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.

British parties and Europe

British political parties have a long and enduring precedent of meddling with the European Union. This volatile relationship is largely unique in western Europe a product of our policy making and party system. Where other European countries such as Germany formulate policy with regards to Europe more at the technical level of the civil service, British parties have always juggled with Europe according to the needs of the party.

With such a narrow party system, the importance of party unity is paramount to maintain an electoral advantage, Europe has proved incredibly divisive to British parties over the years, from Conservative anxiety over its free trade (both for and against), Federalism ( more against) and immigration, to name but a few of the key issues. Labour have been similarly divided over issues such immigration, the protection of workers and union rights. Both parties have had pangs of regret, Europe seemed a decidedly less exciting alternative to the British Empire which both parties opted to cling onto as it crumbled through Post-war Britain’sfingers.

To resolve the issue, parties have had to avoid Europe as a wedge issue, and find a stance which placataes enough dissenters for it not to be an issue in the election. Three consecutive electoral defeats have left the Conservatives hungry for power, and Cameron wants no splits as the party heads towards a 2010 election but will his move to placate the wing of his party prove short-sighted, Brown you will remember tried a not dissimilar approach for the Lisbon Treaty wherehe opted to sign the agreement but miss the photo opp, pleasing no one and irritating everyone.

Cameron’s Problems

Cameron’s latest attempt to navigate the field are perilous.

Tony Barber outlines the options:

The most likely candidates are the Czech Civic Democrats (who have a helpful English-language website) and Poland’s Law and Justice party (Polish only, as far as I can tell, but here’s what the party slogan translates as: “Patriotism, solidarity, modernity”). Neither fits neatly into mainstream western European definitions of moderate centre-right politics. Both have earned a reputation for being “difficult” on the EU stage. Like the Tories, however, they are not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom. They should be taken seriously.

Other possible companions for the Conservatives are Italy’s Northern League, which is distinctly more right-wing. The League, I fear, could embarrass the Tories with its hostility to foreigners and rather peculiar version of northern Italian ethnic politics. Then there is the Danish People’s Party, which has a similar brand of conservative, anti-immigrant populism. Finally, there are some minor parties in Belgium, Latvia and Lithuania.

The problem for the Tories is that the chaps like them, across Europe, by and large are pro-Europeans leaving them with slightly oddball parties such as Law and Justice, who could cause them alot of potential embarassment if/when the Conservatives return to power. Law and Justice on issues such as  homosexuality, not to mention have proven particualrly awkward partners in the European Union, something which may marginalise Conservative’s position. Italy’s Northern League would be even worse, I could build a case against them but this poster from the 2005 regional elections in Italy does it so much better. Even within his party Cameron’s move could backfire,because in bringing back Kenneth Clark one of his biggest hitters in parliament and to the public, he has brought in one of the most pro-European Conservatives. Cameron is probably not a fool, andmust be aware of this but nevertheless it adds one more precarious balancing act that taps into deeply rooted feelings within the Conservative party, issue by issue he’ll have to take the temperatures of the factions to negotiate his pathway through Europe.

Britain and Europe in the 21st Century

I  am sympathetic to the Tory position on Federalisation, I disagree but their arguments are legitimate and fair. The European Union has largely failed to communicate what it stands for, what it does and where its going to, to European citizens. It’s not just the European Union’s fault, the British media and British political parties have constantly switched sides on Europe, always avoided the debate for fearing of exposing divisions in their own party.

The European Union however, is much much more than bendy bananas, more even than free markets and open borders. The European Union is about the long term security and future of the European continent, its very much about geopolitics and as Prodi made clear in a recent talk, no individual European country can have a serious voice on the world stage without standing shoulder to shoulder with its continental allies. This isn’t new, Europe’s status decline was evident immediately after the Second World War, it was a bi-polar world with the UK, a poor third place, desperate to maintain relevance through a relationship with the USA and by clinging on to its Empire.  Looking at the 21st century, the rise of China, India, Brazil and to some extent Russia will again significantly downsize the UK’s position in global standing. When Obama callled Cameron a lightweight, it was probably personal but it was also a pointed dig at his Euroscepticism, Obama’s belief that the UK’s position is as a big player through Europe but not a big player on its own.

