We should all pray for the French to vote yes in next week’s European referendum. Britons should go down on their knees and beg for it. A French yes is vital if the British nation is to express a national view on the new constitution — and throw it out. Only then might Europe get an economic treaty fit enough and lean enough for the new world economy.
Whenever a politician says there is no plan B you can be sure he is lying. There is always a plan B, especially when plan A (a French yes) is plainly in trouble. The question for Britain is whether the plan B now being canvassed in Paris, Brussels and London is any good. The answer is no. This was made plain by the constitution’s author, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, to the BBC on Thursday. “There is no plan B,” he said with the arrogant smile of a gold-plated Eurocrat. “If the French vote no, they will have to be asked to think again.”
That, of course, is plan B. When the Danes voted against Maastricht in 1992 and the Irish against Nice in 2001, Europe’s masters hardly broke sweat. They went briefly into conclave, cooked fudge pudding and asked the Danish and Irish leaders to address their electorates again, this time properly.
If France votes no, the European Union will face a so-called “rolling no” across much of northern Europe, beginning with the Netherlands on June 1. To head off that calamity the council of ministers will swiftly declare the present constitution dead and plan another one. They will parrot Peter Hain and dismiss Giscard’s work as just “a tidying-up exercise” which can be handled in other ways. Bits of the constitution may be implemented under present treaties.
Everyone will repair to another chateau and try again. Europe’s rulers will always crave what the constitution calls Europe’s “primacy over the law of the member states”. Self-aggrandisement must continue and the gravy train keep rolling. Anyone who says there is no plan B does not know his Eurocrat.
On the other hand, if France votes yes a glorious prospect opens. However the Dutch vote, Tony Blair and Jack Straw will be unable to wriggle out of their own referendum commitment, the first on Europe in 30 years. Britons will be offered a choice between Giscard’s introverted, high-spending, “social” Europe and the deep blue sea. They will be told by Blair that the deep blue sea is not an option. That again will be a lie.
The best guide to what happens if Britain votes no is a new pamphlet by Charles Grant from the pro-constitution Centre for European Reform. It confirms that similarity between modern Brussels and the court of Philip II is stark. Grant writes like a royal envoy reporting on the Protestant heretics of Flanders. They may have reason on their side but they must recant or be burnt at the stake. The answer to European reformation is not humility but counter-reformation.
Grant considers 10 possible outcomes to a British rejection of the constitution (assuming a French yes). To him they are a theological horror. To me they are exhilarating. By thinking the unthinkable he only makes it the more appealing. Anyone seeking a realistic future for European co-operation must accept that it demands a clean slate.
A British no would mean that the constitution would be truly dead but with Britain still a member of the existing EU. Unlike in the case of France, there would be no option of fudge and further referendum. That is especially true if a British no sees Blair replaced by Gordon Brown. Europe’s healthiest and most dynamic economy, its most outward-looking state, will have precipitated a real crisis.
The option of simply kicking Britain out would be implausible. It is unlikely to be alone. The Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland and Poland might have shared its scepticism in referendums. This will mean an emphatic halt to a post-war adventure, one now steeped in gigantism, protection and corruption. An association of independent peoples, their political and cultural boundaries marked by the fires of history, has become an empire of the bureaucratic vanities. It will have to stop and think, properly.
Brussels might stumble on awhile on the basis of its current treaties, amended to embrace the new total of 25 members. Grant suggests plausibly that this would breed a series of “avant-garde” groupings of like-minded states, such as the present eurozone and the Schengen agreement on border controls. But with no treaty framework there would be more of the indiscipline shown by the French over agriculture. None of this would cure the present rot.
It is near inconceivable that a British no shared with a handful of other states would fail to precipitate a general renegotiation of the European project. From this would emerge a sincere divergence between those states wanting more centralisation and those wanting less. This tension would mean two or three “rings” of association. A new Europe would emerge organically from the old one. As the agent of that change, Britain would be well placed to drive it forward.
The French and Germans would move towards closer federation, with Italy and Spain in hesitant alliance. This core would have France at the centre, with the “Roman empire” states gathered round it. The Mediterranean, not the Atlantic, would be their pond. They would have no truck with global free markets or fair trade with Africa, with America or the English language. They could retain the habits and horrors of the present EU directorates and parliament.
Members would take smug comfort in Churchill’s remark to de Gaulle: “When I have to choose between you and Roosevelt, you should know that I will always choose Roosevelt. And when I have to choose between Europe and the wide open seas . . . I will always choose the wide open seas.” That is just what Blair has done.
Outside this inner core would be what Grant calls “a mess” and I call a creative and exciting opportunity. The rings of association would reflect the realpolitik of modern Europe. They might embrace states from the Baltic to the Balkans, from as far afield as Turkey (which France will never accept) and even Russia. Some might be loosely associated, as now are Norway and Switzerland. Some might have their own treaties, as might Britain.
Europe’s many nation states vary widely in their politics and economics, in their approach to trade and competition, social support and public finance. It is ludicrous to imagine Romania sharing “health and safety” with Denmark, or Turkey sharing labour laws with France. Different horses need different courses.
This “variable geometry” would be that of a mature confederacy with none of the political rigidity and empire building that afflict the present EU. Unlike the anti-Europeans I believe that such a “messy core” model for co-operation could be robust. And it needs a constitution of sorts. Neighbouring states must order their trade and co-operation within a “shared political space”. For me the Single European Act was the conceptual limit of that space. To return to it, however, requires not some fudged version of what we have now. It requires a fresh start.
A looser European polity is no longer “the unthinkable”. A British no would render it inevitable. Maastricht showed that some states want to continue with the centrally regulated regime of the post-war settlement. Britain since Margaret Thatcher has taken a different view, one shared with smaller northern nations. It is clearly time to honour that diversity, to repatriate farm and regional subsidies and to end the absurdity of a “level regulatory playing field” defined by the entire continental shelf. A globalised economy has rendered that dead and the new constitution with it.
Britain is one of the more obedient EU countries and has paid for it in a horror of over-regulation. There is no argument for it joining the sort of Europe envisaged by Giscard.
Hoary metaphors about top tables, missed trains and marginalisation are as outdated as Miss Havisham’s wedding. Such clichés went out with the old century. The top table is covered in dust. The new world economy would be happy to see Europe stifle its own competitiveness. Britain alone seems able to stop that happening. Europe’s only “core” at present is that of a rotten apple. It is the outer rings that are fresh.
If France votes no, there is a plan B but a bad one. Plan C is much better. For that France must vote yes.
