Liberal Democrat Conference Blog: Is Europe part of the problem or part of the solution?
By Lucy Thomas
Vince Cable, the Business Secretary
On Sunday 23 September, in an evening panel discussion in Brighton, Business for New Europe, in partnership with Aviva, asked the question, ‘Is Europe part of the problem or part of the solution?’ BNE used electronic voting pads to poll the audience on a number of questions before and after the event, yielding interesting results.
The panel consisted of Dr Vince Cable MP, Business Secretary, Andrew Duff MEP, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, Foreign and Cabinet Office spokesman and Mark Pack, co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. The panel was chaired by Phillip Souta, Director of Business for New Europe. Phillip Souta opened the event with a series of questions designed to gauge audience opinion on Britain’s relationship with the EU. The questions were:
1. Is the European Union part of the solution or part of the problem to the UK’s economic and political challenges?
2. Thinking with your HEAD should the UK be in the EU?
3. Thinking with HEART should UK be in EU?
4. Should this party commit to holding a referendum on the UK’s membership of EU in its next manifesto?
5. Do you think Britain will be in the EU in 5 years’ time?
Dr Vince Cable opened the debate saying that he favoured the phrase being ‘broadly sympathetic to the European project’ to being ‘pro-European’, but either way it is clear that Britain should remain part of it. Dr Cable said that most people think we’re better off in than out, and that complaints over the EU budget and ‘fiddly Brussels regulation are broadly cancelled out’ by successes such as the German economy and the Single Market with the jobs and investment opportunities it provides.
He added that the Eurozone crisis has led people to re-examine their thoughts on Europe, and the catastrophic implications were the Eurozone to disintegrate would exacerbate that significantly.
Dr Cable welcomed the ECB’s decision to provide conditional unlimited liquidity, which has stabilised markets but said that solving the problem would require some version of Eurobonds and therefore a transfer union from richer EU countries. This would be underpinned by greater political integration and tighter fiscal rules, which Chancellor Merkel is pushing for, although does not have public support for. Dr Cable said that real disintegration with Greece, Spain and Portugal leaving now presents a risk in a way that it didn’t two years ago, but the UK cannot steer the debate because any intervention will be seen as unhelpful.
Dr Cable concluded that Britain should be more engaged rather than less, and that further cooperation in areas such as defence, where commercial logic points in the same way, as well as broader issues like climate change made sense.
Phillip Souta asked Dr Cable about the likelihood and possible timing of a referendum to which Dr Cable said, “a referendum is not inevitable but there are pressures building up… It would be wrong to have a referendum unless it was either framed around a major departure from current policy, i.e. a major constitutional change, or an in-out referendum.”
When asked about Conservative calls for a referendum Dr Cable highlighted the problem: “they say ‘We want a referendum’, but what is the question? What is it that they want to know the answer to?”
Andrew Duff highlighted the lack of government in Europe, expressing his relief that the “f-word”, ‘federalism’ is now becoming more commonly used amongst European politicians. But moves currently made towards federalisation such as a banking union with a common supervisor, raise problems in relation to centralisation, de-centralisation, ‘the ins, pre-ins and the outs’.
Mr Duff questioned the effectiveness of David Cameron’s ‘veto’ at the EU summit last December, saying that foreign partners had been left ‘baffled’ by Britain’s attempts to isolate itself, meaning that any future negotiations would be more problematic as they would be unwilling to tolerate Britain’s ‘red lines’.
Mr Duff concluded by saying that in his view, the Conservative party policy of ‘marginalising’ Britain in the Europe would never be enough to satisfy right-wing Conservatives and UKIP members, and that Liberal Democrats and ‘hopefully’ the Labour party would never support it.
Lord Wallace identified 4 groups of people in Britain when it comes to Britain’s relationship with the EU: Euro-believers, Euro-realists, Euro-sceptics and Euro-phobes. He stressed the need to distinguish between Euro-sceptics, who ‘don’t like the EU but accept that it exists’, and Europhobes such as members of the UK Independence party who ‘would rather retreat to a sovereign Britain of 40 years ago’. He then questioned the link between this view and that of ‘wealthy hedge-fund managers’ who fund the UK Independence Party are hostile to international regulation, and therefore see ‘British sovereignty’ as a proxy for not being subjected to regulation from Brussels. This should be countered by people standing up to say that ‘old fashioned nostalgia’ will lead us to collapse and positive cooperation is necessary.
As a ‘Euro-realist’, Lord Wallace said that in government he found himself negotiating with ‘practical Eurosceptics’, stressing that the British government is actively engaged in negotiations in Brussels, with Commission officials saying just how useful British contributions had been to rules drawn up on banking regulations. Lord Wallace raised the need for more British ministers and officials liaising with Brussels, in order to reduce the feeling that people have of international regulation being dictated by bureaucrats on the continent.
Mark Pack remarked that the EU institutions were inherently undemocratic due to the nature of their formation as a counterweight to populist governments in order to prevent further wars after 1945. The institutions are therefore now very dated. According to Lib Dem Voice polling, there is a tension within the Liberal Democrats about Britain’s place in Europe and what that should mean. Mr Pack said that Party members are largely in favour of Britain’s EU membership (85%) and yet more were in favour of renegotiation in some form (97%). But only 51% of party members back ever-closer union, so there was a tension over the size of Britain’s contribution to the EU.
Finally, Mark Pack placed Britain’s contribution to the EU at £10bn which compared to the budgets of whole departments is relatively small, but when compared to individual projects such as the Pupil Premium (£1.2bn) then it becomes much more significant.
ELECTRONIC VOTING RESULTS
1. Is the European Union part of the solution or part of the problem to the UK’s economic and political challenges?
BEFORE: solution 83% / problem 17%
AFTER: solution 92% / problem 8%
2. Thinking with your HEAD should the UK be in the EU?
BEFORE: yes 96% / no 4%
AFTER: yes 96% / no 4%
3. Thinking with HEART should the UK be in EU?
BEFORE: yes 89% / no 11%
AFTER: yes 92% / no 8%
4. Should this party commit to holding a referendum on UK’s membership of EU in its next manifesto?
BEFORE: yes 30% / no 70%
AFTER: yes 34% / no 66%
5. Do you think Britain will be in the EU in 5 years’ time?
BEFORE: in 91% / out 9%
AFTER: in 86% / out 14%
