THE OBSERVER – EDITORIAL: The prime minister's catastrophic performance has left Britain isolated and impotent
Show some bulldog spirit in Brussels, urged one Eurosceptic Tory MP at prime minister's questions last Wednesday. "I will," replied David Cameron. He knew already from his diplomats that nobody at last week's historic summit was likely to offer him the opt-out for financial services regulation that he needed in order to be able to steer new EU legislation aimed at easing the eurozone crisis through the Commons. Without some figleaf that allowed him to claim triumph over the "technocrats", he felt he had no option but to exercise the veto. The alternative would have been a referendum on our relationship with Europe, which in turn would have spelled the collapse of the coalition, and an election before the key constituency boundary changes had been made – and against a background of rising unemployment and painful spending cuts.
The party interest was clear. Faced with a choice between doing the right thing for Britain and Europe – supporting the best designed policy possible within the best possible framework to save the euro – and the right thing for his party, the prime minister unhesitatingly plumped for the soft option. He could expect the first round of newspaper headlines to echo the inane call to show bulldog spirit and they duly delivered. Britain stands alone, they proclaimed. In an increasingly globalised, connected and mobile world, being alone, on an island, is suddenly a good place to be. "No man is an island," John Donne wrote. Try telling that to the rump of Conservative MPs who steered Cameron towards this lonely place.
But what was Britain standing alone against. Why [What] did it show its bulldog spirit for? The list of demands to protect Britain's financial services industry from the Brussels "diktat" was phony. A financial transactions tax can only be levied by unanimity, so there was no threat to British interests. There was no EU proposal to limit the amount of bank capital requirements, as has been claimed in justification for the veto, which might have prevented the implantation of the Vickers proposals, which, in any case, Downing Street has been dragging its feet over.
The rest of the British demands – trying to limit second order regulatory proposals in financial services at some time in the future – were trivial. Our financial services industry employs around a million people; probably 10,000 to 20,000 of them might have been affected by possible EU regulatory proposals over the next 10 years – and those largely confined to hedge funds and trading desks of investment banks. This is a tiny interest to be heralded as a major national priority, one for which our relations with Europe are now jeopardised.
Cameron used the nuclear weapon of a treaty veto to combat a non[-]existent threat. The bulldog bared its teeth and Europe turned its back in disdain. They shrugged and got to work. A toothless bulldog has roared off into the wilderness – powerless, isolated, pointless. This must be one of the most reckless positions any British government has adopted in an international forum in recent history. » | Editorial | Sunday, December 11, 2011
