EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords, in all my political experience I do not think I have come across a more absurd notion than a referendum that will only take place some four, five or six years after it is announced. But, of course, this is not a serious political idea. It is, as we know, a short-term and cynical party-political ploy designed simply to push the European issue beyond the horizon of the next election and to keep the Eurosceptics off the Prime Minister’s back until then. If there are costs in terms of investment and jobs and other costs to our national interest, then to hell with the national interest. That is what we are actually confronted with.

If we need further evidence of the superficiality of this exercise, it is in the fact that the Prime Minister hardly mentioned what the objectives of this negotiation or renegotiation are going to be. In all that elaborate speech only one sentence deals with them by mentioning three things: the environment, social affairs and crime. We have only to look at those three in order to realise that either we are faced with what is essentially a hypocritical exercise that is not intended to be taken seriously or else something that would be disastrous if pursued. Are we going to pull out of the European environmental policy? Are we going to get rid of the commitment to reduce emissions by 20% from their 1990 levels by 2020? Are we going to try to do it unilaterally? Does the Prime Minister mean the non-climate change aspects of environmental obligations such as water pollution? Are British factories going to be allowed to release any kinds of effluent into our rivers? If we believe in having environmental controls, is it not in our interests to make sure that our competitors on the continent of Europe bear the same level of costs? It is quite clear that this has not been thought through at all. It is an entirely cynical, short-term exercise.

The same applies to social policy. I would love to see the Prime Minister fight the next election on the basis that he is going to get rid of the working time directive or the parental leave directive. Is that to be taken seriously? And what about crime, which comes under justice and home affairs? We are told that the Government are already intending to opt out of the justice and home affairs chapter. In that case, what is the point of renegotiating something that we are going to opt out of? None of this makes sense.

There are many aspects of this which worry me. Obviously I am anxious about the costs of the uncertainty and even more anxious about the costs attached to our leaving the European Union, if that is the ultimate aim of this exercise; it could easily lead to that bad accident. However, my worst anxiety is that our continental partners will say—they may be far too diplomatic and astute to do so, but it is what more and more of them will think—“For heaven’s sake, the British are hopeless. They cannot make up their minds. They have been humming and hawing and coming and going for 30 years. They always oppose everything and they are very difficult. For God’s sake, if they want to leave, let them leave. Let’s conduct this negotiation in such a way that they end up having to go”.

When that happens, what is the prospect for this country? The prospect is the one that we have been trying to avoid for 500 years. It is why we fought Philip II, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Nicholas I and the Kaiser. We will find ourselves with a superpower on the European continent with whose policies we have in practice to align ourselves although we will have no influence whatever on their formulation. That is the position we shall be in, and under the shadow of that superpower we shall live for the rest of time—regretting the appalling decisions that we came to in a fit of absence of mind.