EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, if a speech can be a 180-degree turnaround from a previous speech, this is it. The context of the Prime Minister’s speech is, of course, the Conservatives’ frustration, because they have missed the boat. The eurozone is recovering and the pound is falling against the euro. Therefore we no longer hear the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, proclaiming that the euro is dead. The problem now for the Conservative Party is the dictum, “If you can’t beat them, you’d better join them”, so the frustration grows apace.

The Prime Minister’s speech is intended to set up a scenario where he demands the repatriation of things such as employment rights, as my noble friend Lord Monks pointed out—as if, incidentally, that would make workers more inclined to vote to stay in the EU. However, as we heard—from the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, I believe—there is no such thing as a retrospective opt-out. The Labour Party—correctly—will have nothing to do with this scenario, including the referendum hypothesis. Apart from anything else, you do not expect the Labour Party to get heavily involved in highly imaginary negotiations conducted by an equally highly imaginary Conservative Government in 2016 or 2017, which, as everyone knows, are intended only to keep the Conservative Party together.

A Labour Government responsible for a hypothetical referendum presupposes equally a Labour Government, which I believe will be elected in 2015. Until nearer that time, what crystal ball are we supposed to look into and to say that one thing or another needs renegotiation followed by a referendum? I am sure that we in the Labour Party are not going to invent such a scenario on the back of an envelope just to meet the wishes of those who read the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. The fact is that this is a crisis for the Conservative Party; it is no crisis at all for the Labour Party.

My non-political friends to whom I talked last weekend, for example, are aghast at the political cynicism of the referendum announcement in particular. They do not think that this whole business has anything to do with the national interest. I therefore think that it will not necessarily be of any benefit to the Conservative Party.