015 are low so, frankly, any renegotiations are a bit like the unicorn, a nice image in someone's head, but non-existent in reality.
The reason they don't want to renegotiate is because, fundamentally, Britain has a different view of what the EU should be to most of what the rest of the EU thinks it should be and it is hard to see how to reconcile those positions, certainly in the time available.
It is amusing for all those advocating the EU as the champion of free trade that EFTA has a free trade agreement with Canada whilst the EU do not.
A just war, duly approved by the appropriate body, is one such situation where the state can take life (and ask its citizens to volunteer to put themselves in harm's way). Clearly all reasonable steps to minimse innocent casulties should be taken, but it is inevitable that there will be some.
This is not morally equivalent to the state taking the life of someone who they already have in custody and who therefore poses no further threat to our society. We have the right to exclude them from society - through exile (impractical) or imprisonment if they are not prepared to abide by the rules and restrictions that society sets out. We do not have the right to decide that their life is forfeit because that implies that the state has authority over the individual in a way that I am not comfortable with. All of the state's authority is delegated from the support of the body politic: tamper with that principle with great care
http://beestonia.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/same-sex-marriage-debate-a-report-by-jane-marshall/#comment-1958
If the latter were to occur there would have to be a fairly radical change in the shape of the EU which would need to become more flexible, multilateral and optional to cope with the implications. That is an EU that Cameron would find it very easy to negotiate a suitable package and in which we could be comfortable.
So euro or no euro? From an economic point of view the EZ going deeper into meltdown as the UK acquires some sort of lift off is a serious pain in the neck. It will reduce our rate of recovery and it will increase the number of economic migrants. From a political view the tories must be thinking how much more can Spain/Portugal/Italy/France take? Surely something has to break somewhere.
http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones
The Second World War was about 65%. Korea was about 200%. Vietnam 40%. NATO's campaign in Yugoslavia was about 10%.
If you oppose drones because of civilian casualties, you basically have to oppose all wars.
I agree that if we are lumbered with PM Miliband then we're stuffed. A toxic combination of ever-closer union and an EU which is increasingly inimical to Britain's interests will be the inevitable result. Thanks, Mr Farage. True, but that remains the case whatever happens, and indeed there is already a fundamental problem in that the EU is not the same as the Eurozone. The project of the EU elite all along was to make them the same. That may have seemed a good idea once upon a time but it doesn't look so smart now and it ain't gonna happen. So we do need to have this discussion with our EU friends, rather than bury our heads in the sands as Miliband and Clegg advocate.
If you oppose it for other reasons then that argument doesn't fit
It really is that simple and has nothing to do with the death penalty in our domestic situation.
For example:
More toxic comments on how AIDs would be stopped if we got rid of gays, how gay marriage was the slippery slope to incest and how marriage should be between a man & woman solely for the procreation of children.
Points 1 (AIDS) and 2 (incest) are very unpleasant comments and could justify the term "toxic". Point 3 (purpose of marriage) is a matter of opinion - I disagree this being the sole purpose [RN posted the 3 purposes of marriage earlier, and procreation is only 1] - but it is clearly not "toxic" to hold that belief.
each stated their own brand of Christianity, bible-believing, fundamental, evangelistic, catholic priest, vicars all trying to prove that they were more righteous than the last speaker, top religious trumps
I'm guessing she doesn't rate freedom of conscience very highly in her list of things to be preserved. That is one of the most bile-filled rants I've heard for a while.
The Tories tell us we need to renegotiate the terms of our membership in order for being in the EU to make sense. In other words, what they are saying is that right now being in the EU is detrimental to our national interest. Richard Nabavi tells us that we will need to safeguard the City if we are to stay in. If we can't we should withdraw. But the implication of this is that leaving will not hurt the City.
Given all of that, what is the point of wasting the next four years obsessing about the whole thing? Why not just get back the powers we need now by withdrawing, while also saving ourselves a great deal of money every year?
The whole Tory position is surely a tacit admission that everything Farage says about us leaving the EU is correct. And if that is the case, advocating that we should waste time (and more money we cannot afford to spend) trying for a renegotiation that will not actually make much difference to us is absurd.
