28/07/2015
If anyone actually thinks they know what is going on, they haven't been listening â or so the old joke goes. But, if anyone is relying on the
Guardian or any other media to tell them what is happening with the EU referendum, they are unlikely to end up well informed.
David Cameron, we are told by the
Guardian, is to stage another round of separate meetings with European leaders this autumn. These will be "critical" to determining whether he thinks he can go ahead with a referendum next year or should instead wait until 2017.
This "intelligence" comes in the wake of the
Independent on Sunday claiming to have inside knowledge of Mr Cameron's intentions, selling us the unlikely line that a June referendum is on the cards.
A day later, we get the Prime Minister from Indonesia declaring that "the negotiations would determine the date of the referendum, not the other way round", something also picked up by
the BBC. It has Mr Cameron asserting that he did not have a referendum date in mind. Instead, he tells reporters that, "When the negotiation is complete then we'll set the date for the referendum".
Cameron also claims that "technical discussions" are "well under way in Brussels to work on the legal parameters of a deal", and "weekly analytical discussions" are looking at the legal form to the changes the UK is seeking. Officials and lawyers are considering whether they would require treaty change, primary legislation or something more modest.
At the same time, we are given to understand that Mr Cameron has accepted that treaty change is not possible by next year. It is nevertheless reported that he could "still win a legally binding agreement in writing that treaty change would follow", once other EU states had finished their own negotiations about revising governance in the euro area.
This is about as clear as mud, not least because there can be no legally binding agreement. Brussels is not in a position to guarantee a treaty change, and neither is any member state. In the absence of the ability to deliver, no agreement can be legally binding. That is a basic principle of law.
Nevertheless, we are supposed to believe that Mr Cameron wants that further round of talks with key European leaders such Angela Merkel, at the end of September, supposedly "to test out how quickly a deal can be struck".
However, if we put this into the context of what we already know, it does not compute. The timetable for treaty change is already set, with the first stage of the roll-out in late 2017, leading to a convention starting in the spring of 2018 and a treaty agreed by 2022.
This, then, rather relegates the Prime Minister to a play-acting role. He will be able, we are told, to make a preliminary judgement at the autumn European Council as to whether to go short or long on the referendum date, but the narrative has him wanting to decide after the December Council.
This, of course, makes a total nonsense of the
Independent story. No decision on the referendum date has been made. But, beyond that, we really are none the wiser, especially as the key decisions are not in Mr Cameron's hands.
Nor does it help if we cast the media net wider. The
Telegraph also has David Cameron conferring with Angela Merkel and other European leaders, but it reminds us that the timing will put his meeting just before the Conservative Party conference. Then, he "will come under immense pressure from backbenchers to show a more ambitious menu of proposed reforms than has so far been disclosed".
Clearly, the
Telegraph is after something dramatic so, for his meeting with Merkel
et al, it has Cameron "now preparing to set out a far more detailed set of demands" than have so far been tabled - backed by a politically illiterate
leader that shows it hasn't a clue on what is going on.
It doesn't get much better if we turn to the
Times, though, because there we get George Osborne wanting to "wrap up negotiations with Brussels by Christmas". These days, we don't even get government by leak. Instead, we have to rely on what the Chancellor has told his friends, who then presumably confide in the
Times lobby correspondent. From this unimpeachable source, we get a variation on the theme offered by the
Guardian.
He (the Chancellor), we learn, would like to strike an agreement at the December Council on "the four target areas of British sovereignty, fairness for non-eurozone members, competitiveness and immigration".
This, of course, is not possible and the narrative does not entirely match what the
Guardian is telling us.
Furthermore, none of the media sources are factoring in the new treaty and the potential for the UK being consigned to associate member status. Without this crucial intelligence, it is not easy to make any real sense of what is happening. But, when it comes to the referendum timing, even the
Times has it that "Downing Street sources insisted" that "no decision had yet been taken on the date".
As to the bigger picture, the only real sense we can get is gleaned from the
Financial Times. It gives us French economy minister Emmanuel Macron, declaring that, "We need a stronger eurozone, more integration and to reaffirm the political project of the eurozone but at the same time we need fair treatment of the [non-euro] countries".
That seems to be a coded reference to a "core group" and the concomitant "associate membership", although Macron stops short of spelling it out. And all we get on the referendum timing from the
FT is that the European Council on 15-16 October will give European leaders "a collective chance" to "take a view on how quickly detailed discussions can be wrapped up".
Cutting to the chase, therefore, all we can really surmise is that the media don't have a handle on things. Trapped in their desperately Brit-centric perspective and reliant on publicity handouts from the Cameron and Osborne media teams, they can't see the inconsistencies in what they are told, and don't have the knowledge to see the bigger picture.
Unsurprisingly, the result is simply a concoction of confusions, strengthening our view that the British media is inherently incapable of sensible reporting on European Union issues. But then what really comes over is the sense that we are being played. And that comes as no surprise. We've known that all along.
