EU: UK Membership

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

My Lords, in the light of what I am going to say, I should make clear that I am strongly in favour of our continued membership of the European Union. In the 1970 general election, the first one I fought, in Clacton, I was in favour of it. I was in favour of it in the referendum of 1975, I fought the first European elections in 1979 and I have always been strongly in favour of it. But the European project is in crisis. If we carry on as we are, we will find that the people of this country have ceased to support our continued membership, and that will not be confined to this country. The recent by-elections and the rise of UKIP here—and to some extent of the Scots Nats in Scotland—are very clear writing on the wall.

You may say, “What has that got to do with it?”. I spent a day in Clacton canvassing, partly for old times’ sake. I was shattered by the degree of hostility not so much to Europe or immigration but to the whole state of politics in this country. Millions upon millions of our fellow citizens feel that they are in some way outside the political tent. They feel virtually anonymous, civically speaking. They feel overlooked, ignored and anonymous. There is a terrible feeling outside London of the metro-centric nature of our modern society. Whether you are talking about this place, or the media, or big business, there is a feeling in the country—and it is evident in a hundred polls, and in a hundred perceptive pieces of research—that the ordinary person in the ordinary community is of no account, until someone wants something from them.

That is certainly the impression I got across the doorsteps of Clacton. I emphasise that it was not racist stuff. It was not anti-EU stuff, except occasionally. It was a sense of rejection, disaffection and disconnection. Unless we do something about this—and it is not easy to know quite what to do—and unless we attack this citizen ignorance and disaffection, I believe that the European project will become unsustainable. In a democracy, if the majority of those who are democrats cease to connect with a central tenet of their society and their democratic culture, then it is not sustainable.

I read the other day that the total membership of our political parties is under 1%. There are fewer members of all our political parties than there are members of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. In the Hansard Society’s most recent democratic audit, its single most powerful point was the sense of powerlessness on the part of our fellow country people. Of the 18 to 25 year-olds, in another recent poll—I think it might have been for the Hansard Society—only 23% felt fairly involved or connected with any political party. Under a quarter of 18 to 25 year-olds now vote. We have 3 million people who are not registered to vote. All in all, I believe that the health of our beloved country, and its democratic institutions, has not been as bad as this certainly in living memory but going back, I suspect, a long way.

I will add just one more point, which is something that we could and should do now, and that is citizenship education. Our society is inexorably complex. We know what complexity is in this place. Many of us cannot cope with the legislation we are supposed to deal with. Think of ordinary 16 and 17 year-olds. How are they supposed to relate to all of this? We do not help them. Citizenship education is collapsing, and so, too, Europe is perhaps the most ignored aspect of all. I hope we will take this issue and deal with it.