Entangled Alliances

photo credit: mohammadali

As Mark announced on the update to his post, Cameron has formally reasserted his desire for the Conservatives to leave the European People’s Party, the centre right coalition for the European Parliament. Then he will attempt to form a new bloc, which  supports the economic benefits of Europe but keeps away from the federalist leanings underpinning that the EPP displays.

The problem as the FT’s Brussels Bureau Chief, makes clear is that the alternative to the EPP doesn’t look that  promising and worse, where there is promise for a new bloc, that may cause Mr Cameron as many problems. Yet the Conservative Party’s European alliances are only a small part of the bigger picture. Cameron’s move away from the EPP is not unusual or without precedent in British politics but it is one that has been tried and tested before and has invariably come up short. Furthermore, Cameron risks isolating the UK from Europe precisiely at a time when greater cooperation is, and will be necessary, all to secure control of a rebel wing of his party.

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Between June 4th and June 7th, Europeans from twenty-seven member states will go to the polls to elect a new European Parliament.  One man, however, is more likely to tip the balance of power in Strasbourg than the electorates of most individual countries.  That man is David Cameron.  In 2005, when campaigning for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Cameron sought to ingratiate himself to the Eurosceptic wing of his party by making a pledge.  Choose me, he assured them, and I’ll bring the Conservatives out of the mainstream centre-right political grouping in the European Parliament, the EPP (European People’s Party), after the next elections.  The icing on this isolation cake was the surreptitious deselection and suspicious retirements of old-style pro-European Tory MEPs, and the imposition of control from Central Office during the MEP corruption scandals of Summer 2008.

photo credit: loungerie

Why exactly did the Cameroonian plan tug on the heartstrings of the John Redwoods and William Hagues of this world?  Above all, it’s important to remember that the modern-day British correlation between Left and Right and Europhile and Eurosceptic is an anomaly in international terms as well as historically (Labour’s 1983 manifesto promised, for example, to pull Britain out of the then-EEC).  Your most ardent Superstaters are likely to be found, not in the Socialist bloc, but within Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats or Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP.  The Tories smell a federalist scent wafting around the hemicycle, and it gives them the jitters. For them, there’s nothing worse than the familiar refrain of common security, immigration and foreign policies.    And don’t get the anti-Maastricht veterans started on the Lisbon Treaty (no really, please don’t). 

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As far as intriguing American politicians go, Jon Huntsman is one to watch. Huntsman is the Republican governor of  Utah and in the running for his party’s presidential nomination in 2012. Given that he governs a state where only 34% of the populace voted for Obama and which is generally considered to be  the most blood-red Republican state in the union, you might expect the rhetoric of his initial forays into presidential contention to be positively prehistoric. But you’d be wrong.  Last month he made national news by coming out in support of civil unions, even though he ran for governor in 2004 on a platform of opposing them. He also criticised Republican leaders for attacking the economic stimulus package after its passage, and other Republican governors for refusing to take parts of the stimulus money. He has said Republicans need to move to the centre on the environment and he’s making noises about delaying the passage of a hard-line immigration bill he signed last year. What is Jon Huntsman up to?

In a recent Huntsman interview, Politico’s Jonathan Martin noted that his thinking resembles a “Republican brand of Clintonism: practical solutions, softened rhetorical edges aimed to appeal to the center and an overall modernization of a party badly in need of a new image.”   If you think this sounds like the tactics of a certain Eton-attending, bicycle-loving British opposition leader, you’d be right:

“I would liken it a bit to the transformation of the Tory Party in the U.K.,” Huntsman explained. “The defeat in ’97, John Major to Tony Blair, after years of strong, conservative rule with Margaret Thatcher setting the mark. They went two or three election cycles without recognizing the issues that the younger citizens in the U.K. really felt strongly about. They were a very narrow party of angry people. And they started branching out through, maybe, taking a second look at the issues of the day, much like we’re going to have to do for the Republican Party, to reconnect with the youth, to reconnect with people of color, to reconnect with different geographies that we have lost. You cannot succeed being a party of the South and a couple of Western states. It just – it isn’t long-term sustainable.”

Okay, so Huntsman is trying to do a David Cameron – get his party to embrace (or appear to embrace) a more moderate, compassionate platform in order to win over the demographics necessary to get into power. It seems to be working for Cameron -  so will it work for the Republican party?

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In a follow up to my top heavy article, I wanted to bring attention to the fantastic news covered in Huff Post, that 350 European cities have signed up to reduce emissions by 20% by 2020. Dafydd Ellis at Climactico has some excellent analysis.

photo credit: doug.siefken

Another issue puts this into a wider context. Back in 2005 141 US Mayors  signed the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.  By 2007, 500 US Mayors had signed. The pact agreed to aim to meet Kyoto limits and was a slap in the face to the Bush administration, who throughout its 8 years opposed or held up any serious Climate Change agreement.

What marks both out is their decision to create policy outside of national Government and beyond their national borders  indicating a remarkable shift in traditional political power structures. While the US has always had stronger support for the Mayoral system than the UK, the gap may be coming to an end as a new era of urban self-determination could become increasingly prominent in 21st century politics.

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