We can trust Cameron on Europe

07 October 2009

Eurosceptics are not ‘swivel-eyed’ or psychotic, says Daniel Hannan, and it’s only Labour propagandists who think the party is divided on this issue

‘[Labour’s] propagandists are salivating at the opportunity to paint the Tories as divided once again on Europe, with “hardline” — code for near-lunatic extremist — right-wingers cast as the pantomime villains. “Behind you, Dave!” they call, less to warn him than to make the public aware of the grotesques with whom he chooses to associate. And there it is, that old calumny that to be Eurosceptic is to be right-wing, not just in a free-market sort of way, but in a hang ’em, flog ’em and — whisper it behind closed doors — a “wogs begin at Calais” sort of way. Cameron can’t be trusted, is the message, not when he is in hock to these mad Eurosceptics, a label which is now used to imply opposition to virtually every piece of progressive legislation from Catholic emancipation onwards.’

We can only wonder at the Gramscian genius of those who have carried out this semantic inversion. To want to preserve your parliamentary democracy is extreme; to want to give more power to unelected officials is moderate. To consult the people is swivel-eyed; to connive at their disfranchisement is level-headed. To accept the verdict of a referendum is obsessive; to keep coming back with the same question, over and over again, is pragmatic.

This last especially annoys me. I have rarely met anyone as obsessive as the Eurocrats who support the European constitution. For eight years, they have clutched at their sacred text like millennarian cultists, undeterred by its repeated rejections at the ballot box. Yet it is their opponents who are routinely called ‘obsessive’.

I think I have worked out what is bothering the Euro-zealots. If David Cameron does indeed call a referendum, it will be very hard to carry on with the pretence that the opponents of European amalgamation are either football hooligans or Blimps. Cameron, in short, threatens to make the Eurosceptic cause look as moderate and modern as it really is. Once that happens, as my integrationist friends are well aware, the game is up.

Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for South East England.