THIS BLESSED PLOT (2)

This week's edition of the Economist newspaper reviewed a memoir by David Hannay, a career diplomat who was at various times the U.K.'s Ambassador to both the European Union and the United Nations. As such, he saw at first hand both how Britain is viewed by the rest of the world, and how so much of that view stems from the fact that it is an integral part of  an economic and political grouping that is bigger than itself, rather than a smallish island nation on the edge of a continent.

His view, with which I agree (see my earlier post), is that the U.K.'s two biggest foreign policy mistakes of the second half of the twentieth century were Suez and the failure to be involved in the E.U. from the start. Judging from David Cameron's long-awaited speech on Europe today, it seems clear that the Prime Minister has not read Lord Hannay's book. Everything points to Britain's making a foreign policy mistake of similar proportions in the first part of the twenty first century.

On the surface, the offer in Mr. Cameron's speech was beguiling. Britain will renegotiate a new relationship with the E.U. based on five principles; an emphasis on the single market, flexibility (which means letting more countries have more opt-outs from common projects, and removing the call for an "ever closer union" from the E.U.'s treaties), subsidiarity, democratic accountability, and fairness (meaning that if the U.K. stays out of common projects, such as the Euro, then it won't be disadvantaged by those common projects). That new relationship will then be put to a referendum in the next Parliament, and at the latest by 2018. The British electorate will then vote either to stay in on the new terms, or to leave. Mr. Cameron will campaign actively for a yes.

Some of the speech was positive, notably his trashing of the so-called Norway and Switzerland options. Yet there are huge problems involved. The biggest is a complete lack of recognition that the E.U. as it has evolved is a complex set of compromises involving 27 countries (and more in the future, starting with Croatia), all of whom have domestic electorates and all of whom seek to promote their national interests. No country is completely happy with the end result, but all accept it, since they recognise that no other country is completely happy either. But as soon as one country tries to unpick that fundamental compromise, it opens up a Pandora's Box where other countries try exactly the same tactics. Denmark is a Eurosceptic member of the E.U., with more opt-outs (four) than the U.K. has. Yet the Danish Prime Minister's initial reaction to the speech was that it was not a good idea; what matters at the moment is working together, not working one against the rest.

Mr. Cameron said that the E.U. would be willing to negotiate, and accept changes, since it would be the only way of addressing the E.U.'s fundamental current and future lack of competitiveness. This is (yet) another example of the Brits telling the pesky continentals what is best for them; I am not sure that Germany (for instance) thinks that it is uncompetitive relative to the U.K., despite having the Euro as a currency. Mr. Cameron pointed to areas where he has negotiated before as evidence that it is possible to get changes that suit the U.K. Yet those changes took place at a time when the E.U. collectively wanted to move forward, and the U.K. could get its way by threatening to use its veto to derail the next step (though on the fiscal compact, his "veto" merely meant that it went ahead outside the E.U.'s legal structures, not that it didn't go ahead at all). By contrast, any future negotiations would need to satisfy both Mr. Cameron's mouth-frothing backbenchers, and 26 other countries heartily sick of British demands to be treated as a special case (plus, of course, the European Parliament and other vested interests). Some tinkering around the edges might be accepted, but I can't see them signing up to the sort of major reforms envisaged by the Prime Minister.

Not that he spelt out in detail exactly what those reforms would entail. Which strengthened the impression that the point of this speech was domestic rather than foreign. A poll taken in November 2012 by Eurobarometer shows that the U.K. is the only country in the E.U. in which a majority (53%) of those asked agreed with the statement "my country would be better off outside the E.U."; in austerity-plagued Spain, it was only 27%, in Denmark it was 21%. Mr. Cameron's Conservative Party has been under intense pressure from the single-issue U.K. Independence Party, which is actively campaigning for an exit; something had to be said to shore up his own party's base.

The problem is that there is a difference between domestic politics and statesmanship. Opinion polls during the past 50 years have consistently shown that the British people are willing to be led on European issues, if only their national leaders would lead them. They never do. Mr. Cameron today repeated the same old canards said before; that laws are "imposed" by Brussels (all E.U. legislation is approved by national leaders in Councils); that the E.U. is just a matter of trade (it hasn't been for 40 years); that European legal judgments give the U.K. difficulties (a common club based on rules needs a common adjudicator of those rules, how else could it function?); that there is a democratic deficit (ever seen the House of Commons at work?); that a single market does not require common legislation.

Underlying it all, sadly, is a more fundamental problem, in my view. I say sadly, since I myself am a Brit. That problem is that we Brits have still not accepted that we are not top dog in the world anymore, and so cannot accept the basic idea that it is better to be a smaller part of something bigger, than stand alone. Since 1945, we have thrashed around in the net of the perception of our special status, trying to find a post-imperial role. Sir Henry Tizard's memo is as relevant today as it was in 1949. And just as ignored.

David Cameron is leading us into another Suez moment. My prediction is that the U.K. is going to fluff it in exactly the same way. That's the saddest thing of all.

Walter Blotscher