Major faces high noon over Europe

Date: 03/10/1996

By Geoff Meade

IF UK Prime Minister John Major persists in claiming that his Conservative party is at the heart of Europe, someone is soon going to suggest by-pass surgery.

Because for the British Tories, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Just when it seems as if the worst xenophobic excesses over Europe are past, up pop the Eurosceptics armed with fresh ammunition to aim at the same old targets.

It is no coincidence that the latest bout of Euro-mayhem which is tearing the party asunder has broken out on the eve of next week's Conservative Party conference.

And nothing would more delight the increasingly vocal anti-EU faction both within the British cabinet and on the back-benches than if Major were to produce some rousing sceptical eve-of-conference rhetoric at this weekend's EU summit in Dublin.

The opportunity is there: this summit is supposed to breathe fresh life into the Intergovernmental Conference, and it would be simple for Major to make great play of warning yet again that his IGC vote will be used to scupper the whole process if there are attempts to bully the UK into another unpalatable great leap forward in the European adventure.

It is the least Major will be expected to do to keep the Europhobes at bay until his party conference is safely out of the way.

In theory, at least, a good solid soundbite of Euro-bashing at the high table of EU summitry might persuade the troublemakers to shut up and clear the decks for party harmony in the last crucial months before the UK goes to the polls in a general election.

But few are convinced that this tactic will actually work. The Eurosceptics are not interested in just steering Europe their way. The fight over Europe may have begun as a sincere one, but it has been seized upon by a hard-right faction as perfect camouflage in the far more fundamental battle to toughen up what they regard as a soft-centred party.

Last spring, Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine appealed to the Tories to end the “political madness” leading the party towards electoral suicide. The issue of Europe, he intimated, was not worth the destruction of the Conservatives.

But on the eve of the Tory conference, the stakes are higher than Europe.

The Eurosceptics simply bounce from subject to subject, picking up indignant anti-European support along the way and converting it into effective opposition to the kind of Toryism Major has tried to stand for.

Beef bans, the 48-hour week, works councils and now, most divisively of all, the single currency, have emboldened those baying for blood.

It is little short of civil war, and the fight back by the newly-formed pro-EU Conservative Mainstream Group - said to have the support of as many as ten Tory cabinet members - may have come too late. The Eurosceptics are camped out all over the latest battleground of the single currency, demanding heads on a plate, notably that of Chancellor Kenneth Clarke, unless Major closes the door now on UK membership of the Euro.

Major is said to be furious with the Chancellor for handing the Eurosceptics countless rounds of fresh ammunition by loose talk on the radio which made it crystal clear that Clarke does not want the UK to be on the outside of a single currency looking in.

Clarke insists that what he actually said was nothing new, but any word from any senior cabinet figure on such a sensitive issue as Europe at this stage is now dissected, inspected and then injected into the interminable and increasingly bitter struggle.

The generals in the Tory Eurosceptic army are now becoming increasingly confident of victory.

Former government minister Norman Tebbit took delight last week in reminding Major that his predecessor was sunk by the issue of the EU. And the failed challenger for the Tory leadership, former Welsh Secretary John Redwood, now wants the prime minister to block any attempt to fudge the Maastricht Treaty EMU criteria to swing more countries over the pre-determined financial thresholds and into the single currency.

Major has hit back, insisting that the Eurosceptics are “wasting their time and breath” expecting him to shift ground on the UK's wait-and-see policy on the currency.

But this is no longer a blip on the Conservative Party screen. It is turning into a total systems failure and the rest of Europe can only look on in dismay.