Simon Chapman's message to Euro-realists: The MER can work – but it needs your support

When David Cameron and William Hague announced that the Conservative Party would wait until 2009 to leave the EPP they also announced that they were establishing a new organisation, the Movement for European Reform (MER) to promote a new centre-right vision for a flexible modern and open EU.

Euro-realists, bruised by what they saw as a broken pledge, have been sceptical about the MER. They point to the ED (the Conservative part of the current EPP-ED grouping) which was supposed to achieve the same things. One MEP told me at the time:

“The ED ended up with no officers, no staff, no meetings, no budget, no policies, nothing.  It produced a couple of half-hearted leaflets and a logo - nothing more.  I would like to believe that the MER will do better - but I doubt it.”

David Cameron gave the job of making the MER work to Graham Brady (who, as Euro-historians may recall, was as one of our youngest candidates amongst those Conservatives who included a personal pledge never to join the Euro in his 1997 election material). This week saw the first steps: the MER has been formally launched with its own website, and with public support on the main conference platform from William Hague, Timothy Kirkhope (Conservative MEP group leader) and Jan Zharadil from the Czech ODJ party.

I spent some time with Graham yesterday morning to ask him about the MER. He was keen to emphasise that, whilst there is an obvious linkage with the new group that the Conservatives will establish in 2009, he sees this as a broader and more important initiative. The MER’s object is to build relationships between politicians, parties, opinion-formers, business people and private individuals across the EU and even beyond.

They will come together to challenge the failed orthodoxies on which the EU is currently based and generate a new vision and institutional architecture that will enable the EU effectively to serve the peoples of its member states. Membership is open to people in the EU, EEA and accession countries. It is not limited to potential partners for 2009. Politicians from countries seeking to join the EU will find in the MER an assurance that the ever-close union model is not the only show in town. 

How will it work in practice? As yet there is no detailed budget or business plan. The good news is that this is Graham Brady’s first priority:

“the critical next step is getting the financial resources in place – it is essential to make this fly that we attract its own budget with permanent staff and organisers.” 

Initial events in London and Prague are being planned.

Graham was insistent that lessons have been learned from the ED experience. The MER is a serious and concerted attempt to establish a broad coalition of support for a new Europe. So what should Euro-realists do?

Let us remember that Hans-Gert Poetttering, Chairman of the EPP-ED group, spoke at a fringe meeting on Monday night here in Bournemouth. There are those in our party who, despite David Cameron’s pledge in July that "the agreement to form a new group is not an aspiration, it is a guarantee - and it will be delivered", still believe that the Conservative Party should remain in the EPP.

They are unlikely to do much to promote the MER. Their view is that the political arithmetic will be the same in 2009 as it is in 2006 – if it was difficult to establish a new group now nothing will have changed to make that easier in 2009.

Brady’s answer to that is that the party could have started the new group now, but that it chose to respect the request of our Czech colleagues. There is a broader point. If the MER is properly resourced and supported it will be a vehicle to set out a fresh and compelling vision for a 21st century EU that will attract new partners and colleagues.

Euro-realists have the contacts, the experience and (in some cases) the financial resources that the MER needs to succeed. Its prospects will be diminished without their whole-hearted support.

The stakes are very high. The EU desperately requires a new direction. For the Conservative Party, the row over the new grouping cannot be allowed to resurrect itself in the run up to the European (and probable General) election in 2009.

If Euro-realists can overcome their suspicion and make the MER succeed they will do their cause and the Conservative party a considerable service. If they don’t support the MER, who else will?

Comments

[christina speight]

The EU is unreformable - that point is what ALL prime Ministers here fail to grasp. NOTHING can change except by unanimity and the French (for a start) will not agree to anything that they don't want. Certainly they won't agree to alter a syllable of the Common Agricultural Policy.

This is all hot air and smoke and mirrors stuff. A bone thrown to keep the peasants quiet. It's got Cameron written all over it - doesn't know the facts and comes up with an undefined solution to a problem equally undefined

[Tim Aker]

The rationale is very very simple. Euro realists should not want to be in any EEC bloc, the founding treaty of which calls for ever closer union and the adoption of the acquis communitaire. In other words, we joined the EEC as it was, thus on a road to federalism. They have tried to implement a single currency since 1980, and their federalist ambitions have stretched even further back, and will crawl on into the 21st century. If the other European states want that, fine, they can have it. But we, as conservatives who believe in a sovereign Britain, should realise that a foreign power that has legislative authority over our democratically elected chamber goes against everything the conservative party has fought for. Cameron said today he did not believe in Presidentialism, odd seeing the EU still wants to create a Euro-president, by the back door if necessary. He should then argue against the EU which wants to see Presidential government for the whole EU.

Being in the EU and hoping to change it brought Lady Thatcher down. John Major ruined himself by placing commitment to the EU as an issue of confidence in his government. Time after time the EU has managed to cause tory Prime Ministers, who either adhere to the federalist project or want to stay in and reform it, grief and in the end a loss of confidence and the long term ruin of the party owing to splits. For once, we have a leader who says everything as if it was a voice of optimism. There can be nothing more optimistic than telling the country he will want to set us free from the EU, from the thousands of laws they send to us, from the regulations and the burden of ever closer union that threatens to end our existence as a nation state. The time is coming for those who want to be 'in europe, not run by europe' to read the treaty of rome, the single european act, the maastricht treaty and for them to decide which side of the fence theyre on. There is no middle way anymore.

