"Fog in Channel; Continent Cut Off" is one of the most famous headlines in British newspaper history. That it is apocryphal matters less than the general truth it conveys: Britain has always stood apart from continental Europe. This island nation may be part of the wider European brotherhood, but it is still not a full member of the club. And as the euro crisis continues to cripple the continent, the distance across the English Channel only seems to be growing.
COMMENTS (10)
More...
It was ever thus. Winston Churchill stressed the importance of European unity after World War II, but when the European Union was founded through the Treaty of Rome in 1957, Britain was left on the outside. Ever since, it has never been wholly enthusiastic about the European project, so anyone surprised that British Prime Minister David Cameron vetoed proposals in Brussels on Friday, Dec. 9, for a new EU treaty, notionally supposed to address the present fiscal crisis, should have known better. On Dec. 12, back at home, Cameron told the House of Commons that he did not believe there is "a binary choice for Britain" between being a "full, committed, and influential member of the EU" and staying "out of arrangements where they do not protect our interests."
Nevertheless, the prime minister's veto was the clearest indication yet that Britain is at best a semidetached member of the European Union. Britain, Cameron stressed, desires "the flexibility of a network, not the rigidity of a bloc." Yet can any network be flexible enough to comprise a bloc of 26 countries and a single refusenik? What's more, the future of Britain's relationship with the European Union has been called into question. Suddenly, the idea that it might actually one day leave the union entirely seems more credible.
In truth, Cameron's room for negotiation was limited. Accepting a new EU-wide treaty would have required a British referendum that he would almost certainly have lost. Moreover, it is not clear the prime minister could have retained even the support of a majority of his own party, which if lost could have fatally undermined his authority. In October, more than 80 Tory MPs voted against the government on a proposal to hold a referendum on British EU membership. That was a purely symbolic motion because the government had no plans to introduce such a bill. If so many Conservatives rebelled over a purely notional vote, how many more might do so if the question were asked for real?
Whatever the reason, European leaders saw Cameron's decision as part of a long history of British stalling designed to preserve its special prerogative. On Monday, Cameron complained about "discriminatory" and hostile European attitudes to the City of London, the heart of Britain's banking sector. The French think Britain's financial center is part of the European problem; the British, of course, thus consider it the single most important part of their economy and believe it must be protected from French-led interference.
For those on the continent, Cameron's determination to do all he could to protect his country's vital financial-services industry was a typical piece of British duplicity. Britain, this view has it, always demands all the benefits of EU membership while also always declining to accept the costs of membership. For instance, Britain would like to save the euro but won't contribute anything to actually saving it. One French diplomat reportedly complained that Britain had behaved "like a man who wants to go to a wife-swapping party without taking his own wife."
SUBJECTS:
(10)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE