By Max Wind-Cowie, Head of the Progressive Conservatism Project at Demos
Poor old Philip Hollobone. The MP for Kettering has been at the sharp end of a great deal of media attention over the past week. His Private Member’s Bill on face-coverings has inspired much comment, from the sublime to the ridiculous, and today he has been rather pilloried in the Independent. The pros, cons and practicalities of a ban on the burkha have been discussed and debated exhaustively and I would have nothing to add to Conservative Home’s own Paul Goodman, whose wisdom on the matter should inform us all.
But it is another of Mr. Hollobone’s attitudes that bothers me today – his resolute opposition to Turkish membership of the EU. It bothers me because I think it is misplaced and, more importantly, because it is also unhelpful to conservative ideas about Europe and the EU.
In the Indy today he says that Turkish accession to the EU would be a ‘disaster’, citing his fears that we would see ‘hundreds of thousands, if not more than one million, Turks heading our way’. Let me attempt to allay that fear. Britain had its hands burnt by mass Eastern European migration in the noughties but that was because of the incompetence of our former Government which, unlike virtually every comparable EU member state, refused to cap the numbers permitted to come here to work.
It would be entirely feasible – and with precedence - for Britain to place stringent restrictions on the numbers of economic migrants we would accept from any new member-state. These measures would require tough negotiation, but they are eminently doable, we shouldn’t allow the recklessness of the previous administration to tie the hands of our new Government.
But it is not simply a question of mitigating the potential damage of Turkish membership – there are genuinely good, conservative, positive reasons to support it.
Like many conservatives I am sceptical about Europe. This does not mean, hard as it may be for those on the left to grasp, that I hate the EU or that I am unable to see the benefits as well as the problems. It simply means that I want a balanced Europe - where we are able to gain from mutually beneficial agreements but are protected from harm and from unaccountable political interference and threats to our sovereignty. That balance is best achieved through an EU that is less deep but spread wider - so that many benefit from a light-touch Europe rather than a few being squashed beneath the weight of a concentrated bureaucracy. Expansion helps to achieve that.
The EU has helped to nurture democracy, tolerance and openness in those Eastern bloc countries that are now members and which have developed vibrant political cultures free from Sovietism (it is no coincidence that our new conservative allies in the European Parliament are drawn overwhelmingly from those countries) – I would like to see it do the same in Turkey. I support Turkish accession because of the benefits that it would bring to a country that is a fledgling democracy with much to gain from being part of an institution that values and requires those principles. But I also support it because it would spread the EU more thinly and make political union harder to entrench.
Finally there is the issue of Islam. And it is an issue for many who oppose Turkish membership and who worry that it would dilute the ‘Christian identity’ of the EU. Well, maybe, but I would really rather the EU didn’t have a religious identity at all. It is supposed to be a free-trade club, one that countries join because they sign up to the rules of the game - democratic freedoms, human rights, capitalist economies – not because they resemble one another culturally, ethnically or religiously.
One of the biggest problems that conservatives have with the EU has been its ongoing desire to regulate the cultural mores of its members – the bizarre crusade against serving pints in pubs springs to mind – and homogenize its members. It is good for conservatives if the EU is as culturally and religiously diverse as possible, it helps us to make the case for recognizing differences of identity within the confines of union.
What is more, Turkish membership would be a powerful propaganda weapon against those fanatical Islamists who attempt to claim some conspiracy against their co-religionists. What better argument in our favour – that it is not their faith we despise but the way in which some act in its name – than to allow a democratic, tolerant and Muslim country to join the club as an equal?
I don’t hate the EU but, like most conservatives, I want it to be less intrusive. Admitting Turkey to the union would help to spread it more thinly, to reinforce the importance of recognizing different identities within it, to nurture democracy in a close neighbour and to combat the paranoid propaganda of radicals. Our Liberal-Conservative Government should be making the case for welcoming the Turkish people with open arms!
