European Union

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I commend the Democratic Unionist party for this timely motion. It is effectively an invitation to a party in our House for the Eurosceptics on the Government Benches, who have been good enough to turn up.

It is important to recognise, as the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) did, that we are not talking about a done deal as such. Some right hon. and hon. Members who have been cheering the Prime Minister’s position make him a hero because he stood outside what they have presented as an all-consuming, fixed done deal that can move only one way, whereas the reality is that the deal is not done. What the Prime Minister has done is take the UK out of the important, detailed negotiations that need to take place over the next few months. At a time when, given the safeguards that he and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have said they want for the eurozone and the separate safeguards they want for the UK—and at the time when they could most have used and built up key alliances in Europe—he has taken a position that says, “No, I am out of this.”

Let us remember that it is the Prime Minister and the Chancellor who, for nearly their whole time in office, have been saying that what is needed is closer fiscal union in the eurozone. They were the people who were commending a unitary fiscal position, together with the US Administration, and now the Prime Minister is being cheered because others have moved to the very fiscal compact that he advocated as necessary.

There is a danger in this debate that those who were yesterday grinning like horses chewing thistles when the Prime Minister came in to make his statement will get carried away and become over-jubilant. They might find in a few months that their celebrations and anticipation will turn out to be ephemeral. The same goes for those in other European countries who are jumping up and down with indignation and raging at the Prime Minister. They might find that a lot of their concerns are ephemeral as people concentrate on the shortcomings of the deal itself—the shortcomings that are written into the pact and the even bigger difficulties that are not accounted for in the pact at all.

We need to remember that the deal is a fairly weak construction. It will not inspire enduring confidence among investors. The extra resources remain insufficient and the failure to deliver a credible plan for growth will only worsen the debt problem in Europe. There are serious shortcomings with the Merkozy deal, but the Prime Minister’s approach should have been to point out those shortcomings and to build alliances in the months to come when those details have to be worked out further. We have seen the difficulties with all the previous deals that have come apart, and that will happen to this deal too.

The Prime Minister told us that he was going to the Council looking for certain golden rules to be put in place in the eurozone, but now he seems to be opposing a deal because people want to introduce some of those golden rules. The real issue has to be the difficulties that will be faced in achieving those rules. Let us remember that he did not tell us that he had vetoed a treaty because of its shortcomings in terms of guaranteeing fiscal discipline, stopping contagion and erecting a firewall. He told us that he stayed outside because the safeguards for the UK were not right. He would have been in a stronger position if he had focused his criticism and concern on the inadequacies of the deal per se, because he would have had alliances in times to come, including possibly assistance with his own safeguards.

We cannot afford isolationism, but we have heard talk of it tonight. Nor can we afford the vindictiveness that has been expressed in some political chambers in Europe. This is not the time to revert to predictable political postures on Europe and simply rehearse the totemic positions of our traditional European debate. Empty political certitudes are no answer to the raging economic uncertainties that face us in Europe, which do not affect just the eurozone, but fundamentally affect the sterling zone as well.