David Cameron today believes himself on the brink of a triumph. His proposed EU renegotiation needs only endorsement at a summit of the other 27 members. This would be followed by a June referendum, ending with an ‘in’ vote that will scupper his foes in Ukip and on the Tory Right.
But what if he is wrong? What if yesterday’s draft settlement, requiring merely a shifting of deckchairs in Brussels, provokes a seismic shift in the British body politic?
EU Referendum: This sham will only make voters even more cynical
By Max Hastings for the Daily Mail
3 February 2016
Daily Mail
David Cameron today believes himself on the brink of a triumph - but what if he is wrong?
David Cameron today believes himself on the brink of a triumph. His proposed EU renegotiation needs only endorsement at a summit of the other 27 members. This would be followed by a June referendum, ending with an ‘in’ vote that will scupper his foes in Ukip and on the Tory Right.
But what if he is wrong? What if yesterday’s draft settlement, requiring merely a shifting of deckchairs in Brussels, provokes a seismic shift in the British body politic? Read President of the European Council Donald Tusk’s letter, which makes plain how little has changed, for instance on migrants: ‘We need to fully respect the principles of freedom of movement and non-discrimination.’
Most of what Cameron claims to have secured will remain vague aspiration, a country mile from implementation. Who else would trumpet the securing of an ‘emergency brake’ on migrants’ benefits over which he will have little control, or a red card system that requires the support of more than half of our bickering EU neighbours on any given issue?
This much is plain: the sham of a renegotiation, the pretence that the Prime Minister meant what he told us for years about his intention to change our terms of membership of the EU, has spawned a cynicism across the land that will not quickly be dispelled.
No politician dares to tell voters all the truth about difficult issues, because the message would be so bleak that they could never win an election.
But we are entitled to hear more truth more of the time than we get from David Cameron. The consequence of his past evasions and outright deceits is that now when we are asked to endorse his judgment, to accept his assurance that we are better staying in Europe than getting out, it is hard to do so.
I wrote here back in 2009 that it was Cameron’s misfortune that he would become our national leader at a moment when to be merely an adequate prime minister would not suffice: he needed to show himself a great one. At that time, I was thinking chiefly of our crippling debt problem.
As matters have evolved over the intervening seven years, however, other equally grave problems have emerged, headed by the migrant crisis and the struggle with Muslim extremism.
In response to the challenges, on the credit side Cameron has supported George Osborne in making a modest start towards curbing the deficit. He handles himself in the Commons and on the world stage with the natural authority of a country squire opening village fetes. By winning last year’s general election, he saved Britain from the disaster of Ed Miliband.
Yet through it all, Cameron shows no sign of having any higher purpose than that of holding together the Conservative Party, keeping himself in office until he quits to make a fortune and passes the reins to George Osborne. He seems prepared, meanwhile, to tell the British people whatever might shut us up until next week.
'Most of what Cameron claims to have secured will remain vague aspiration, a country mile from implementation,' writes Hastings. Pictured: Cameron meets with European Council president Donald Tusk
Ghastly
He promised his 2014 party conference that a future Tory government would cut immigration, repeal the Human Rights Act and repatriate powers from Brussels, when he had not the smallest intention of doing anything significant to advance those objectives.
He told the Commons last November that 70,000 ‘Syrian moderates’ were waiting to join with the Kurds to fight Islamic State, if we would do our bit by sending four RAF Tornados to provide air support.
This seemed tosh then, and is tosh now, on a subject rightfully too serious for spin-doctoring. He delivers ringing denunciations of what he describes as great evils of our time, most recently social inequality and alleged racism at Oxbridge and in the police and Armed Forces, while saying pitifully little about the matters that passionately concern most British people: mass migration, the failure of the state education system, the need to prevent the NHS from bankrupting our children — and the manifold failures of the EU.
The best defence that can be made of Cameron is that he is no more guilty than his fellow European leaders in refusing to face harsh realities. Almost all of them have abrogated responsibility for credible security policies, at a time when Russia looks more menacing than for three decades.
Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England, has always argued that history will judge Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, pictured, much more harshly than do her contemporaries
They are in denial about the enormity of the migration threat. We are not talking here about a few hundred thousand Syrian refugees, but tens of millions of economic migrants striving to reach Europe from Africa and the Middle East. Absolutely nothing in the Cameron ‘renegotiation’ with Brussels will prevent these people from coming here once they secure some sort of EU documentation, as most assuredly will.
My old friend Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England, has always argued that history will judge Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, much more harshly than do her contemporaries. Even before Merkel’s ghastly blunder in publicly opening Germany’s doors to millions of migrants, she has maintained a posture of stubborn denial about the precariousness of the eurozone and the irrecoverable debts still burdening banks and whole nations.