Cameron has displayed some dangerous naivete on the world before,  his attempt to cash in on world leader status and make Brown appear dithering, during the Georgia-Russia conflict was embarassing, he showed a totally one sided view that barely took into account Georgia’s foolish military stunts on South Ossetia, offered provokative language with no examples of what was to be done and then ordered Georgia’s application should be sped up – which would only anatagonise Russia’s position and put NATO in a precarious spot having to provide cover for  Saakashvili’s   loose cannon foreign policy.

His attempts to paint a new world order where Britain can retain relevance without Europe and the US have a similarly hollow tone . Undoubtedlythe UK has opportunities with India yet to be exploted but if Cameron thinks these can amount to replacing Europe he is drastically over-estimating the UK’s role in the 21st century.  The UK’s economy is far more closely tied with both Europe and the US, our security issues frequently are far more closely aligned with the US and Europe, from border to security to terrorism and geo-strategic military interests.  Like it or not , the UK is inextricably linked to its “old foes”, the old Commonwealth  is over and  India will engage with us not the other way round.

The challenges facing the UK in the 21st century will require European above all European solutions,  not just border security, immigration and keeping open markets, some of the biggest issues will be challenges such as maintianging secure energy supplies in the face of Russi’a volatility,  transforming European economic development to fulfil the Lisbon treaty and invest in a research driven Europe in the so-called ‘knowledge economy’, does Cameron think India or the US will help the UK out with this, does he not think that the UK and Europe are irrevocably bound by geography and now the European Union.

The Road ahead

Where does this leave David Cameron and the Conservatives? By leaving the EPP and attempting to pursue a form of Europe supported by a minority group can only leader to the UK’s isolation and irritate other European leaders.

An Economist article a while back made the point clearly, there was a time when the UK sent its best and brightest to Europe, not because they were passionate about Europe but to make sure they got what they wanted out of it, those days are gone, and as the Economist went onto point out this represents a strategic error.From experience this hasn’t worked out well for Britain, because other European leaders simply continue to develop European policy which Britain is then left out of, unable to convert its strength into leverage because it alienates its potential allies to score quick points in party politics and refuses to seriously engage with Europe.

Thatcher may have won domestic plaudits for her rebate but her Bruges speech in 1988 was an embarassing admissions of how out of touch with European feeling she was. While Europe can prove frustrating to the UK, issues such as the CAP , the nature and size of its bureacracy and yes its federalist implications, half-hearted detachment only weaken’s the UK’s ability to alter its direction.  By leaving the EPP Cameron would not only be handicapping his relationship with other European leaders from the start but he would be weaken the UK’s long term ability to project its actual power into influence within Europe. One salient example is Blair’s attempt to reform the CAP, he had to give up the rebate just to gain a discussion of the CAP, yet had the UK been more engaged with Europe and cultivated alliances and policy positions, rather than pursue its childish semi0detachment Blair may have been more successful.

In reality, Cameron undoubtedly has some sort of fudged plan in mind, to appease both sides, but the future ahead looks set for a continuation of UK’s marginalisation in Europe, and that is of little good to anyone of its citizens.

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). 

So, you might be asking, Cameron’s had four years: how’s he got on?  Not well, is the answer.  And with only three months before a new Parliament is elected, Cameron risks, in Prescottian style, getting the political egg on his face.  The problem is that most of the centre-right parties who make up the EPP are quite happy where they are, thank you very much.  As the largest grouping in the Parliament, they elect its President, who gets to do fun things like fawn over Hillary Clinton, and perhaps more importantly, have an evident leg-up in setting the political agenda and controlling committees.  Bubbling below the surface, as I mentioned last week, are also various propositions to expand the role of the parliamentary blocs.  If the Tories do break away, then, they could deprive the EPP of its largest-party status, giving European Socialists a boon (although the EPP still fancies its chances).  The European Parliament doesn’t like splinter groups, especially national ones.  It somewhat defies the point of a multitude of countries coming together to work towards common goals after centuries of division.  That’s why it takes 25 MEPs from seven countries to create a recognised grouping, eligible for EU funding.  To many, this looks like a bit of a long-shot for Cameron’s comrades, assuming he doesn’t want to end up sharing floor space with Jean-Marie Le Pen, Alessandra Mussolini or not-quite-Fascists-but-really-pushing-it parties (I’m looking at you, Law and Justice).

