Margaret Thatcher was right. Campaigning to keep Britain in the EU, the former Conservative leader declared that Europe opened windows on the world that would otherwise close with the end of empire. To protect and promote its interests around the globe, Britain needed an anchor of authority and influence on its own continent. That was 40 years ago. Nowadays, it falls to Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, to make the case for British engagement.
Thatcher’s argument, offered to the House of Commons before the 1975 referendum on EU membership, is not heard often in today’s Tory party. Hardline eurosceptics, who have wrenched control of policy from David Cameron’s government, shake a fist at geopolitical realities. Unshackled from the EU, they imagine, their plucky island nation would be restored to its rightful role as a global power.
The impact of such delusion is already being felt. There was a small glimpse of this when Ukrainian protesters gathered in Kiev’s Independence Square to overturn the government of Viktor Yanukovich.
A couple of decades ago, to the great credit of John Major’s government, Britain was a powerful champion of the efforts to extend security and democracy eastward. Yet the efforts to mediate in Ukraine devolved to Germany, France and Poland. Britain stood on the margins. Such has been the extraordinary narrowing of strategic focus that Mr Cameron seems more anxious to lock out immigrant workers from the former Communist bloc than to support Ukraine’s claim to a European future.
Ms Merkel was feted this week with lunch in Downing Street, tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace and a rare audience of both houses of parliament in between times. The contrast with the low-key reception for François Hollande when the French president visited Britain a few weeks ago was no accident.
The German chancellor had been invited to make the case that her host has allowed to go by default. Mr Cameron well knows that she is an indispensable ally. His promise fundamentally to renegotiate the terms of British EU membership was never terribly credible. Without some rhetorical support from the continent’s most powerful leader, it would be entirely threadbare.
This insight has not been lost on Ms Merkel. One senior German official has been heard to remark – only a little unkindly – that she has two European missions: the first to rescue the euro, and the second to save Mr Cameron from his own political miscalculation. The open question is whether he has the political courage to help himself.
The signs are not encouraging. The prime minister has widened the channel separating Britain from the continent by overturning 40 years of British European policy. Hitherto, even when governments stood aside from this or that EU project, they have insisted on a seat at the table. Mr Cameron leaves an empty chair.
He had hoped – naively – that the promise of a second referendum would turn the tide of Tory Europhobia. The reverse has been true. Many sceptics demand changes in the terms of the relationship that they know well can be achieved only through departure. The original sin, you hear them say, was the transfer of sovereignty in the treaty of Rome.
Ms Merkel’s readiness to offer an eloquent counter-argument was not entirely altruistic. For Germany, the most important relationship in Europe will always be that with France. Without the Franco-German axis, the enterprise will founder.
Berlin, however, does not want an exclusive arrangement. It also looks for allies in the more freewheeling north of the continent. Britain is an obvious choice. Berlin worries too about Europe’s standing in the world. Ministers close to Ms Merkel make a telling point: what would it do for European prestige if the EU lost one of its most important, albeit troublesome, members?
So Ms Merkel wants to be helpful. Between the lines of her speech you could read that she will back reforms that promote a more outward-looking, competitive union. Some of the rules on social policy can be revisited and brakes applied to EU intrusions into matters better left to national governments. Protections can be offered to those nations that remain outside the eurozone.
There are, however, limits. Ms Merkel will not accept changes to the treaties or exemptions for Britain that would jeopardise the essential fabric of the union. For his part, Mr Cameron dare not list his demands with any precision for fear of inviting his party’s sceptics to dismiss them as inadequate.
So even as she asks Britain to stay, reprising Thatcher’s arguments about influence in the wider world, the chancellor is making plans against the possibility it will leave. The demarche in Kiev was a sign of things to come: Poland has begun to look a natural substitute for Britain as Germany’s northern ally.
There are lots of reasons why Britain has felt uncomfortable in the EU – why, in the phrase of Lord Patten, the former Tory minister and EU commissioner, it has never really “joined Europe”. Political culture, geography and imperial history have all played their part.
However, what most infuriates those now dragging it towards the exit is the idea of membership of a club Britain does not lead. A US secretary of state got it right some years ago. Never underestimate, Edward Stettinius wrote to president Franklin Roosevelt during the second world war, the difficulty an Englishman faces in adjusting to a secondary role after so long seeing leadership as a national right. As they say in Europe, plus ça change.
Fonte: FT
