A warship alters its signal?
The dilemma for most eurosceptics who oppose British integration into a EU superstate — that political chimaera which is finally being brought into being by the EU constitutional treaty — has always been the assumption that EU membership is a take-it-or-leave-it deal. Our European, ahem, partners have always made it crystal clear that you either sign up to all the terms of the euroclub or you get out. Those opt-outs the UK has previously secured — on the euro, for example — have met with fury because for the eurocracy there can be no halfway house. The UK's perverse attachment to self-government has always been perceived to be as incomprehensible as it is non-communautaire.
It’s that assumption of take-it-or-leave-it that is paralysing the Conservative party over the EU constitution. At present, it is pledged to fight it, but only up to the point at which the constitution becomes a done deal within Europe; at which point the Tories will…
Exactly. Since they assume that the terms of the UK’s membership of the EU are non-negotiable, they know that if they were to commit themselves to hold a referendum after the constitution was set in stone, thus implicitly suggesting that they would renegotiate Britain’s terms of membership of the EU, they would instantly be pilloried as living in cloud-cuckoo land and accused of pursuing a covert agenda of pulling out of Europe altogether. So the Tories are fudging it and hoping no-one will notice.
But suppose the assumption that the eurocracy demands all or nothing from Britain is wrong? Suppose the implacable reluctance of the Brits to be good Europeans like everyone else has now convinced the eurocrats that the Brits will never be anything other than a millstone round the euroneck? A remarkable intervention by the very architect of the constitution himself, the former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, has come my way. Interviewed in the French weekly Le Point on July 5 2007 about the revived constitution, Giscard said there was now a serious problem with the British for whom European integration appeared as
an obstacle, a brake, a source of complications. We saw this clearly during the summit negotiations: the British said no to everything that could be said to be in the direction of European integration, or insisted on opt-outs. This attitude signals a new phase which for me is interesting and positive because it leads to an examination of the way in which the UK participates in the process of European construction. No-one thinks the UK will join the eurozone or the Schengen system. From now on there’s strong British exceptionalism in the EU. Should that worry us? I don’t think so. Rather it’s a clarification — not a matter of concern. However, we need to find a structure that reconciles this new British position with the undoubted desire of other European countries to press ahead with integration [my emphasis].Asked whether there should be a ‘special relationship' — statut particulier — for the UK, Giscard replied:
We need to work out with the UK some practical arrangement. Intellectually, it’s fairly easy; in practice, it’s more complicated. The approach could be as follows. In everything to do with the market economy and inter-governmental co-operation, the British would be involved. When it comes to British integration the British, if they wanted, could stay on the fringes. The problem is institutional. How, in this scenario, could they take part in the European Parliament? How could they vote, and on what policies, in the Council of Ministers? So we can readily conceive of a Europe in which there’s a large group of countries — not just an inner core but almost all the others —pursuing integration. And that one country prefers a special relationship.What Giscard appeared to be suggesting here was precisely the kind of relationship with Europe — economic, co-operative but not integrated — that the vast majority of the British people would undoubtedly want, if given the choice. And it wasn’t the first time he’d done so, having said something similar in an interview with the French radio channel France Inter on June 27 2007. From Giscard, then, of all people, comes the idea that Britain can have precisely what it wants in Europe — a unique relationship befitting the UK’s unique position as the bloody-minded offshore island that stubbornly wants to remain in charge of its own affairs. Giscard of course has long moved on; but since he is so much the spirit of the EU — the grandest possible of fromages — his suggestion is electrifying.
So there you are, William and David — Giscard has handed it to you on a plate. What are you waiting for? Or to put it another way, how come a former French president is suggesting something that's in the fundamental interests of the UK but for which British politicians are too afraid to ask?