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Eurealist :: Why are the Conservatives so reluctant to play to their strengths: “Why are the Conservatives so reluctant to play to their strengths
by Eurealist at 07:50AM (BST) on April 25, 2005 | Permanent Link | Cosmos

William Rees-Mogg asks in the Times “Why this baffling silence?”

NEXT MONTH there will be historic votes both in Britain and France; the British general election on May 5 and the French referendum on the European constitutional treaty on May 29. In both countries the Government is in favour of the European constitution and supports ratification. In Britain, the Conservatives are the only major party opposed to the constitutional treaty.

In France, the past three months have seen a large and rapid swing of opinion against the constitution. Earlier in the year the “Yes” vote had a majority of 60 to 40 per cent in the polls; that has been reversed and the “No” campaign is now in a 60 to 40 majority. In Britain, where the European issue has played hardly any part in the election campaign, there has been a small increase in the Government’s lead, from around 5 to 6 per cent. The European issue has moved public opinion massively in France, but the opposition campaign in Britain has so far failed to prevent a small seepage of support back to Labour.

The European issue has gripped the imagination of France. If there had been a similar 20 per cent swing in Britain, the Conservatives would be in the lead by a wide margin. This actually happened last June in the European elections. The Conservatives came comfortably first. The combined Eurosceptic vote, including both Conservative and the UKIP, won 45 per cent of the vote to Labour’s 23 per cent.

Europe is a big issue for Britain and for France. Whatever view one takes of the constitutional treaty, it needs to be argued through. The United Kingdom cannot lose its liberty in a fit of mere absent-mindedness.

It is argued, mainly by the small minority of Conservative Euro-extremists, that voters are not interested in Europe, that William Hague’s Eurosceptic campaign in 2001 did not help him much, and that the electorate is content to leave the euro and the constitutional treaty to future referendums. Since the Conservatives have refrained from campaigning on the European issue, we may never know whether these arguments are valid. I doubt it.

I was reporting on the 2001 general election mainly in the West Midlands, but also in Scotland and the West Country. My view is that the opinion polls at the time did reflect some reality, though they always exaggerated the Labour lead. They recorded a huge Labour lead in the middle of the campaign, whittled down in the last ten days when William Hague was emphasising the issue of the euro. On May 24, MORI in The Times gave Labour a 25-point lead; on June 7 Labour won the election but with only a nine-point lead. MORI may have been exaggerating, but there probably was a big swing to the Tories during the European phase of Hague’s election campaign.

I do not believe that British voters do not care whether they become a province of a European superstate, whether European integration is taken further, whether European law is given complete constitutional priority over British law or whether Britain remains a self-governing democracy.

None of the three main parties is campaigning on this issue. I quite understand why the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats do not do so. They are both in favour of joining the single currency, with the loss of control of our own currency and interest rates, and of ratifying the constitutional treaty, with the loss of our national independence. They know that these policies are extremely unpopular.

Last June the European election gave the Lib Dems only 15 per cent of the vote, in fourth place below the UKIP. Yet on the same day, in the same polling stations, the Lib Dems won 30 per cent of the vote in the local government elections. As their European policies lost the Lib Dems half their support, they are wise not to talk about them. The same is true for Labour.

It is the Conservative failure to make an election issue of Europe that is impossible to explain. The Conservative policies are perfectly sound. They are against joining the euro, which in principle the Government wants to do. They are against ratifying the constitutional treaty, which the Prime Minister has already signed. They want to recover powers from Europe, particularly in fisheries and immigration.

That really is the big question, why are the Conservatives so reluctant to play to their strengths, why are they allowing the other parties and the media to dictate the issues that will be aired in the election debate. The tactic agreement not to debate the areas of policy that the British government no longer has control is making a mockery of the pretensions that the decision we make on May 5 will be important for our futures.

If Howard has bowed to “the small minority of Conservative Euro-extremists” then obviously he is not clear enough in his own ideas on the future place of Britain in the EU, and will not have the strength to see through the negotiations that will be required to return the areas of power to the British Parliament, thus he is perhaps inadvertently confirming the view expressed by Dennis MacShane that the Conservative policies have no chance of being implemented if they were to be elected.

Howard says that if elected the Conservatives will hold a referendum on the constitution within six months and if the vote is No, this would give him a double mandate, how can he claim that, if the EU takes no part in the election debate. I think William Rees-Mogg has called the problem right, but feel that because the Conservatives have not built a case against the constitution and the intrusive nature of the EU then to do so now would fall into the same trap, as William Hague, to little to late. This will set back the Eusceptic campaign, because those same Euro-extremists in the party, will again be able to claim without any evidence that the EU is not important to the voters, whilst it is obvious that the Euro-extremists themselves would prefer to see a Labour Government that is in favour of joining the single currency, with the loss of control of our own currency and interest rates, and of ratifying the constitutional treaty, with the loss of our national independence, rather than a Conservative administration that “says” it is opposed, but will not stand for election on that issue.