[Denis Cooper]

There is no hope of any reform of the EU which would make it acceptable for the British people to remain involved. That would mean going right back and starting from scratch with a new treaty which stated that this international organisation was being set up by and between its sovereign member states for specific limited purposes, that there was no intention of embarking on a process of "ever closer union", that the law of the each member state remained supreme within its own territory, and so forth. It would be such a total rejection of everything which has been built up over the last half century that it couldn't happen as a "reform" of the existing structure - that would have to be razed to the ground.

[tapestry]

Eurosceptics have no choice but to totally reject involvement with the MER, the movement for European reform. It is a ploy.

The problem for the eurosceptic movement in the UK is that the energies of so many sceptics are being deployed wastefully. UKIP stands against almost all Conservative MP's regardless of their views,. Unless PR is introduced, a vote for UKIP is always a wasted vote. In fact it is worse than a wasted vote. UKIP managed to prevent up to 20 Eurosceptic Conservative MP's from getting to the House of Commons in 2005, ensuring that twenty Lib Dem and Labour europhiles were elected in their place.

Conservative eurosceptics like Christina Speight focus a lot of their energy in attacking Cameron. In the world as it was, that approach might have made sense. Go to the top, people used to say. No one knows where the top is any more. The Conservative Party as it currently stands is a coalition, with members of the Bildeberg Group like Ken Clarke, William Hague and Rupert Murdoch (the phantom of British politics) on the one side, and with the vast majority of the party who are eurosceptics on the other. Despite the preponderance in numbers in favour of euroscepticism, the balance of power between the two halves of the coalition is if anything still tilted in favour of the eurocompliant (= europhile) wing. This is because the Bildeberg wing of the Conservative Party is backed by the media, which has the power to make or assassinate its leaders.

Cameron is not easy to read, but he does not appear to be eurocompliant. Murdoch continually makes negative statements about him, and Ken Clarke has been seen on Channel 4 issuing public threats against him over the EPP. It seems likely that Cameron is eurosceptic. He was adopted by the europhiles as the best way to stop Liam Fox, who would have been openly eurosceptic in the style of IDS. Rather than allow Fox to win and go through to be the next assassination victim, the pro-EU wing baked by Blair, Campbell and the media promoted the relatively unknown David Cameron, maybe picturing him a new Blair who would be easy for them to control and manipulate.

Given the situation, Cameron if a eurosceptic will have no choice but to play down the issue of Europe and to play a long game. The MER is of course the next ploy from the europhiles to attempt to stop eurosceptics from attacking the EU and to lay down their arms, and to keep the Conservatives inside the EPP. It will be a white elephant from start to finish.

If British eurosceptics like Christina Speight and also folk like Nigel Farage would wise up to what the game is all about, they would begin to see different strategies to achieve the ends that they desire. UKIP should only focus on removing Europhile MP’s from Westminster, and fight only the last 20 or so europhile seats that are left – including the false eurosceptic Hague. How Hague is still getting away with it defeats me. I guess it’s the power of the media to bamboozle.

The Christina’s of this world should be working on the inside, assiduously pushing for the deselection of the MP’s like Ken Clarke, William Hague and the rump of eurosceptics that remain. In this way the energies of the eurosceptic movement would no longer be wasted in conflict with each other and the eurosceptic movement would start to achieve a base from which they could make some real progress.

The strategy would be the same whether Cameron is or is not a eurosceptic. I personally think the evidence that he is a eurosceptic is strong. If eurosceptics don’t begin to hit the target, and change the Conservative Party from a coalition dominated by the Europhiles into one dominated by the skeptics, they will have lost the only realistic strategy to remove Britain from the EU that exists.

[Denis Cooper]

I would no more sign up to support this campaign that I would put my name to a petition which states: "As a citizen of the European Union, I want the European Parliament to be located only in Brussels", which references and relies upon Article 47 of the proposed Constitution, and which was initiated by a federalist MEP at the suggestion of a European Commissioner as part of her "Plan D":

http://www.oneseat.eu/

I would also point out that the very first news item placed on the MER website, "David Cameron announces the formation of a new group in the European Parliament", is close to being a lie. OK, so it's just about tenable that an announcement that a new group WILL be formed in three years counts as an announcement of "the formation of a new group", but it removes any initial hope that statements on the MER website could be taken at face value.

I would further point out that the Joint Declaration (actually linked through "Read the Explanatory Note", by the way) is silent on the position of the Tory MEPs until the new group is formed in 2009. There is nothing in that Declaration which prevents them leaving the EPP NOW, which is what Cameron promised.

[Camoron]

Britains place is as a region of Europe. Cameron and his team that were ELECTED by the party understand this.

The sooner the Xenophobes leave and join the crazy fools at UKIP the better. Then this great party can continue it's great tradition of integrating Britain into the fabric of Europe.

The post democratic society is almost here comrades. Nothing will stop Camerons march and if we play our cards right, then Cameron could be the first presdient of the United States of Europe!