Lost in Europe

As you read this, the Conservatives seem to be edging towards some promise, to be contested at the next general election, of a referendum in the next parliament over Britain’s membership of the EU. You can see how far opinion has moved by the fact that government ministers — Michael Gove only last week — can now say that we should contemplate getting out of Europe without the heavens falling in on them. If Mrs Thatcher had said anything like Mr Gove did, she would have been ejected from office at once.

Now of course we should welcome all genuine attempts to give our own citizens a fuller say in their constitutional future. At some point, there will have to be a referendum. While I would caution that, from the Eurosceptic point of view, it matters very much at which point, I regard a referendum as morally and politically essential.

But you will observe that the call for a referendum comes not because we all trust a Conservative government — if there were one — or a Labour government — if there were one — or the present coalition. It is because we don’t. The promise of a referendum from a mainstream political party is therefore not an emblem of its faith in the British people, but an effort to buy us off. It feels like an electoral gambit. A referendum promise is being used by government as a substitute for something that is missing. What is missing is the same thing that was missing, oddly, in the Thatcher era too. What is missing is a new policy.

Even though, as prime minister, Mrs Thatcher dramatically changed the rhetoric and attitude towards Europe, she never felt politically strong enough to change the policy itself. This most powerful of British prime ministers did not command a majority in her own Cabinet on this subject.