photo credit: edmittance

But internal European Parliament arrangements are probably not what are on Cameron’s mind.  For him, the political dilemma is tricky.  Either he stays true to his word, and succeeds in attracting Czech, Baltic, Swedish and Italian Conservatives as seems to be his best-case scenario (good luck…), thereby winning plaudits from within his Party, or he fails, embittering the Eurosceptics who are already miffed at the return of Ken Clarke.  Either way, in a move which will be one of the first to which foreign leaders pay attention, Cameron risks appearing like an isolationist who has no conception of the necessity of co-operation during this time of recession.  Not a great way to dispel doubts about the existence of a foreign policy vision.  By all accounts, Barack Obama wasn’t impressed by this kind of attitude when he met Cameron last summer.  So does Cameron move out of the EPP, annoying other governments to placate an internal faction of his own party, or does he stay in, and risk re-opening the fissures which destroyed the Conservatives in the Thatcher-Major era?  Either way, Dave,  the clock’s ticking…

Update: the decision looks pretty final.

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?

Well, uh, no. At least not for a while. Not only is Huntsman seemingly alone among Republicans in his desire for Cameron-esque moderation, but his recent comments have led to him skipping CPAC – a Republican party get- together where potential candidates traditionally strut their stuff- because he feared he would be booed.  Indeed, Republicans appear to currently be under the command of extreme radio shock-jock Rush Limbaugh, who has openly expressed his desire to see Obama fail and whose keynote address went down a storm at CPAC.  When the Republican National Committee Michael Steele called Limbaugh “incendiary” and “ugly” last weekend, he almost immediately apologised to the radio host for his remarks.  As many noted at the time of Steele’s attack, if you have to insist to an interviewer that you’re the leader of the Republican party, then you’re probably not.   Finally, when favourite contender for the Republican presidential nomination Bobby Jindal gave his reply to Obama’s State of the Union last month, it was a speech straight from the playbook of the last eight years: government is bad, lower taxes are good.

The inevitable, incredible conclusion from all this is that despite the overwhelming political evidence of the public’s shift away from the right, the vast majority of Republican politicians think that the problem is that the party is too centrist and not being bold enough in declaring its right-wing beliefs.  So much so, in fact, that it’s probably going to take another battering in the 2010 congressional mid terms to make them think otherwise. This is not all that surprising: it did, after all, take eight years of being in opposition for the Tory party to begin the process of renewal under Cameron. Republicans, on the other hand, only lost Congress in 2006 and only lost the Presidency last November.  It’s therefore no surprise to see the Republican leadership going down the road of failed British Conservative leaders Michael Howard, Ian Duncan Smith and William Hague: appeal to the base & go extreme.

But at some point, will Republicans be left with no choice but to face the kind of modernising face lift that many believe Cameron has achieved with the Tory party? After all, history suggests that most parties thrown out of power don’t go too long without undergoing a  significant transformation back to electability. However, though such a rebirth may eventually be embraced by the party of Bush, the truth is they’re going to have a much harder task than the simple David Cameron analogy suggests. America is not Britain and if Cameron thinks he had a fight on his hands modernising the Tories, it’s nothing compared to the battle the likes of Huntsman is going to have if he thinks he can drag Republicans kicking and screaming into electoral contention once again. In part two, therefore, I’ll explore why the Cameron analogy isn’t quite as cute – or as accurate – as the Governor of Utah would like to think.

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.

David Cameron recently wrote an article in the Guardian, asking for greater devolvement of power. This isn’t exactly a new theme, and the article is somewhat ironic given it was Thatcher more than anyone else that smashed local Government control in the UK.  Look past thishowever and you will see a key piece of Cameron’s plan is for 12 new mayoral systems to be established across the UK.  The rise of mayoral politics is undoubtedly a symbol of our growing urbanisation, with over 50% of the world’s population now living in urban areas, the traditional local government structures, of geographical region will need serious reform to cope with the growing power of cities.

There are reasons to think this is a positive development; the recent intensity around London’s election, which saw Conservative Boris Johnson oust incumbent Ken Livingstone was a testament to the shifting identities in the UK and around the world , and a subsequent need for new democratic structures to represent and engage people.

Furthermore, cities are fundamentally different from other traditional units, continuous, dense economic hubs with high stress on resources and infrastructure,  usually multicultural and often far more integrated into the global economy,change is a permanent state in the city and as such the mayoral system with greater executive power is in my opinion far more appropriate.

These two pieces of legislation, remarkable in their breadth, vision and justified belief in the importance of cities for global issues is a strongly positive symbol of the globalized society to find new routes to enact the urgent change we need to tackle Climate Change, and hopefully arrest the lethargy in national goverment in addressing urgent issues.