Politicshome points us towards an interview in The Independent with Lib Dem Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, who warns that the Tory eurosceptic (or should that be europhobic) right wants nothing more than the UK to become ‘semi-detached’ from the EU.
Criticising the Tory right’s approach to the EU, he says:
I am worried there is a tendency on the Conservative right wing, a significant part of its parliamentary party, that does not appreciate the importance of being at the table in Brussels when it comes to negotiating the rules for the single market – and does not understand the strength the EU gives us globally in tackling problems like climate change.
In a strong re-statement of his pro-European stance, reflecting that of the Liberal Democrats, Chris says:
We need to make that case more positively. The case for our membership of the EU is not a case for ending national sovereignty but for delivering an age-old, historic objective of our foreign policy.
You can read the full interview here, in which an unfavourable contrast emerges between the Prime Minister’s strategy in Brussels and Huhne’s own at the climate summit in Durban.
It seems Europe is an issue on which the Cabinet remains divided along party lines.
* Prateek Buch is Director of the Social Liberal Forum and serves on the Liberal Democrat Federal Policy Committee
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“who warns that the Tory eurosceptic (or should that be europhobic) right wants nothing more than the UK to become ‘semi-detached’ from the EU.”
Hold on, that is what I want too!
I keep hearing Lib-Dem’s wittering idiotically on about being at the “heart” of europe, and being in “driving-seat” of europe, all vague and waffley nonsense that that skirts around the fact to achieve those aims requires being in the euro and driving the pace and direction of federalism alongside france and germany.
There is no way around that fact that being outside the monetary-union, which events are forcing into a transfer-union, we will likewise be outside a future coalesced economic government, and as our dear Gladstone noted:
“The finance of the country is intimately associated with the liberties of the country. It is a powerful leverage by which English Liberty has been gradually acquired … It lies at the root of English Liberty, and if the House of Commons can by any possibility lose the power of the control of the grants of public money, depend upon it, your very liberty will be worth very little in comparison …That power can never be wrenched out of your hands… That powerful leverage has been what is commonly known as the power of the purse – the control of the House of Commons over public expenditure – your main guarantee for purity – the root of English liberty. No violence, no tyranny, whether of experiments or of such methods as are likely to be made in this country, could ever for a moment have a chance of prevailing against the energies of that great assembly. No, if these powers of the House of Commons come to be encroached upon, it will be by tacit and insidious methods, and therefore I say that public attention should be called to this.”
We are already going to become semi-detached from europe, just be being outside the eurozone, and frankly this is a good thing as long as the British public do not regard Brussels as being capable of legitimate governance.
“That powerful leverage has been what is commonly known as the power of the purse – the control of the House of Commons over public expenditure – your main guarantee for purity – the root of English liberty.”
So by analogy the full control of a sovereign Scottish parliament over its public expenditure must be the root of Scottish liberty. Gladstone is making the liberal case for Scottish independence!
@Al
Well Home Rule at least.
I think we need to stop deciding what we think about issues by reference to what the Tory right think (e.g. Europe, equalising the position of married couple with unevenly distributed income with other couples on the same income, and so on), and start examining actual policy for it’s effects on people. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Saying “We need to start making the case for EU membership” is a detestable straw man argument. To be trusted on the EU we* need to actually get honest and say why we are not just in favour of continued membership as every party is, but also in favour of what distinguishes us, namely our desire for the Euro and more treaties and more decisions taken by the Frankfurt group.
Also, having said “we need to start making the case” does not constitute having made that case. If you spend a decade saying “we need to start making the case” without making it then it actually suggests more that there is no case to be made.
* “we” as a party, but “you” as the pro-European members.
“namely our desire for the Euro and more treaties and more decisions taken by the Frankfurt group.”
That would be a very courageous move Minister, very courageous indeed!