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Saturday 22 November 2008

WEB EXCLUSIVE:  Meet the minister for selling the unsellable - uncut

An extended version of Fraser Nelson's interview with Jim Murphy

As Europe Minister, I ask, doesn’t he have the worst job in government? He must sell a treaty which the public do not want, and do not believe is any different to the old constitution on which they were promised a referendum. ‘My job,’ he says, slowly, ‘is to repeatedly try to explain and discuss how it is different in substance and consequence from the old constitution.’ A tough task, I say, given the long list of European leaders saying the two documents are substantially the same.

‘The building blocks of your argument aren’t very strong in that the rest of Europe hasn’t said it’s the same,’ he says. I quote Bertie Ahern and Angela Merkel, but he stops me. ‘There are quotes from every leader in Europe saying the Treaty is different to the constitution. There just are. Sure, we can trade quotes at each other — the Prime Minister of Luxembourg says this, someone in Slovenia says that.’

But what about the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee — surely what it says must be taken seriously? ‘Of course, but it said the Treaty is substantially the same for those countries who have not secured the opt-outs which Britain has. We have a unique deal.’ He is technically correct, but the Committee went on to say it was ‘not convinced’ that the UK version of the Treaty wasn’t ‘substantially the same’.

Mr Murphy knows the arguments against this Treaty, and knows how to fight them: drag your opponent down into minutiae. I could swear I detected a smile when he used phrases like ‘third pillar’ and ‘Schengen aspects of justice’ as if he was daring me to put them into this piece and see how many readers I would lose. 

But surely, I ask, he accepts widespread hostility to the Treaty. For example, he recently explained his case on a video posted on a Labour party website. ‘Ask a question,’ it says — and underneath are comments from the public with questions like ‘Is this legal?’ and ‘How can you look at yourself in the mirror?’ alongside phrases such as ‘mealy-mouth spin’, ‘running scared’, ‘total breach of faith’, ‘blatant lies’ and worse.

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