EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, the Prime Minister’s speech went down well with my very conservative mother, who celebrated her 100th birthday on the morning that he delivered it. I myself found quite a lot to commend in the analysis of what is wrong with the functioning of the European Union, but I wish that he had heeded Rab Butler’s dictum that politics is the art of the possible. The road he has taken for achieving the improvements he seeks is a road that leads to where he says he does not want to go—to Britain’s exit from the European Union.

When President Hollande told his cabinet that he wished Britain to stay at the heart of Europe, his Ministers hardly needed reminding that that could not be at any price. France is not alone in taking that view. David Cameron should take seriously what Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, spelled out in bold language in his Blenheim speech last September.

The Prime Minister reminds us in his speech that history has often proved heretics right. But one proposition, which he admits is heretical, is a heresy too far for most if not all of his European partners. He attacks the commitment of member states enshrined in the European treaty to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe. He respects the right of others to hold to that commitment but he says that that is not the objective for Britain, and that it may not be the objective of others, either.

However, attacking the founding principle of the Union is not the recommended way of seeking the indulgence of fellow member states, which is what he now needs. Why should they feel bound to meet the demands of a fellow member who rejects the club’s primary objective? Therein lays the dilemma he has created for himself. The price he must demand from his European partners in order to satisfy his Eurosceptic Back-Benchers and constituents is a price that the European partners will almost certainly not be prepared to pay.

However, he now has the bit between his teeth. He gallops around the Union with all the zeal—though happily not the belligerence—of Charlemagne seeking to bring a Carolingian renaissance to Europe. But David Cameron is no Charlemagne. Rather, he is the man of La Mancha, dreaming his impossible dreams and fighting his invincible foes; dreaming of treaties popping open at his command like champagne corks at a wedding reception; ready to fight the invincible foes drawn up on his Back Benches, waiting to fall on him when he fails to deliver what they believe he promised when they cheered him to the rafters last week. And then will he hear the ghostly voice of Andrew Bonar Law proclaiming: “I must follow them. I am their leader”?

As to the referendum, I happen to believe that the people will vote to stay in the European Union. We are a people, for better or for worse, much wedded to the status quo, as previous referendums demonstrated. If the case is well made that the advantages of staying far outweigh any perceived advantages of leaving, that, I believe, can and probably will be the result. But, in the mean time, the damage done to our relationships with our European partners will take long to repair, and confidence in us as members of the Union will not quickly be regained. That will be a task, I hope, that a future Labour Government will take up with enthusiasm and determination.

I wish the Prime Minister would not now be leading us down this long, dark, uncertain alley. Lord Birkenhead once said of Stanley Baldwin, “I think he’s mad”. He added:

“He simply takes one jump in the dark, looks around, and then takes another”.

If the Prime Minister has forgotten Rab Butler, he should at least seek to avoid being branded another Baldwin.