A familiar story was played out in Brussels last week. A British prime minister entered the conference chamber vowing he would not give one inch to the European Union. He emerged a few hours later having given way but nonetheless declaring a ‘spectacular’ victory. It was John Major and Maastricht, Tony Blair and his ‘red lines’, all over again. How quickly David Cameron has settled into the role expected of him by Brussels. To pretend that he is happy to be giving away an additional £450 million a year to the EU. To sound the bugle of triumph, no matter what the outcome.
To his credit, Mr Cameron did not pretend to be pleased about his latest instructions from the continent: to grant prisoners the right to vote. After debating the topic for decades, it turns out that it doesn’t matter what anyone in England thinks. The European Court of Human Rights has decided that it must be so, and Cameron says he does not have the money to fight it. Perhaps because Britain’s net payments to the EU are trebling to an indefensible £10.3 billion — even before the little extra demanded by Brussels.
Cameron’s greatest wish regarding Europe is for the subject to disappear. It brings out a rather vicious, mutinous streak in his party and bitterly divides the coalition. But the EU refuses to go away. Whether regulating the hedge funds out of London or simply demanding more money, it keeps coming back. Even the Lib Dems are frustrated with the bureaucracy that they have defended for so long. Danny Alexander has spoken about lowering tax on petrol in rural areas to assuage his Highland constituents, but he has found out that to do this he will need approval from all EU member states. Nick Clegg is reviewing local government finance, but has discovered that localising VAT is illegal under EU law.
Admitting defeat in Brussels is hard, but explaining it to voters is harder. Why, at a time when services are being slashed, will we nevertheless have to contribute an extra £235 million next year to, among other vanity projects, a new headquarters for the European Council in Brussels? Why, when British embassies are facing cuts, must we pay for a cadre of people whom Brussels describes as ‘ambassadors’ who require ‘top of the range furniture’ in 137 offices worldwide?
All of this is indefensible. And this is why Cameron’s strategy — to avoid conflict wherever possible — will prove counterproductive. With each fresh outrage, the anger over Britain’s relationship with the European Union grows. This fact is not lost on the new intake of Conservative MPs, many of whom already rebelled against the rise in the EU budget. In spite of their diversity and socially liberal instincts, the new breed of MPs are robustly Eurosceptic. They will not tolerate any further loss of sovereignty.
Sooner or later a British prime minister will be forced into declaring a straightforward referendum asking the British people: do you wish to stay in the EU? David Cameron would not be threatening the coalition by calling for such a referendum; Nick Clegg himself floated the idea during the election campaign — presumably confident that the vote would be ‘yes’. Polls suggest that between 40 per cent and 55 per cent would vote ‘no’, but the case has not been made since Britain was asked to join a free trade bloc in 1975.
Britain is the EU’s fourth-largest paymaster. The more seriously we take the idea of holding a referendum, the more seriously Brussels will take us. As Thatcher found out, one can save a lot of money by playing a little hardball. If Cameron wants to stop Europe exploding as an issue during his premiership, he should try acting tough.
Orphans of political correctness
The announcement by children’s minister Tim Loughton that the government is to make it easier for white parents to adopt black and Asian children is long overdue.
Adoption agencies have worked on the principle that black children belong only in black families. The cost of this wrongheaded ideology is that black, mixed-race and Asian children wait for an adoptive family on average three times as long as white children. Some are never adopted and are instead shunted from foster family to foster family, suffering poorer health and education as a result.
New Labour’s attitude towards ethnic minorities was not dissimilar to Basil Fawlty’s towards his German guests. In its obsession to avoid being racist, the party ended up being guilty of the very offence from which it tried to dissuade others. But it is not just on race that adoption policy is discriminatory. One couple, Dominic and Alex Bemrose, were told by social workers that they were not only too white to adopt but ‘too heterosexual and middle-class’. In the end they adopted a Guatemalan boy. While that is very nice for him, it is a disgrace that the British children they would have loved to adopt remain in care.
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