Europe

Tim Montgomerie has the scoop that the Tories will not hold a referendum on Lisbon if it has been ratified by the next general election. A vote on Lisbon once it had been ratified would only have had moral force so the Tory policy shift is not a betrayal of Euro-scepticism. However, the party will seek a ‘manifesto mandate’ to begin negotiations to repatriate powers. The challenge for the Tories is to persuade the other member states to allow Britain to take back powers.  As Tim says, the Tories will need a savvy negotiator with strong Euro-sceptic instincts to take charge of this process. To my mind, Theresa Villiers, a former MEP who knows her way around the European system and is a strong Euro-sceptic, would be ideal for this task.

In his column, James asks the key question about Tony Blair’s candidature for President of the European Council: what would it do for the Tories and Britain’s foreign policy. William Hague clearly thinks it would be a bad thing and has been lobbying against Blair’s candidacy.   The Shadow Foreign Secretary is letting his anti-EU, anti-Labour views cloud his judgement. Let me explain. If the Tories win, Labour will be in the doldrums, a shadow of its former self. The idea that the party will mount a challenge to a Conservative government by rallying around an EU-focused Tony Blair is unbelievable. Romani Prodi may have jumped from an EU job to the top of Italian politics, but Britain works differently. Peter Mandelson is the exception, Roy Jenkins the rule.

A contact just back from Brussels tells me that the putative Blair candidacy, which I wrote about this week, is in trouble. Apparently the supporters of Jean Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg PM, are frank that the purpose of his candidacy is to polarise the field with him—Federalist, anti-Iraq—on one side and Blair on the other. In typical EU fashion, the compromise candidate will then be looked for.   Blair’s problem is that he is the high-profile front-runner. He is the man everyone is either for or against and in a selection that is decided by consensus that person rarely gets the job. In the meantime, the Dutch PM Jean Peter Balkenende, who I am told Merkel favours, is neatly tucked up on the rails ready to break through when there is a gap in the field.

Last night in a speech at the IISS, David Milliband laid out the case against the Tories’ Europe policy. As he started off saying: "It is very strongly in the British national interest for the EU to develop a strong foreign policy; that to be frightened of European foreign policy is blinkered, fatalistic and wrong; that Britain should embrace it, shape it and lead it." In that one sentence lies the case for Britain’s role in shaping a liberal, open and outward-focused EU. It is probably also the line of attack that the Foreign Secretary will use against the Tories until election day and possibly beyond, if Miliband eventually assumes the Labour leadership. I have never made a secret of my support for the EU.

No one has done more to make the Tories’ new European allies an issue than Jonathan Freedland. He has written about the subject with real passion and, so sources in the Jewish community tell me, played a crucial role in persuading the president of the Board of Deputies to write to David Cameron expressing concern about them.    This week, his column on the subject contained this point: ‘Just this month Oszkar Molnar, an MP from Hungary's main opposition party – on course to form the country's next government – told a TV interviewer that "global capital – Jewish capital, if you like – wants to devour the entire world, especially Hungary". His party leader said there was no need to discipline him because he'd broken no rules.

Increasingly, it looks as though Tony Blair must make do with what he’s got. Last Saturday, the Independent reported that Nicolas Sarkozy is likely to evoke the spirit of de Gaulle with an emphatic ‘Non’, founded on Britain's retention of the Pound.Today, Iain Martin has heard that Jonathan Powell’s proselytising in Brussels merely antagonised his audience. And the kiss of death for Blair probably came in the form of an endorsement from Silvio Berlusconi. But, there must be a European President, and, as Matthew D’Ancona observes, Blair’s experience on the international stage, his Europhilia and his Eurotrash-popstar status make him the ideal candidate.

No one really thought that Vaclav Klaus would hold out against the Lisbon treaty until the British general election, but it was a convenient fiction for the Conservative party. It enabled both the leadeship and Eurosceptics to pretend that the current policy remained operative and that any questions about what would happen if the Lisbon treaty was ratified by the time of the next election were hypotheticals. So, as David notes, to hear Klaus conceding that he can't hold out until the election is a blow. The question now is what happens next. Domestically, I doubt that the party will have a big row about Europe—it is too disciplined, too eager for power for that. In European terms, the question is always put as does Cameron have the stomach for a battle with Brussels.

Assuming that the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, that the Conservative Party wins the next election and that Angela Merkel and Nicola Sarkozy want Britain to remain in the European Union, what “sovereignty package” will EU leaders come up with for Prime Minister Cameron, so that the Tory leadership can placate its eurosceptic base? The deal cannot be cosmetic, but make it too tough and other EU leaders will not want to compromise.