Europe is a mighty cause of mystification in British politics, as well as the great divide. Conservatives on the pro-European side of the argument are regarded with unwarranted indulgence by right-thinking people. For the millions whose lives were ruined by the 1979-82 recession, the transformation of Geoffrey Howe from monetarist fanatic to grave statesman remains a wonder of the age. Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine have acquired the gravitas to join him. They are no longer the ministers who wrecked the hospitals and the mines, but cool voices of moderation who must be listened to with attention, even respect.
The greatest beneficiary of amnesia is Leon Brittan. When Jack Straw and Ann Widdecombe were juvenile delinquents, he was assaulting and battering civil liberties and delivering short, sharp shocks from the Home Office, while his stonewalling and eventual resignation in the Westland affair were a great scandal at the time. All that is forgotten, and he appears now on the BBC as regularly as the weather forecast to warn that his party's opposition to Europe is an act of unprecedented extremism. To listen to him, you can believe that Thatcherism never happened and the Tories' lurch to the right was last Saturday night's stagger, rather than a generational shift.
Ignored, too, are other elements of the Conservative tradition and, indeed, the tradition of the higher reaches of European bureaucracy. For decades, the preferred exit strategy of both was to dive for the revolving door. In the 1990s, Geoffrey (now Lord) Howe, Norman (now Lord) Tebbit and John (now Lord) Wakeham and many others went from high office to companies that valued their expertise and their efforts in government.
In Brussels, the reputation of the European Commission was shredded by the Bangemann affair . The German commissioner for industry and telecommunications, Martin Bangemann, retired in 1999 and accepted a job running Telefonica, the Spanish telecommunications giant, at double-quick speed on a reported salary of £630,000. Pauline Green, the Labour leader of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, spoke for her comrades when she said she was horrified at "this sleaze-soaked appointment".
Leon (now Lord) Brittan was a colleague of Bangemann's on the Commission. He was responsible for trade, which, ever since Seattle, has been the most violently contested area of policy between north and south and left and right. Brittan, needless to say, was a "liberaliser" who wanted to weaken the ability of governments, elected or otherwise, to control corporations.
As we go to press, the next round of the World Trade Organisation's talks on creating a future where multinationals can profit with a minimum of accountability is beginning in Geneva. If the critics are even half-right, the negotiations for the General Agreement on Trade in Services (Gats) could not be more serious. They may well render fruitless what attempts there are in the third world to foster native industries and to protect the environment. There is at least a reasonable chance that Gats will enforce the privatisation of European schools, hospitals and social services.
Brittan will not be in Geneva, but his influence will be felt. When he retired from the Commission in 1999, directorships were his for the asking. He became a vice-chairman of UBS Warburg, the City investment bank, and a consultant to the fantastically expensive City law firm, Herbert Smith. Both have an interest in seeing Gats triumph. Unrestricted global markets in banking, insurance and corporate law services will make a fortune for the City.
A few weeks ago, Brittan became the chairman of the Lotis (Liberalisation of Trade in Services) Group of International Financial Services, London (the cumbersome title is usually abbreviated to IFSL). His appointment was accompanied by the sound of doors whizzing on their hinges. When Brittan was EU trade commissioner, Andrew Buxton (who founded Lotis), the then chairman of Barclays Bank, lobbied him to "liberalise" trade. In 1998, Commissioner Brittan said he was "delighted" with the proposals from Buxton and others to create a European Services Forum of 40 chief executive officers to pressure the EU into pushing Gats as far as it could go.
Brittan retired and, he told me, was asked by Buxton to take on the IFSL chairmanship. The lobbied is now the lobbyist and Brittan calls on his unresisting successor Pascal Lamy, himself a former banker, to remove restraints on capital.
When I spoke to His Lordship, he said that comparisons with Bangemann were "absurd" on two counts. His work at IFSL representing the City was unpaid. "I don't get a penny piece," he said. (Brittan's altruism is not entirely profitless, we should add in fairness; Herbert Smith and UBS Warburg ensure that he doesn't starve while he lobbies to get Gats ratified.) His second objection was confused, but telling. In both Brussels and the City, he had supported the liberalisation of services. How can there be a conflict of interest when he believes that the imperatives of his private and political careers are in harmony, when there is no conflict between the corporate and the public interests?
You can't question his sincerity. You remain, however, free to hear some jarring notes.