She will not tell the German people what every numerate person knows, that Greece’s vast sovereign debt will sooner or later have to be written off. Meanwhile, France has fundamental social and economic problems that no Paris government seems capable of persuading its electorate to face.
Exasperated
Every day, the supposedly intelligent political leaders of Europe tell their peoples falsehoods that would make Pinocchio’s nose fall off. One of the most powerful arguments for leaving the EU is that its dominant members refuse to admit its bureaucratic stagnation and absence of accountability. It is plain they will not do so unless or until economic disaster brings their temple down about their ears: Europe is incapable of self-reform.
David Cameron wishes us to swallow the nonsense of his ‘renegotiation’, when, in truth, he has simply reached a personal decision to forget his Eurosceptic past, shrug his shoulders and stick with the tottering European club, in sickness or in health.
Last month, I asked a group of clever thirtysomethings what they thought about the EU. They said they wanted to be convinced that we should stay in, but nobody had yet offered credible arguments for doing so. A retired captain of industry — a Tory and lifelong European — told me recently that he has become so exasperated by Cameron’s condescension in assuring us that the moon is made of green cheese, figuratively speaking, that he is now minded to vote ‘out’.
Cameron wishes us to swallow the nonsense of his ‘renegotiation’, when, in truth, he has simply reached a personal decision to forget his Eurosceptic past, and stick with the tottering European club
So am I. The arguments do not all run one way, and we should disbelieve those who claim they do. We all favour a free trade area, a genuine common market. Leaving Europe will not solve some of our grave national problems, starting with the failure of the education system, poor productivity and a chronic balance of trade deficit.
But the Prime Minister and his henchmen seem to want Britain to stay in this creaking union merely because they are too slothful to contemplate the alternative. Our squire wants no unpleasantness at the harvest supper.
Yet a leader of more courage and imagination would at least consider the logic of addressing the EU’s perhaps irredeemable predicament by leaving it.
David Cameron is not a bad prime minister — Gordon Brown and Tony Blair did far more harm. But he has utterly failed thus far to rise to the greatness of the challenges he and this country face. The times require a visionary leader of the stamp of Margaret Thatcher or Clement Attlee. Instead, we have a man resembling that oh-so-soothing 1930s appeaser, Stanley Baldwin.
Cameron could yet win his summer referendum on Europe, for the usual reasons such things happen: on the day, voters prove too scared to risk the unknowns of ‘out’.
But on the case the Prime Minister has made thus far, and following the risible draft deal he has struck with Donald Tusk, he does not deserve to.
But what if he is wrong? What if yesterday’s draft settlement, requiring merely a shifting of deckchairs in Brussels, provokes a seismic shift in the British body politic?
EU Referendum: This sham will only make voters even more cynical
By Max Hastings for the Daily Mail
3 February 2016
Daily Mail
David Cameron today believes himself on the brink of a triumph - but what if he is wrong?
David Cameron today believes himself on the brink of a triumph. His proposed EU renegotiation needs only endorsement at a summit of the other 27 members. This would be followed by a June referendum, ending with an ‘in’ vote that will scupper his foes in Ukip and on the Tory Right.
But what if he is wrong? What if yesterday’s draft settlement, requiring merely a shifting of deckchairs in Brussels, provokes a seismic shift in the British body politic? Read President of the European Council Donald Tusk’s letter, which makes plain how little has changed, for instance on migrants: ‘We need to fully respect the principles of freedom of movement and non-discrimination.’
Most of what Cameron claims to have secured will remain vague aspiration, a country mile from implementation. Who else would trumpet the securing of an ‘emergency brake’ on migrants’ benefits over which he will have little control, or a red card system that requires the support of more than half of our bickering EU neighbours on any given issue?
This much is plain: the sham of a renegotiation, the pretence that the Prime Minister meant what he told us for years about his intention to change our terms of membership of the EU, has spawned a cynicism across the land that will not quickly be dispelled.
No politician dares to tell voters all the truth about difficult issues, because the message would be so bleak that they could never win an election.
But we are entitled to hear more truth more of the time than we get from David Cameron. The consequence of his past evasions and outright deceits is that now when we are asked to endorse his judgment, to accept his assurance that we are better staying in Europe than getting out, it is hard to do so.
I wrote here back in 2009 that it was Cameron’s misfortune that he would become our national leader at a moment when to be merely an adequate prime minister would not suffice: he needed to show himself a great one. At that time, I was thinking chiefly of our crippling debt problem.
As matters have evolved over the intervening seven years, however, other equally grave problems have emerged, headed by the migrant crisis and the struggle with Muslim extremism.
In response to the challenges, on the credit side Cameron has supported George Osborne in making a modest start towards curbing the deficit. He handles himself in the Commons and on the world stage with the natural authority of a country squire opening village fetes. By winning last year’s general election, he saved Britain from the disaster of Ed Miliband.
