UK and EU Relations

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, we need the Government to bring us up to date with a wider view than these papers. The Lancaster House speech needs its second edition. For the EU it is all about tactics. Does Brussels want a special partnership? It does not look like it. Who is trying to go where? Shadow boxing comes to mind.

I voted remain, because there was enough trouble in the world already. Nobody needed us to create any more. Mr Cameron had been to Europe wanting to remain. Greeted by the short-sighted, he was not seen as wanting anything of substance. What did we need? I suppose it was an opening up of European Union rules, recognising that we are not federalists, and seeing this English-speaking island as a honey pot with sterling as its currency—a two-speed Europe, if you like.

Our trouble now is that accepting the referendum result seems to mean, for example, that we can “take back control”, as leave supporters insist. But we cannot go backwards; things have moved on. What does “control” mean in a world where Facebook has 2 billion users? Does it mean only ceasing to appear before the European Court? Or is it a credible border control plan? Does anybody believe immigration should be brought down to tens of thousands? That would certainly need a lot of people to leave.

As for the rhetoric of trade agreements, I have never found that selling things depended on agreements; rather, it depended on whether one had the things available that others wanted to buy. People can usually find a way of buying what they want. Right now, I hope that the Prime Minister, who has not been much mentioned this afternoon, as she remembers the leave campaign, also remembers Burke and knows she is not a delegate.

All this is not the heart of the matter. We are a member of a faulted institution and, as my noble friend Lord Howell said, an institution which has lost its original imperative—the prevention of another war which might well have started in Europe. So the institution changed and became intent on becoming an economic power bloc, expanding to a union of 19, 28 or maybe even more European states. This creation within the world order and its nation states was never a good idea. Indeed, as Willie Whitelaw assured Margaret Thatcher, it was never—and I would say now, never is—going to happen. Instead, trouble has mounted with time. First the euro itself and the intervention in Greece—classic problems of a common currency without fiscal and monetary union; then the steady rejection of subsidiarity, yielding little since 2008 other than unrest; and then the migrants with the desperate ways in which they come.

All this gives Brussels good reason to worry. Is it possible, or likely, that the project will fail one day? So the negotiator gets his negative brief, confidence and good will are in short supply, and both sides are living on illusion. How can it come out well?

Right now, we would do well to remember what would have persuaded us to remain if it has been on offer to Mr Cameron: a thoughtful version of the special partnership. The Prime Minister should provide it. We and the 27 need to see a bigger, bolder picture. Who knows what might happen then?