Of course, the alternative is that Cameron and co actually believe it would be disastrous for us to leave the EU, do not have the guts to say so and are using the referendum as a ploy to make the argument go away until after the next GE.
It's not a stellar lineup. I wonder, though, where Boris would stand if we had an In/Out vote on the present conditions of membership.
So in practice, it sounds like Cameron's plan must be for two referendums...
'Farage's Edinburgh Disaster Shows Scotland is a Different Country'
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/468579/20130517/nigel-farage-ukip-edinburgh-protest.htm
1. There are benefits to staying in the EU
2. Currently the benefits are outweighed by the costs/risks
3. If you believe that you can renegotiate the terms of our membership so that the benefits are increased or the costs/risks reduced then there potential could be a case for staying in
4. If this is the situation, then the net cost of membership on sub-optimal terms for the next 4 years could be more than offset by the improved benefits in future years
5. However, if you believe that there are no circumstances in which a meaningful renegotiation is possible then it becomes rational to leave now
6. We will be fine either way. Life is rarely as dramatic as people like to believe.
The UKIP position is that Europe is all bad.
The Tory position is that some Europe is good, some bad. Make the bad bits better, and it would be worth staying in.
Blimey I don't this girl would take to me! Marriage being for men and women who want to procreate = toxic? How times change
The key is that the euro has changed our relationship with the EU for good. Before the euro we had largely been successful in ensuring that real power in the EU was vested in the Council of Ministers and controlled on an intergovernmental basis that we were broadly happy with.
Now we have a group of nations who are in a single bloc. They are in the process of integrating their banking systems, their fiscal systems, their debt. If they don't do this the euro will fail. If they start to vote as a bloc they will rule through QMV. After Lisbon the scope of that is very wide. We will not have a say.
So we need to have more opt outs and ability to protect our national interests such as the City. We need to be protected from the tyranny of that bloc. If we can't we leave. Cameron thinks he can get this. If he is right there are arguments for staying in and the question will be finely balanced. If he is not it will be pretty simple.
But assuming that doesn't happen for a while, it's not necessarily true that the UK wouldn't be able to have a constructive relationship on things it's inside while outside the Euro. The key to it is that as the Eurozone gets more integrated, its politics will become more aligned on left-right lines and less on national lines.
A decent parallel would be Scotland inside the UK. When the left has a majority in the UK, Scotland very well represented. When the right has a majority, it's not so well represented, but it's still a little bit unusual for the UK to do things that are deliberately mean to Scotland. (I guess testing the poll tax on them would be an example, but it's not that common.)
@kiranstacey: Ed Miliband goes for "sexy photoshoot". Fails. http://bit.ly/YJDKuH (Eric Pickles on the other hand...)
Not really. In practice, Cameron isn't going to get a deal with major reforms in the first place. He'll be thrown a few bones by the EU that can get through backed with unanimous agreement in the original negotiation. He'll then get back to the UK and say he's won big for Britainis possible yadda, yadda, yadda, the Times, FT etc will back him saying reform is possible. This will probably cause a bump in the stay in side in the polls for a short period. It will wear off, but it depends on how quickly it does whether the vote is arranged in time.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/468506/20130517/george-galloway-nigel-farage-ukip-edinburgh-bbc.htm
Best for PB Tories to keep well out of it...
Well, it could go one of two ways. If Farage was to get a place in TV leaders' debates, then a UKIP breakthrough in terms of seats could be on the cards as soon as the next general election. But by the "not-too-distant future" what I really meant was within the next 15-20 years, which is really what's at stake at the referendum.
If the renegotiation is about things that will make only a very slight difference, then we should leave.
The only reason to stay in is if it is overwhelmingly in our national interest. Otherwise, the sacrifices we make in terms of sovereignty and monetary contribution are just too great.
I love that the Germans think of it i terms of sausages. In response we should ask for an extra pork pie and if they insist on dealing in sausages demand half a pound of black pudding
The Germans have no sense of humour and their jokes about sausages are the wurst!
Would you agree that "marriage should predominantly be between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation" was a toxic point of view?
