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Poor Ken Clarke!

Published 14 April 2009

Just when you thought the Tories couldn't get more hardline on Europe William Hague announces Ken Clarke is expected to vote 'No' in any future EU treaty referendum

Who's calling the shots?

Overlooked in the Damian McBride furore the shadow foreign secretary used an Easter weekend interview in the Daily Telegraph to warn fellow Tory frontbencher Ken Clarke he must toe Hague's line on Europe and vote against ratifying new EU Treaties.

Hague also says the Conservatives will call for a retrospective referendum to reject Europe if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified later this year.

The younger Hague is now back wearing his mugger's baseball cap and taking aim by roughing up his much older colleague in the columns of the Daily Telegraph.

Will Ken Clarke accept this humiliation? Or, like Geoffrey Howe finally rebelling against Margaret Thatcher’s anti-EU posturing, will Clarke stay true to his pro-EU beliefs?

Today’s Tory hostility to Europe is without precedent in post-war British politics. Even in the worst days of Labour's Euroscepticism in the 1980s, politicians like John Smith and Tony Blair were allowed to stand up for Europe. Hague is telling Clarke to renege on a lifetime's pro-European politics and telling all other Tories who want to work with Europe to keep quiet.

In tactical terms Hague’s appeal may be aimed at trying to get back hard-line anti-EU voters ahead of the European Parliament elections in June. But these voters are ready to vote UKIP and BNP as the two parties share the same objective of immediate UK withdrawal from Europe.

Hague dare not go that far though the Yorkshire-based "Better Off Out" group of Tory MPs look to him as the man who will so wreck Britain's relations with Europe that withdrawal becomes possible politics.

However, Hague could not have laid down the challenge to Clarke without David Cameron's decision to break links with mainstream conservative parties in Europe - the most isolationist move in decades of British politics.

Nominally, the Tories are now looking for partners in European politics who share Hague’s anti-EU obsessions. This has led to an embarrassing meeting with a Latvian right-wing party which includes members who venerate the Waffen SS.

Hague’s hunt for anti-EU right-wing parties is going to be tricky and it is doubtful he is serious about forging links with a ragbag of oddball rightist parties in Europe.

His objective is to create conditions in which Britain moves to the exit door of the EU. The implications for global policy and the UK’s relationship with the US, China, Russia and the Commonwealth are enormous as the Foreign Office faces up to having an openly isolationist Foreign Secretary if the Tories win power.

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4 comments from readers

Anthony Z
14 April 2009 at 15:18

I read a quote the other day (in a different context) that summed up the consequences for Britain's international clout:

"If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less"

BMorant
15 April 2009 at 13:44

Surely the true scandal is Labour's failure to honour its manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (a light re-packaging of the previous proposal for a constitution). Would it not be honourable to let the people speak? Or is it assumed that the public aren't as enlightened as the Labour elite and like Ireland may end up voting the 'wrong' way?

cat osb
15 April 2009 at 14:06

Perhaps if your party had stuck by its manifesto promise to hold a referendum on the EU Constitution, this entire debate would now be redundant.

But that would have involved treating us with a degree of respect, wouldn't it?

Pencils
16 April 2009 at 07:09

it is assumed that membership of the EU is 'a good thing' - why? For instance, when were the EU accounts last approved? How many EU citizens could write 30 words on the EU? The EU is a criminal scam and a tool for international (mostly US, obviously) capital to strip sovereignty and democratic accountability (what little there is) from the European peoples, in order the better to exploit us and to keep us from challenging US dominance - the opposite to what it pretends to be. The elected European Parliament has no power to initiate policy, just approve or amend the stream of directives coming from the unelected, opaque corporate-lobby shop which is the European Commission, and so is permanently on the back foot, reactive rather than being a positive expression of the will of the peoples. It was designed this way by elites who regard popular democracy as a nuisance and intrusion on their grand schemes. The whole thing is structurally rotten and unsaveable.

"...the Tories couldn't get more hardline on Europe...." ?

Yes they could - they could state plainly that they are going to take us out of the EU, and renegotiate the whole thing on a sounder basis - hopefully the other countries might follow suit. Our future is with Europe, but not with the EU.

By the way, I wish the Tories ( or anyone) would be more hardline about our other 'special relationship', Increasingly, the language is all we have in common with the USA. Let's start with telling the people that we don't, and never have had, an independent nuclear deterrent (I think we should); Trident could only ever conceivably be used for American purposes, and so just represents a massive imperial tribute payment to the USA .