02/03/2015
If green cheese was worth £25 billion a ton, there was an active, multi-billion demand against a global shortage, and the moon was made of green cheese, there would some sense in exploring the idea of developing a lunar green cheese mining industry.
But to argue for such an industry, ignoring the salient facts â not least of which the moon is made of something altogether more pedestrian â is not so much to ignore reality as to defy the notion that it even exists. Any writing in such terms would rightly be considered absurd.
Likewise, although not quite in the same league of impossibility, writing about the supposition that the UK can go to Brussels and negotiate fundamental changes in our relations with the EU is similarly absurd. Anyone with the slightest understanding of EU politics and treaty law knows that this is impossible. It cannot and will not happen.
One can, of course, argue those points. But to do so would be a waste of time and resource. The anti-EU movement has little enough of both and it really is necessary for us to move on and address the realms of the probable and possible, in order then to devise a credible plan for fighting a referendum campaign.
Sadly though, in a jointly produced pamphlet for the
Civitas think tank entitled "
Hard Bargains", soon-to-become ex-MP Brian Binley and "research consultant" Dr Lee Rotherham are not yet ready to move on. In the foreword by John Redwood, we are told that the pamphlet, "sets out some of the matters that the authors wish to see renegotiated". The authors are not even prepared to entertain proximity talks with reality. They have expended their skills and undoubted intellects on an utterly futile cause.
The point is made adequately in the
LSE blog:
Renegotiating the UK's terms and conditions of EU membership is unworkable, unpersuasive, and unnecessary. Practically speaking there are two options. Either the UK tries to renegotiate from above by reducing the law-making powers of the EU institutions. That option would require a treaty change and the unanimous agreement of the other member states which is, currently, unrealistic. Or the UK tries to negotiate a better "deal" for itself, e.g. through opt outs and protocols that are attached to the Treaty. But is it credible that the other member states would grant the UK special treatment when every member state is subject to aspects of EU law of which it disapproves and would dearly like to roll back the frontiers of European law and policy?
Yet, neither Binley nor Rotherham is stupid. In an otherwise interesting pamphlet, therefore, one wonders why they should devote their energies to such an exercise. But there again, while they may disagree, I suspect I know what they are trying to do.
Essentially, so embedded is "renegotiation" in the psyche of Tory "eurosceptics" that our two stalwarts are not confident that they can carry the day by arguing for an exit. They thus feel the need to dress reality in a taffeta frock of "renegotiation" to make it presentable. This is seen as a way of sanitising euroscepticism.
The overall idea, most probably, is an attempt to keep as many of the disparate "anti-EU" groups together, with a "big tent" agenda which will pull in as many players as possible to create a united front.
Nevertheless, in arguing that "fundamental treaty change is needed from any renegotiation", the objective being to "remove entire articles and titles as applied to the UK", the authors have evidently decided that reality is not to be allowed in the same building.
Worse still we find that Binley and Rotherham don't even want it above the horizon. Although they assert that "achieving wide-ranging reform of the Lisbon Treaty" is not realistic, in its place they propose something equally unrealistic: a "bilateral deal between the UK as one party and the rest of the EU as the corporate other".
This, amazingly, they would have us believe, "could address the UK's issues by removing the controversies from EU control", notwithstanding that a party to one treaty cannot negotiate bilateral changes to that treaty and remain a party to it.
Strangely though, reality is then offered a cameo walk-on part, when we are informed that, "by definition, this will change our individual treaty terms and we will no longer be 'EU members' in the current sense". But, that is as close as it gets. In an attempt to square the unyielding circle, we are informed that, "vocabulary doesn't matter â the terms do".
The problem is that, whether or not "vocabulary" matters, in a rules-based treaty organisation such as the European Union, procedures do matter. And there is simply no procedure written into the treaties which would permit any single Member State to redefine the treaty provisions to its own advantage. And, without such a procedure, the UK cannot insist on negotiations. Nor could Member States consider them - to do so would risk the break-up of the Union.
As we have so often pointed out, the only way that the UK can insist on negotiations to redefine its relationship with the EU is by invoking Article 50 â which requires us to leave the EU.
To point this out is not being difficult, or even "arrogant" â as some have averred to my face. It is simply a matter of fact. There are no options, there is no flexibility. There are no choices. If the EU wants to force the pace with negotiations, then it is Article 50 or nothing.
However, from the "vantage point" of Binley-Rotherham, things appear different. Article 50, they suggest, is "rather ahead of the game" since they are looking at the terms of a treaty to be reached before Mr Cameron holds his [2017] referendum.
Only when one digs deeply into the pamphlet, do we find by way of an endnote to a reference to Article 50 (on page 88), that the authors believe that the Article might need to be triggered "only if the talks on a new relationship have stalled". Against the threat that the UK might decide to leave the EU, we are expected to accept that the "colleagues" will allow us special and exceptional privileges, that fly in the face of the very concept of the European Union.
But then, this is not a eurosceptic tract. At the very end of the paper, we find that the ambition of the authors is actually to "make our membership of the EU work". All we have, therefore, is the sheep wearing a taffeta frock. This is simply a variation on the Cameron/Open Europe/Business for Elliott theme. We really do not have time for these games - we really do have to move on.
