New Europhile campaign’s failure to launch

Jonathan Lindsell, 1 July 2013

This morning saw the launch of the ‘Our Biggest Market’ campaign, the pro-Europeans’ latest manifestation of the after ‘British Influence’ and ‘Business for New Europe (BNE)’ failed to gain media attention.

This being an old book with a new cover, there was little new content either in the manifesto or in the speeches of Roland Rudd (PR guru), Vince Cable, Margot James (Tory MP and Parliamentary Private Secretary to the trade and investment minster) or Emma Reynolds (Shadow Europe Minister). Indeed, if you scour Twitter, the event’s most remarkable aspect was a debacle over Cable’s microphone malfunctioning.

One speech did raise a few eyebrows, and highlighted the subtext of the manifesto. Rudd invited David McAllister to show the new initiative’s cross-continental support: McAllister is a star in Angela Merkel’s CDU, Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, and half Scottish. Nestled in his speech, which was mainly singing the manifesto’s praises, McAllister asserted a German desire for stronger rules, a more effective single market, and the need for the Commission to have strong tools to sanction member states that broke such rules.

This is daunting. The manifesto, you see, is an odd mix of (1) reform aspirations you’d expect from Eurosceptics, (2) vague hopes for progress that are impossible/contradictory/misconstrued, and (3) a dangerous tendency towards more centralisation.

In the first category: defending the City, cutting strangling regulations, starting renegotiation sooner, and the reducing Common Agricultural Policy protectionism.
The second includes the importance of future trade deals with America, Japan and India – ignoring how these are piecemeal, stuttering, and how Britain would achieve them further and faster alone. The potential benefits of such deals, and of the current situation, are painfully inflated. Rudd also suggests the European Parliament should only sit in Brussels rather than hopping back-and-forth to Strasbourg. This is an admirable goal, but legally inconsistent with BNE’s stated aversion to treaty change.
The third category concerns extending the power of the European Commission, although it’s framed in misleading terms to placate businesses. ‘Completing the Single Market’, expanding ‘harmonisation’ to digital, energy, transport and telecoms sectors, and implementing the ‘Services Directive’ to allow UK financial and legal firms to compete on the continent all sound positive. But centralising is a double edged sword, since it would give the EU courts and Commission the ultimate say on these policy areas (‘competences’) in the future.

Take the Services Directive. The UK has been pushing for its completion since 2005. Even Tony Blair’s Council Presidency couldn’t resolve the fears France and its allies have of ‘social dumping’ – of their service sectors being undercut by Eastern Europeans willing to work under worse conditions. Any new mechanism to force conformity to the Directive could also be used to force the UK into one of the many EU initiatives we have rightfully opted out of.

There are no new tricks in this manifesto launch, and the old ones are decidedly underwhelming.