Yet through it all, Cameron shows no sign of having any higher purpose than that of holding together the Conservative Party, keeping himself in office until he quits to make a fortune and passes the reins to George Osborne. He seems prepared, meanwhile, to tell the British people whatever might shut us up until next week.
'Most of what Cameron claims to have secured will remain vague aspiration, a country mile from implementation,' writes Hastings. Pictured: Cameron meets with European Council president Donald Tusk
Ghastly
He promised his 2014 party conference that a future Tory government would cut immigration, repeal the Human Rights Act and repatriate powers from Brussels, when he had not the smallest intention of doing anything significant to advance those objectives.
He told the Commons last November that 70,000 ‘Syrian moderates’ were waiting to join with the Kurds to fight Islamic State, if we would do our bit by sending four RAF Tornados to provide air support.
This seemed tosh then, and is tosh now, on a subject rightfully too serious for spin-doctoring. He delivers ringing denunciations of what he describes as great evils of our time, most recently social inequality and alleged racism at Oxbridge and in the police and Armed Forces, while saying pitifully little about the matters that passionately concern most British people: mass migration, the failure of the state education system, the need to prevent the NHS from bankrupting our children — and the manifold failures of the EU.
The best defence that can be made of Cameron is that he is no more guilty than his fellow European leaders in refusing to face harsh realities. Almost all of them have abrogated responsibility for credible security policies, at a time when Russia looks more menacing than for three decades.
Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England, has always argued that history will judge Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, pictured, much more harshly than do her contemporaries
They are in denial about the enormity of the migration threat. We are not talking here about a few hundred thousand Syrian refugees, but tens of millions of economic migrants striving to reach Europe from Africa and the Middle East. Absolutely nothing in the Cameron ‘renegotiation’ with Brussels will prevent these people from coming here once they secure some sort of EU documentation, as most assuredly will.
My old friend Mervyn King, former Governor of the Bank of England, has always argued that history will judge Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, much more harshly than do her contemporaries. Even before Merkel’s ghastly blunder in publicly opening Germany’s doors to millions of migrants, she has maintained a posture of stubborn denial about the precariousness of the eurozone and the irrecoverable debts still burdening banks and whole nations.
She will not tell the German people what every numerate person knows, that Greece’s vast sovereign debt will sooner or later have to be written off. Meanwhile, France has fundamental social and economic problems that no Paris government seems capable of persuading its electorate to face.
Exasperated
Every day, the supposedly intelligent political leaders of Europe tell their peoples falsehoods that would make Pinocchio’s nose fall off. One of the most powerful arguments for leaving the EU is that its dominant members refuse to admit its bureaucratic stagnation and absence of accountability. It is plain they will not do so unless or until economic disaster brings their temple down about their ears: Europe is incapable of self-reform.
David Cameron wishes us to swallow the nonsense of his ‘renegotiation’, when, in truth, he has simply reached a personal decision to forget his Eurosceptic past, shrug his shoulders and stick with the tottering European club, in sickness or in health.
Last month, I asked a group of clever thirtysomethings what they thought about the EU. They said they wanted to be convinced that we should stay in, but nobody had yet offered credible arguments for doing so. A retired captain of industry — a Tory and lifelong European — told me recently that he has become so exasperated by Cameron’s condescension in assuring us that the moon is made of green cheese, figuratively speaking, that he is now minded to vote ‘out’.
Cameron wishes us to swallow the nonsense of his ‘renegotiation’, when, in truth, he has simply reached a personal decision to forget his Eurosceptic past, and stick with the tottering European club
So am I. The arguments do not all run one way, and we should disbelieve those who claim they do. We all favour a free trade area, a genuine common market. Leaving Europe will not solve some of our grave national problems, starting with the failure of the education system, poor productivity and a chronic balance of trade deficit.
But the Prime Minister and his henchmen seem to want Britain to stay in this creaking union merely because they are too slothful to contemplate the alternative. Our squire wants no unpleasantness at the harvest supper.
Yet a leader of more courage and imagination would at least consider the logic of addressing the EU’s perhaps irredeemable predicament by leaving it.
David Cameron is not a bad prime minister — Gordon Brown and Tony Blair did far more harm. But he has utterly failed thus far to rise to the greatness of the challenges he and this country face. The times require a visionary leader of the stamp of Margaret Thatcher or Clement Attlee. Instead, we have a man resembling that oh-so-soothing 1930s appeaser, Stanley Baldwin.
Cameron could yet win his summer referendum on Europe, for the usual reasons such things happen: on the day, voters prove too scared to risk the unknowns of ‘out’.
But on the case the Prime Minister has made thus far, and following the risible draft deal he has struck with Donald Tusk, he does not deserve to.
