How long will Britain stay in the EU?

Πηγή: FT
By Philip Stephens
Dec 9 2011

There’s fog in the channel: the continent is isolated again. This well-worn adage has often described the British attitude to Europe. So it was at the latest European Union summit. David Cameron’s veto of a new EU treaty on fiscal union leaves Britain to sail under clear blue skies. Things will not turn out like that, of course. They never do.

Whichever end of the telescope one looks through, the summit was a turning point in Britain’s relationship with its neighbours. It harked back to the EU’s founding conference in Messina when Britain first decided to step aside. Now, like then, the prime minister of the day has decided Britain can better make its way in the world without the encumbrance of its continental partners.

Governments and corporations beyond Europe must now ask themselves a question which, for all the occasional spats with Brussels, has hitherto seemed unthinkable. Will Britain still be part of the EU five or 10 years from now? I am not at all sure. Why, one banker asked on Friday, would companies selling into Europe now invest in Britain?

Through one end of the telescope, Mr Cameron’s veto was the moment Britain signalled the beginning of a long goodbye to Europe; through the other it was Europe bidding its farewell to Britain.

The effect is the same either way. Ever since it negotiated the single currency opt out at Maastricht nearly 20 years ago Britain has managed by dint of power and skilful diplomacy to be both within and without the European club. Mr Cameron’s decision to leave an empty chair at negotiations for a fiscal union in the eurozone marks the end of that road.

It is important to insert a caveat here. The presumption of everyone in the room in Brussels was that the eurozone countries will indeed succeed in saving the single currency and build alongside it a more integrated political union.

That enterprise could yet fail. Some will say after the limited progress made at the summit on rescue plan, the odds have now stacked against the euro. If it were to fall apart, so too would all other ambitions among the 17 eurogroup members. Assuming it does not, however, Britain has never looked so isolated.

Mr Cameron, of course, can expect hearty cheers from his Conservative MPs when he reports on the summit to the House of Commons. Some in Whitehall are already whispering that it was fear of being jeered by his own backbenchers that drove Mr Cameron into a corner in Brussels. Either way many Tory sceptics will exult in Britain’s isolation.

The prime minister should enjoy the applause while he can. The government now faces a ratchet effect. For the growing band of hard-line Tory sceptics this is just the beginning. Now that Britain has placed itself fully outside the EU’s core economic project, why not reopen negotiations on everything else?

There is logic to this position. If 20 or so other European nations succeed in building a political union, it is hard to imagine a place for at best a semi-detached Britain. As for protecting the interests of the City of London from the feared depredations of Paris and Frankfurt, that will scarcely be achieved with Britain locked out of negotiations on the future shape of European financial regulation.

What, some will ask, of Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats? Surely Mr Clegg, as Mr Cameron’s coalition partner and a powerful advocate of British engagement in Europe, will act as a counter to the sceptics. One might have hoped so. But like Britain in Europe, Mr Clegg has thus far been left outside the room.