The triumph of Euroscepticism

November 4th 2009 marked the triumph of Euroscepticism.

I have been a Eurosceptic since the late 1980s.  I remember challenging Leon Brittan in 1989, asking him what an entity with its own Executive, civil service, legal space, Parliament and supreme court was supposed to be if not a state.  If it waddled like a duck and quacked like a duck, I said, it was probably a duck.  I made my first speech against the Single European Currency in 1991.  Throughout the 1990s I argued in favour of Euroscepticism, that we should be in Europe but not run by Europe.  After Maastricht I was in favour of renegotiation.  Neither of these views was code for anything.  My belief in renegotiation was not code for "get out of Europe".  My belief in "in Europe but not run by Europe" was not code for "join the Single European State by stealth".  I was a Eurosceptic.

Back then, from the late 1980s through the 1990s Eurosceptics of my complexion wanted Britain to remain part of the European Union but not to participate in the Single European State.  To deliver on this we sought three key things:

1. That Britain's membership of the European Union should be clarified as an international agreement of a sovereign state, not the pooling of sovereignty into a newly sovereign entity of Europe.  We thus did not object in principle to the UK's membership of either the trading agreement or the other aspects of the European Union that represented participation in an international agreement.  (Of course, we each disagreed with a number of details of the arrangement, such as aspects of the Common Agricultural Policy, but these were matters of detail, of implementation, of policy not of principle.)
2. That Britain should state that it would not join the Single European Currency, the scope of which was always going to constitute the scope of the Single European State.
3. That Britain should have no participation in any future aspect of the European Union encompassing criminal law.

Today, this concept triumphed in the Conservative Party.

I was always opposed to the idea of referendums.  These are a device of dictatorship, fundamentally incompatible with Parliamentary democracy, an appeal to the Will of the People over the heads of their elected representatives.  The concept of using a binding referendum to determine what would happen in our relationship with our EU partners was pretty much as destructive of any traditional concept of the British constitution as our being subsumed into the Single European State.  I was appalled when British political parties came, en masse, to commit to referendum as the determinant of our destiny.  I regarded those who favoured referendums as fundamentally nationalists or arch-democrats, sitting along a certain political dimension virtually at the opposite end from myself.  What they willed was the destruction of the British constitution, every bit as much as the most swivel-eyed Europhile.

Considering these two aspects of my view - my Euroscepticism and my opposition to referendums - you will appreciate that I am very happy but not perfectly happy with Cameron's proposals today.  For these represent the triumph of Euroscepticism at the cost of entrenching the role of alien referendums in our constitution.  For what has he proposed?

1. He proposes to amend the European Communities Act 1972, the key founding piece of legislation through which all legal force of our membership of the EU applies (ponder the significance of that, you who want to suggest that Cameron's proposals today amount to nothing of significance).  He proposes to amend this in such a way that the standard legal devices whereby EU Treaty amendments create variations in UK law will not apply to any future such amendments (except via referendum - my point of dispute with him).  He thus proposes to unmake that aspect of the Lisbon Treaty that means that future variations to the EU Treaty do not require future treaties with ratification by national Parliaments.  This would straightforwardly negate the most fundamental constitutional aspect of the Lisbon Treaty.

2. He proposes a Sovereignty Act, to re-assert that rulings of the European Union (e.g. of the ECJ) have effect in British law only through the auspices of Acts of the Crown in Parliament.  This is precisely the assertion that Eurosceptics requested in the 1990s.

3. He proposes to renegotiate such that only the British authorities can initiate criminal investigations in the UK, reversing provisions presaged in the Amsterdam and Nice Treaties and asserted most explicitly in Lisbon.

If we can take Britain's position on not joining the euro as clarified, then what Cameron proposes is just what Eurosceptics have been asking for for decades.  Unless you believe that he doesn't mean it, or can't deliver it (neither of which I believe for a second - I think it is clear that he is a convicted Eurosceptic), this is our moment of triumph.  If Cameron's policy is enacted, Britain's involvement in the Single European State project comes to an end, whilst our membership of the European Union remains intact - we will be in Europe but not run by Europe, as we wanted all along.

Of course, I hope that in renegotiation lots of matters of detail come up - things to do with the CAP, CFP, the Social Chapter, and much else.  But these are all matters of detail, of the policy of the moment, things that can be negotiated away one day and taken back the next if the basic constitutional principles he proposes are established.

There are a couple of things I disliked, some of which I hope might yet be nuanced.  I obviously object to the promises regarding referendums (but he won't change those).  I didn't like the remarks about how we had lots of time to do this.  I think the only credible policy on renegotiation is a renegotiation starting immediately.  Otherwise it will be too easy to put off and put off and then never get around to doing.  And I was bemused by the suggestion that we might include in the next manifesto but one a proposal for a referendum on a wider renegotiation.  I don't think that's acceptable.  Our EU partners will certainly accept the measures Cameron proposes - how could they object, since these are all amendments to our own domestic constitution, other than by ejecting us from the EU?  But if they were to object to them in some way, we would be ejected from the EU, and the issue of a referendum on renegotiation would not arise.  I just think that idea missed the point.

These are small quibbles.  The key thing is that November 4th represented the triumph of Euroscepticism.  I really think most of those that have taken these proposal badly either failed to understand them or have actually long been get-outers rather than Eurosceptics at all.  For those of us that are, indeed, Eurosceptics, this is our moment.