All the cakes Dave fed Angela at Chequers just over a week ago did not do the trick. A few days later in Brussels the German chancellor sided with the other EU national leaders as they told the prime minister: “We won’t show you our hand. If you want us to offer the British people concessions ahead of your in/out referendum, put your specific requests in writing. Now. Then we’ll get back to you.”
This wasn’t the plan. As this column noted some months ago: “Cameron has been having a succession of face-to-face meetings with other EU heads of government to establish, as best he can, what they would concede to the UK. The idea is then to present those publicly as his demands — and claim a negotiating triumph when the other EU countries duly agree to them.”
Worse, it was Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president whose appointment the PM had failed (spectacularly) to block, putting the diplomatic boot in: “It takes two to tango. Our British friends have to dance.” Actually, in this tango we have to get not one other person to dance in step with us, but 27.
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This helps explain why the British “demands”, which have leaked out over the past few days (and which Cameron has agreed to put in writing next month to Donald Tusk, president of the European Council), seem so vapid. Gone is the idea of tackling the most politically sensitive issue, immigration, via restrictions on benefits paid to those entering the UK from other EU countries.
Mrs Merkel, channelling the views of citizens of the formerly Soviet-controlled eastern Europe (with whom she has close affinity), made it clear there could be “no discrimination” against the people of other EU states. In fact, even if that had been achieved, it would have scant impact in limiting migration into the UK: the overwhelming majority of EU citizens who come here do so because they want to earn, not because they want to live off benefits.
Cameron will, however, demand some sort of “red card” system to allow unspecified “groups” of national parliaments the power to block unwanted directives. Big deal: it is hard to see how this differs much from the existing system of qualified majority voting (QMV), in which a sufficient number of countries can block unwanted Brussels legislation.
The particular concern of the chancellor, George Osborne, is that the 19 eurozone nations will drive policy in a way that makes complete sense for a group moving towards economic and political union (in an attempt to preserve its misbegotten monetary union). Osborne, rightly, does not want this centralising direction of travel to apply to any policies binding on the UK.
So a second British demand is for some sort of new voting structure that will prevent this. As things stand, under the implementation of the Lisbon treaty, next year the eurozone nations will gain an absolute majority on all votes under QMV: that is, they will collectively be able to impose their legislative will on those countries not in the euro.
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I know the chancellor regards this as a make-or-break point, which is why the third British demand is an “explicit statement” that the euro is not the official currency of the European Union as a whole. Under the Maastricht treaty it is; and it is that which enabled our “partners” to feel justified in voting for the European Financial Stability Facility to provide a €7bn (£5.15bn) emergency loan to Greece — leaving the British taxpayer at risk to the tune of almost €700m.
Incredibly, this was decided when neither Cameron nor Osborne was even in the room. After furious protests from London, the money was found without involving the UK — but this was a dreadful warning.
There is an overriding problem with anything that changes the voting structure within the EU, however — even if it were to be agreed by the other nations. It would require treaty change. And while Cameron originally declared that he wanted “proper, full-on treaty change”, there is not the faintest chance of any treaty being signed before the last date on which the referendum can be held (December 31, 2017). So even if all the other EU heads of government accepted all of Cameron’s new — reduced — demands, they would be offering no more than a promissory note.
Given the British public’s scepticism about the worth of politicians’ promises — especially from foreign leaders who seem unlikely to be in office beyond their own next election — it is hard to see such a “deal” as something Cameron could safely brandish in triumph as he arrives back in London, having negotiated it. It would be less convincing than the agreement waved by Neville Chamberlain on his return from Munich in 1938.
This is not to compare Mrs Merkel to a certain former German leader. She is a good woman, morally upright in every way. But while she may be most sympathetic to lieber David and will do what she can to help keep Britain in the EU, the prime minister has continually overestimated her ability or even willingness to support the UK against majority opinion in the councils of Europe.
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More fundamentally, the current plan of the eurozone nations to move towards greater economic and political union (the so-called Five Presidents’ report) envisages the next EU treaty being signed in 2025, when Merkel — not to mention Cameron — will be long gone from the political scene.
I’m told that the new cunning plan in King Charles Street (home of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) is not to worry overmuch if Cameron’s demands aren’t met. We will instead get a solemn and binding undertaking from the other EU nations to the effect that, in that next treaty, the UK will be able to negotiate a completely new deal with its partners, allowing us the much looser, purely trade-based arrangement that Britons had thought was the deal when they originally joined the Common Market in 1973.
But even if such a seductive dream actually became reality, it would not become so until 10 years from now. Meanwhile the British people are paying more than £10bn a year, net, to remain members of a club whose brickwork is crumbling and whose foundations are shaking.
It is in this context that the former head of Marks & Spencer, Lord Rose, last week launched the campaign to keep Britain in the EU. Why Stuart Rose? Well, they wanted a top businessman, but all the other names were the usual suspects who had declared the British economy would shrivel into decline and even disaster unless we joined the euro. Who would believe any of them?
Rose, however, had been a member of the opposing (entirely vindicated) Business for Sterling group. So it was apparently clever of the pro-EU campaign to co-opt him.
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Not that clever, however: it also meant that when the top schmutter salesman uttered his scripted warnings last week about how bad for business it would be if we left the EU, it took his former colleagues in the anti-euro campaign about half a second to point out that only six months ago Rose told Sky News if the UK were to leave, “it’s ridiculous to suggest that everybody is going to suddenly go offshore. I don’t believe that for one moment.”
With friends like these, David Cameron really doesn’t need enemies.