Shortly, I'm going to post (again) about why it is vital that we take the opportunity fate has presented to us to renegotiate our relationship within the EU. But before I do that I want to address an important prior issue. I think that many of you reading my next post will have a thought along the following lines: "For goodness' sake! The party has been obsessed with Europe for about twenty years. We nearly tore ourselves apart over the issue in the mid-1990s. Surely the last thing we want to do, on coming into government, is to start going on about Europe again straight away! Can't we just move on?" I suspect that many of you even amongst those that a strongly in favour of renegotiation (perhaps even withdrawal) feel that Europe is something of an embarrassment. Shouldn't the Right find some other way to define itself than an inability to miss any opportunity that comes along to create a row about Europe? Shouldn't we at least try to deal with some other matters first and perhaps come back to Europe later?
I think this is completely the wrong way to look at the matter. Do we think it "obsessional", dysfunctional in some way and lacking a sense of proportion, to "bang on all the time" about the economy? Do we think it boring and lacking a sense of proportion that the Party began on the task of addressing the deficit immediately upon taking office? Would you accept it if someone said the Party should "move on" from its interest in Education, or the NHS?
And let's ponder a moment on those nasty "obsessives" who went on and on and on in their boring and dysfunctional way about Europe in the 1990s. Without them we would have joined the Single Currency, for sure. Do you think that would have been better? Perhaps you would have felt less embarrassed at your clever cocktail parties to confess you were a Conservative, prouder of the Conservative Party if we hadn't "banged on" about Europe?
No! Those nasty obsessives were heroes. A number of them surrendered high office and personal enrichment, and made themselves figures of public ridicule so that they could argue the Right Thing. Others forewent careers they might have had by rebelling almost immediately after entering Parliament in 1992. Those horrible people you think of as having split the Conservative Party, cost us the 1997 Election, and distracted us from "more important matters" achieved probably the most important back-bench-pressured policy choice of the modern era, very much against the odds.
I want to move on from Europe as well. The way to move on is to solve it. The way to solve it is to renegotiate. The way to leave the Party obsessing about Europe for the next twenty years is to fail to take the once-in-a-generation opportunity now before us. The time to renegotiate is now.