There is a liberal-leftish fantasy that the EU is a social-democratic utopia that will save us from American capitalism. The illusion can be sustained only by forgetting the enormous advantages of the single currency to corporations, and by passing over the fact that European-based multinationals are just as keen on Gats as their American counterparts.
Agreement may be good for them and good for the City, and it would be foolish to pretend that their advantages will not generate wealth that will trickle down, however feebly. But the price that is being demanded is exorbitant.
The WTO has expanded the definition of "services" with the rapacity of an imperial lexicographer to cover just about everything. Health, education, energy, food supply are no longer the basics of life in the WTO's dictionary. They are "services"; mere fripperies on a par with pastry chefs and hairdressers. Once a country agrees to liberalise any "service", it will have made an irrevocable commitment. In a few years, every voter in Britain may, for example, deplore the ability of US companies to take over British hospitals under WTO rules, but there will be nothing they or their elected representatives will be able to do about it. There is no doubt that American multi-nationals are driving the current push in Geneva to open up private and public sectors irreversibly and guarantee that, in the words of the WTO's statement of principle, democratic regulation can be allowed only if it is the "least trade restrictive" and "not more burdensome" than is necessary.
"Without the enormous pressure generated by the American financial services sector," explained David Hartridge, a WTO official, "there would have been no services agreement." American finance is clear that it has the NHS and European health services in mind when it talks of removing constraints on commerce. Dean O'Hare, president of one of the world's biggest insurance companies, who has led the lobbying in Washington, told Congress: "We believe we can make much progress in the negotiations to allow the opportunity for US businesses to expand into foreign healthcare markets."
Last year, it seemed evident that Europe was willing to give up public services in return for a free hand for its multinationals in the third world. Pascal Lamy said he believed that health and education were "ripe for liberalisation", while the European Commission dismissed concerns that Gats would prevent representative governments regulating by saying: "Gats is not something which exists between governments. It is first and foremost an instrument for the benefit of business."
The parallels do not end there. Corporations in the European Services Forum have just as large a say in the formulation of European policy as big business has in the policies of the American Democrat and Republican politicians whom it bribes with campaign donations.
Documents unearthed by Corporate Europe Observatory show that the Forum enjoys extraordinary access in Brussels. EU trade policy is determined by the Commission's "133 Committee", which meets every Wednesday. Proceedings are not open to the press or public or elected members of the European Parliament. When non-governmental organisations asked for details of the EU's position on allowing conglomerates to privatise health and education, they were told the information was a "trade secret". When parliamentarians in Denmark asked their government to explain what was going on, they were told that elected ministers couldn't get access to Commission documents either.
The European Services Forum, however, is a respected participant in the 133 Committee's meetings. On 20 June last year, for instance, it was invited to give its views on the international mobility of "key business personnel."
Although the citizens of the Union are not allowed to know what is being done in their name, the EU is being very free with their money: the Trade Directorate gave the European Services Forum a grant of 49,290 euros (£30,000) in November to meet the cost of a conference on Gats.
As protests about Gats have grown, a kinder note is being heard in Washington and Brussels. Mike Moore, the head of the WTO, has denounced criticism as "astounding lies", promising that Gats will not "threaten public services and the right to regulate"; and Lamy has echoed him. In theory, they are correct - the Gats process leaves it up to governments to decide which sectors should be deregulated . Only with their consent is the sector consigned to perpetual liberalisation.
For all that, there is a strong element of casuistry in the reassurances. Few doubt that third world governments will find that a condition of IMF and World Bank loans will be that they allow their banks to be taken over by the north . They will be in no position to resist. Brittan said how he and his City colleagues were identifying countries that were resisting Gats and persuading the EU to whip them into line. Their work had the full approval of new Labour, he added, and links with the Bank of England and Whitehall were excellent.
Our government, like other European governments, remains strong enough to refuse to sign up to the privatisation of the health service and schools. And, indeed, ministers say that while they welcome Gats, public services will be exempt.
But new Labour's warm relationship with a former Tory opponent, as much as its record of privatising hospitals and allowing American corporations to take NHS patients, shows that it is more than willing to go further than Thatcher dared. Richard Caborn, the trade minister, is already diluting the promise to spare public services by saying that it only covered services not in competition with private operators. Private hospitals and schools already compete for custom in Britain.
Labour politicians complained of "sleaze" when Bangemann did his runner. But he was just one greedy man stuffing his pockets. What is being contemplated in Geneva, without reference to any electorate, is the systematic and unchallengeable destruction of publicly owned and accountable services.