You need to remove the word predominantly. In any event, marriage is and always has been between a man and a woman. The law may change to say that it is no longer the case, but if so, the law is an ass.
So it would have to be:
1) Referendum on whether you want to be in the EU with longer working hours and three Ferrero Rochers, then if yes:
2) Referendum on whether you want to be in the EU even with shorter working hours and no Ferrero Rochers.
Alternatively I suppose you skip step (2), the skeptics can say the voters were conned and everybody gets to work themselves into a state of righteous indignation about it for another 40 years.
Suppose that Cameron wants Britain to remain in the EU. He can only achieve this if he can win public support for EU membership. If he simply advocates membership of the EU on the present terms he will not remain leader of the Conservative Party for very long, and in any case simply telling people who are currently opposed to the EU that they are wrong is rarely very persuasive.
So he has to agree with them in the first instance, gain their trust, negotiate some concessions - personally I think that if he can't manage to get the EU Parliament to stay in Brussels then symbolically he will have failed - so that he can declare victory and bring some of these sceptics with him to vote for glorious continued membership of the EU.
Suppose the opposite, that Cameron has concluded that Britain will have to leave the EU. How best to bring the British people with him? If he simply advocates leaving then he risks being painted as an extremist, and unreasonable. What simple explanation would he have for changing his mind on EU membership?
So he has to declare that he is in favour of EU membership in principle, but that the practical details of that membership need to be improved. He will attempt to renegotiate, in good faith, but will reluctantly have to tell the British people that no such renegotiation could be successfully completed with the EU. Thus he will hope to bring reluctant waverers who are not ready to take the leap out of the EU to vote with him for glorious independence from the EU.
In both these possibilities it is about trying to forge an emotional connection with moderate people just to one side of the debate, and to take them with him to support his policy (whatever it is).
Or it could be that he genuinely does not know what to do at all, is convinced that he lacks the Parliamentary support for any policy that he might form anyway (and so what would be the point) and sees this as the best way to keep as many potential UKIP voters on board as possible, so that the damage of the 2015 defeat is limited.
"Do you know what procreation means?"
I bet you'd get some interesting answers.
Is the UKIP-SNP spat being engineered by both parties, desperate to stay in the news? They do share a defect in each only having one policy.
There are no options which are both satisfactory and easy. That's hardly a recommendation for the Miliband position of doing nothing.
Alternatively an in/out referendum now is logical in principle, although I would argue deeply undesirable. That is the UKIP position (albeit they think it desirable).
So the UKIP and also the Labour/LibDem positions actually make sense. The tory one is nonsense unless your promise is simply a sham or tokenism.
But BOO is different. My son asked me, 'How much better off?'. I told him about costs of membership...gold-plating...instituitional corruption...BRICS....Then I wheeled out my clincher: we wouldn't join now, would we?
'I can accept that, on balance, we'd be BOO. However, it seems to me closer than you think it is. And I wouldn't vote to join now, if we weren't in. But that's a non-point, because that's not what we will be asked. You've given me nothing that I could use to persuade my peer group, most of whom are both undecided and disinterested, that the UK should give notice to quit the EU'.
'Remember, most of them don't have the priviledge of a father who is a UKIP candidate'.
http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/the-rules-of-the-game/
The Labour/LD position is tomorrow, and tomorrow. There would always be another excuse for not doing it.
Setting a date is entirely sensible and consistent if you believe the current status quo is untenable. Negotiate what you can, vote on what you get. If you get nothing, vote out.
The UKIP position is out regardless.
You can't just knock off one Ferrero Rocher - you have to pass the whole thing or it all goes back to the drawing board.
The skeptics should be aware of this, because they've been spending years trying to throw sand in the gears to stop the engine of integration moving forwards. One of the British tactics was enlargement, which makes unanimous decision-making very hard. They shouldn't be surprised if they try to put the engine into reverse, and discover it's completely seized up.
"Your food bills could be cut by hundreds each year"
"Our politicians would have to start listening more to your generation rather than aging bureaucrats in Brussels"
"The billions we would save in membership fees could be spent on more teachers and nurses"
"More trade with India and Brazil will help provide a lot more jobs for young people"