In the post-summit photocall of leaders this morning, David Cameron stood right on the edge.
I’ll leave that metaphor hanging in the air for a moment.
It’s clear that Cameron never intended to sign up to any treaty alteration. Indeed I’d go as far to say as the decision this morning to veto was pre-meditated. The PM’s demands were so irreconcilable, so contrary to what the French and Germans are trying to achieve that the outcome this morning was inevitable.
So why did we bother to turn up?
David Cameron’s decision was deeply eurosceptic. It might play well to the Mail and the Sun; it will play well to eurosceptic Tory backbenchers, but it has damaged our national credibility and our national interest.
David Cameron has previously stated that his ambition was for a ‘Britain at the heart of EU decision-making.’ By walking out of the talks unilaterally we have isolated ourselves. This summit was about a sovereign debt crisis. By putting our narrow interest ahead of the interests of the European – and world – economy, we have made ourselves look ridiculous on the world stage.
We are now out of the decision making process, we will now be treated with scorn by our partners and we have unnecessarily angered our allies in a way which was completely avoidable.
The prime minister’s move has shifted us to the periphery of Europe. As the other 26 come to an agreement we stand, foolhardily, apart. Imagine trying to come to an accord to repatriate powers with Sarcozy now. What will Merkel mutter under her breath when Cameron says he wants to help shape European policy in the future?
One of his first moves as leader of the Conservative Party was to have his European MPs leave the centre right group of parties in the European Parliament – the largest group which dominated EU policy, committees and decisions – and set up his own rival alliance with a handful of eccentric parties. The move left Conservative MEPs irrelevant and pointless. Cameron has just done the same thing to Britain.
Britain has walked away with nothing.
Yes, this was avoidable and it is fundamentally a failure of foreign policy. Our position weeks ago should have been to support an agreement within the Eurozone 17. William Hague should have been hammering the phones to build up support for that position. Instead we went in making demands which would not be accepted with no one else fighting our corner.
There was no need for grandstanding or taking it to the wire. If Cameron says he had no choice but to veto it was his foreign policy failure which navigated him into that cul-de-sac.
Britain looks weak. Britain looks isolated. Britain looks irrelevant. I fail to see how this helps our national interest or our economy. There is fog in the channel this winter. Britain is cut off.
'Little Englander' diplomacy
by Martin Shapland / 09 Dec 2011 15:50
Not agreeing to a treaty may well be the right thing to do to protect the City of London but Cameron’s grandstanding veto was bad diplomacy, isolates Britain and, most importantly, the fallout could and should have been avoided
Comments
David / December 09 2011 4:17pm
But nothing you've written provides any concrete solution to how they would have got France to drop its demands on imposing measures damaging to the UK economy. That was the issue here.
Cameron went in saying he would not seek to repatriate or do anything to renegotiate, but was more than willing to do what it took to help sort out the Euro.
Where was the quid pro quo from France? Why no criticism that France held fast to matters that had nothing to do with saving the Euro and refused to negotiate?
Or are you arguing the proper role of the UK in the EU should be to quietly acquiesce to whatever is put in front of it?
Nicola / December 09 2011 6:39pm
I agree that it was bad diplomacy by Cameron and Hague but at the end of the day, we shouldn't have ever signed up to a treaty change that effectively forbids Keynesian economics.
We needed to have built up support for our position against Merkel and Sarkozy.
Clr Ralph Baldwin / December 09 2011 7:25pm
We were already marginalised here as Franco-German relations were and are a consolidation of their control where we are locked out.
Richard Holloway / December 10 2011 2:04am
When the euro collapses as each member state's electorate realises what their leaders will be signing them up to I do hope you'll have the good grace to write out another column for Total Politics. A hundred lines saying:"Sorry, I was wrong." should do it.
K.R.Lohse / December 10 2011 4:59pm
What the Franco-German alliance is trying to achieve is political and economic control of Europe. the Alliance has already inserted apparatchiks as de facto heads of state in Greece and Italy, and this treaty was intended to reduce the elected governments of european nations to the status of County Councils by insisting that an unelected super-quango
have the final say on their budgets.
If resisting the unreasonable demands of a would-be socialist empire makes me a little Englander then it's a name I will wear with pride.