Charles de Gaulle, be he watching proceedings from Heaven or from Hell, must be chortling to himself: "J'avais raison. I always knew it would be a mistake to let the British into the EU".
UK Prime Minister David Cameron has lost no opportunity over the past three months to tell the Eurozone that it has to get its act together to save the Euro, and BE QUICK ABOUT IT!! He was so insistent that at one summit, President Sarkozy lost his Gallic cool (well, he is part Hungarian) and snapped to Cameron "You have missed a perfect opportunity to shut up".
Now that there are signs that the Eurozone countries really are moving toward a more durable deal to reform the way the single currency works, what's Cameron's reaction? He's delighted, relieved and supportive, right? Wrong! His first reaction has been to threaten to veto the deal unless "essential" UK interests (as defined by the UK itself) are protected.
President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel must be bemused and infuriated by this, but it plays well with the Eurosceptic wing of Cameron's own Conservative party, the kind of knuckle-dragging xenophobes who often manage to give the impression that they think the ghost of Hitler still stalks the halls of the Chancellery in Berlin. These people's political idol, Margaret Thatcher, supported UK entry into the EU at the time, but the party has since become a lot more hostile to the European "project", egged on by much of the tabloid press, which likes nothing more than a chance to bash Johnny Foreigner, especially foreigners of a German or French persuasion.
Cameron is being forced to walk a thin line between indulging this kind of xenophobia and following what still appears to be his main instinct, which is to offer as much help as possible (though no UK taxpayers' money) to those within the EU who are trying to sort out the crisis. The Europhobes want at a minimum to use the crisis to "bring powers back from Brussels" (though they're notably vague on which powers these might be); ideally, they would like to force a fresh UK referendum on the UK's entire membership of the EU. Cameron's initial goals, in contrast, are to see a solution to the Eurozone debt crisis take shape, and to preserve the free market in goods and services that is the EU's main raison d'etre. He is probably right to judge that the Eurozone will be much more willing to accommodate British concerns if the UK is helpful at this moment of crisis, whereas his right-wingers seem to want to give the wounded beast a good kick in the privates, and to hell with the longer-term consequences.
Non-UK readers of this blog (thank you for coming by!), who may be puzzled at this hostility, may like to ponder the usual mass media reaction in the UK whenever England prepares to play Germany at football. Pictures of Prussian helmets appear on the sports pages, along with phrases like "the old enemy" and slogans like "two world wars and one World Cup". It's bad enough that people on the football terraces can still be egged on in this way; the fact that a great chunk of today's Tory party appears to think along similar lines is truly depressing. There must be many moments when President Sarkozy wishes that President de Gaulle had won the argument all those years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment