Obama warns Cameron over his dangerous EU game

The British eurosceptic right, normally known for their fawning obsession with America, have been in a strange state of cognitive dissonance this week after the Obama Administration delivered this frank warning to British Conservatives on Wednesday: if the UK leaves the EU, it could doom itself to international irrelevance.

Philip Gordon, the US assistant secretary of state for European affairs, said in a speech in London that the UK leaving the EU would be a mistake, implying that Britain’s relationship with the US (and, presumably, most other major global players) would be damaged as a result.

"We have a growing relationship with the European Union as an institution which has a growing voice in the world – and we want to see a strong British voice in that European Union. That is in the American interest," he said. "When Europeans put their resources together and have a collective decision-making function they end up playing a major role in the world…And for the UK to be a part of that stronger, more important voice in the world is something I know a lot of British people welcome."

It isn’t just an academic debate. At the end of this month, British prime minister David Cameron will deliver a speech in The Hague on Britain’s future relationship with the EU. It is expected that he will announce a public referendum on EU membership that will take place in 2018 – well after the next general election and most likely after Cameron is out of office. Cameron has found it increasingly difficult to assuage the demands of a significant contingent of his increasingly anti-European party for a referendum on Britain leaving the EU.

Britain snubs Europe, goes to the dance with Canada

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that UK foreign secretary William Hague has found a new way to annoy his European counterparts. But today he’s managed to bring a North American country into the fray, and for once is isn’t the one with whom he believes he has a “special relationship”.

During a visit to Canada today Hague announced that the UK is going to close some British embassies across the world and merge them with Canadian embassies. The two countries will establish joint diplomatic missions, sharing embassy offices and consular services.

The move, an attempt to save money in these cost-cutting times, might seem logical enough at first glance. But the more you delve into it the more you realize it is diplomatically and logistically bizarre. While the UK and Canada may have similar foreign policy (something irrelevant to the consular services they are merging), they are completely separate countries which share no unified visa system. The only thing they share is a queen.

Europe leads on Libya, but divisions persist

We are only in day four of the Libya War, but it doesn't seem to have taken long for confusion to settle in over where we go next and who is in charge. As the aerial bombardment tapers off and the skies clear into a no-fly zone over the Libyan desert, questions are now being asked that are not only causing disunity within the European Union but also between Europe and the United States.

"In most of the foreign policy issues we've talked about for decades, the US has been the lead player," conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks noted on PBS Newshour a few days ago. "Here we're clearly not the lead player, it's the UK and France and we're following along on the caboose. Now we feel like the UK often feels, as the secondary player. So the question is how much is the president really supporting this and how much is he being dragged along?"

So far the Obama administration has seemed disinterested in the Libya situation, and this wasn't helped by the fact that at the time military action was launched the US president was on a trip to South America and had to give comments on the war's launch from a shared podium in Brazil. Over the past few days US politicians haven't even made an effort to try to convince the American public that this war is in America's strategic interest.

Britain hurt over Obama's warm words to France

A compliment from President Barack Obama used for his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy during a state visit in Washington last week has raised more than a few eyebrows in the UK.

Speaking after his meeting with Sarkozy, Obama told assembled journalists that, “We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy and the French people.” Almost immediately the British press went ballistic. After all, the UK is supposed to be America's number one ally in the world through their so-called "special relationship" (a term used ad nauseum in Britain, but one I've never once heard in the US). The Daily Mirror wrote, "It shatters the idea that Britain still has a special relationship with the US." The Daily Mail wrote that the words are "evidence that Mr Obama does not cherish the special relationship." An editorial in The Telegraph wrote that the statement, "represents an extraordinary sea change in US foreign policy," adding that "such a remark is not only factually wrong but also insulting to Britain, not least coming just a few years after the French famously knifed Washington in the back over the war in Iraq."

By contrast, in France the statement barely registered with the media. The only thing the French media reported about the comments was that Obama called France an "exceptional partner". Any gloating about France supposedly overtaking its long-time rival as America's best friend was absent from the French press.

Cameron's "euro-realist" first moves

Brussels received some encouraging news from across the channel today when we learned newly-elected UK Prime Minister David Cameron has dropped Mark Francois, the fiery eurosceptic who served as his shadow Europe Minister in opposition, in favour of a more centrist politician. The news is being received here today as a welcome sign that the Tories’ coalition with the Liberal Democrats will have a real and tangible effect on their stance toward the EU.

David Lidington, the man appointed to the Europe Minister post instead, is being described as a “euro-realist” by some of the more moderate members of the Conservative Party. He was, for instance an advisor to former Conservative prime minister John Major in the 1990s when he guided through passage of the Maastricht Treaty, the most significant milestone in the EU’s development.

An unholy alliance

Well, that was a crazy couple days. But last night it all came to a dramatic and sudden end as Gordon Brown abruptly drove to Buckingham Palace to hand in his resignation to Queen Elisabeth II, making Conservative leader David Cameron prime minister. So now it’s all done and dusted right? Hardly.

The excitement started Monday afternoon when, as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were still holding their negotiations, Gordon Brown emerged from 10 Downing Street to announced that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg had approached the Labour Party to see what they could offer instead. And, most dramatically, Brown announced that he would be resigning as leader of the Labour Party.

That announcement soon sparked breathless speculation throughout the media. Gordon Brown stepping down was considered by many to be a precondition for a Liberal Democrat – Labour coalition. Surely, the media inferred, Brown would not have made that dramatic (and rather humiliating) announcement unless some kind of deal had been worked out. For the rest of the day Monday the assumption was that some kind of Lib-Lab coalition was being formed. The problem of course was that a Lib-Lab union would still not meet the threshold of reaching a majority in the parliament.

Brussels holds breath as leaked Tory memo shows plan of attack

It’s safe to say that EU leaders have bigger things to worry about today than the UK general election. But a leaked memo about the Conservatives’ Europe strategy is likely causing extra heartburn throughout Brussels today. And it’s likely also added an extra dose of complication to the fertive negotiations going on between David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

The talks are proving difficult because the two parties are so far apart on major issues, and it’s going to be difficult for them to come to some kind of an understanding on how they can govern together. One of those major issues is Britain’s relationship with the EU, and hopes of agreement in this area were dramatically undermined last night when a top-secret letter from shadow foreign secretary William Hague to David Cameron was leaked.

The letter, written last week, assumed a Tory victory on Thursday and outlined a plan for a brash and aggressive introduction of the new UK government to EU foreign ministers at a meeting today. According to the document, Hague planned to tell the foreign ministers "the British relationship with the EU has changed with our election". Hague then planned to tell the ministers there would be no further integration of the UK with the rest of Europe. Instead, the UK would be clawing back national powers over criminal justice, social policy and employment policy during the first term of the Tory government. He also planned to tell the foreign ministers bluntly "we will never join the euro".

Tories make nice with Europe, but is it genuine?

When William Hague starts making nice with Europe, you know the Tories are getting very worried about their falling poll numbers. Over the past week the Conservatives have been bending over backward to rebut an increasingly successful line of attack by Labour that accuses them of being isolationist.

Yesterday in a speech in London the Conservative's shadow foreign secretary William Hague sounded a very different tone than he was just a few months ago. He insisted that the Tories would play a "leading role" in the EU if they were elected to power in May. Calling the EU “an institution of enormous importance to the United Kingdom and its foreign policy,” he said that the Conservatives’ intention was to be active in Brussels, “energetically engaging with our partners.” It was, to say the least, quite an about-face from the barely veiled contempt the Tories have displayed for the EU as they rode higher and higher in the polls over the past two years.

The speech clearly had two intended audiences. One was an increasingly skeptical British public who have begun to doubt whether the Tories have really changed from theconfused and conflicted party they were in the 1990’s. The other audience was fellow European leaders, particularly Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, who have been enraged by the Tories’ behavior over the past two years. To say the least, David Cameron’s outspoken criticism of the Lisbon reform treaty did not go over well on the continent. But it was Cameron’s decision last year to remove the Tories from the pan-European conservative party (EPP) in the European parliament to form a new anti-EU party with hard right Eastern European parties which really provoked the ire of the Tories' centre-reight European counterparts. Merkel’s Christian Democrats have reportedly suspended meetings with the British Conservatives since that decision.

France: ‘Autistic’ Tories will Castrate UK

One could argue that there’s perhaps no better vote-getter for the Tories than having the French call them names, but the rather un-PC reaction from the continent to David Cameron’s speech yesterday deserves more that just a bemused reaction in Britain. It’s a reflection of how deeply concerned the continent is about a future Tory government.

I was at a conference in Copenhagen on Tuesday when the news broke that Czech President Vaclav Klaus had finally signed the Lisbon Treaty, following a Czech court ruling that the treaty did not violate Czech sovereignty. As soon as someone announced the news the room broke into applause – which is significant because this was an industry conference, not a gathering of EU policy-makers.

The capitulation by the Czech president meant that UK conservative leader David Cameron would have to abandon his crusade to put the treaty to a public referendum in the UK. He had made a “cast-iron” guarantee that the Tories would offer the British public a referendum on the document if the Tories were elected, but he had never addressed what he would do if the treaty went into effect before the Tories came into power. On Wednesday Cameron hastily arranged a speech acknowledging the obvious: now that the treaty has been ratified it is no longer a treaty, but EU law – making a referendum at this point essentially meaningless. At the same time he said he would work to "unravel" much of the treaty through negotiations over the coming years and would seek new "opt-outs" for Britain from EU policy.

In fact, a ‘no’ vote on the treaty would at this point mean a ‘no’ vote to the EU, and the implication of such a result would be that Britain must exit the union – something Cameron knows would be a disaster for the UK. His decision to abandon his plans for a referendum is less an active policy choice that an acknowledgement of reality.



The reaction to Cameron’s speech in the British press has been strangely schizophrenic. The right-leaning papers have focused on Cameron’s “capitulation to Europe” and a supposed “abandonment” of the Eurosceptic wing of the party. The Telegraph ran this headline yesterday: “David Cameron tells Eurosceptics: get over it,” followed by an interpretation that Cameron has rejected the Tory Eurosceptics by putting Europe low on the agenda. They point to the resignation of the two most rabidly anti-Europe MEPs, Daniel Hannon and Roger Helmer, from their front-bench positions in protest over Cameron’s decision.

On the other hand the left-leaning papers have focused on the nonsensical nature of Cameron’s speech yesterday, highlighting the fact that Cameron is still being antagonistic toward Europe yet he is not being clear in exactly what he wants from it. They point out that the UK already has many of the opt-outs Cameron said he would ask for in the coming years, including not being part of the Charter of Fundamental Rights (Brown already negotiated a UK opt-out to that part of the treaty). And they have recounted the baffled reaction of many leaders on the continent to the content of Cameron’s speech. Cameron’s promise to renegotiate employment law is almost laughably absurd, the continental politicians said, considering there is almost no chance Britain's European partners would approve an opt-out as it would be seen as giving the UK an unfair advantage in attracting foreign investment. And his promise that “never again” would a treaty pass without a public referendum in Britain is an empty gesture considering the Commission has already said it will not attempt any further institutional reform for at least a decade and probably much longer.

But it was the furious reaction from the French government to Cameron’s speech which the left-leaning papers focused on the most. In a stunning abandonment of diplomatic niceties, France’s Europe Minister Pierre Lellouche came out with a remarkable condemnation of the Tories, saying he was conveying French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s “sadness and regret” over the path Cameron has chosen to take. Lellouche told the Guardian:

"It's pathetic. It's just very sad to see Britain, so important in Europe, just cutting itself out from the rest and disappearing from the radar map …. This is a culture of opposition…I have told William Hague: go away for two to three years, in your political economic situation you're going to be all by your self and you'll come back. Go ahead and do it. That is my message to them … You want to be marginalised? Well, you go for it. But it's a waste of time for all of us.”

The minister’s comments reflect the depth of the anger felt by Europe’s Conservative parties at Cameron’s decision to take the Tories out of the main centre-right European party, the European People’s Party, to form a new “anti-federalist” party in alliance with hard-right parties from Eastern Europe. Lellouche said Cameron’s decision had “castrated” British influence in the parliament, and his continued antagonism toward the EU – saying the same thing over and over but not expressing any coherent question or demand – seemed like “a very bizarre sense of autism”.

The comments were particularly surprising considering that Lellouche is one of the most Anglophile members of Sarkozy’s government. It should be kept in mind that these unusually harsh diplomatic words are not coming from socialist governments on the continent, they are coming from fellow conservatives.

Despite the very different coverage of the issues from the different British papers, it is actually really heartening to see Europe being discussed so much in the British media this week. Though Cameron seems to be trying his best to get rid of Europe as a campaign issue, it would probably be the best thing for the UK if Europe were made a central part of next year’s campaign. Labour certainly has every interest in bringing it up as much as possible, considering it has historically been an issue that has caused civil wars within the Conservative Party, and Labour will be eager to exploit lingering fears and doubts the public has about the Tories’ ability to govern.

But more importantly, having Europe as a major issue of the campaign could mean that Britain will finally get the frank, honest Europe discussion it has never had. If the Tories want to unravel the European project then they need to present to the British public what their alternative vision is for the UK to be a relevant part of the 21st century. So far the discussion of the EU in the UK has focused on silly euromyths about the length of vegetables rather than a real education on what the EU does and that its purpose is to make Europe a relevant, strong global player in the 21st century. That discussion has never been had here because most politicians dance around the central truth regarding the necessity of Britain’s EU membership: the UK is no longer a world power and it faces a future of marginalisation and irrelevance if it tries to go it alone. As Lellouche said Wednesday:

"It is a time of tumultuous waters all around us. Wars, terrorism, proliferation, Afghanistan, energy with Russia, massive immigration, economic crisis. It is time when the destiny of Europe is being defined – whether or not we will exist as a third of the world's GDP capable of fighting it out on climate, on trade, on every … issue on the surface of the Earth. We need to be united, otherwise we will be wiped out and marginalised. None of us can do it alone. Whether you're big or small, the lesson is the same. And [Britain's] risk is one of marginalisation. Irrelevance."

It remains to be seen whether similiarly outraged words will be publicly expressed from Europe’s other conservative governments in Germany, Italy, Sweden and Denmark – but such views have already been expressed privately by Conservatives from all corners of Europe. Angela Merkel is reportedly refusing to even meet with Cameron, and joint policy groups between Germany’s CDU and the Tories have been cancelled.

If the Tories are elected next spring it would mean that all three major EU countries will have Conservative governments. Yet far from being an ideologically unified block that could plow through badly-needed reforms in Europe’s social model, there will be a huge chasm between the continent and Britain as a result of Cameron’s decisions.

Brown ashamed of Europe?

I'm starting to view Gordon Brown with some "Britoscepticism."

Throughout all the troubles of the past few months, the British media have been picking on Brown and labeling him a 'ditherer'. With each unfolding embarrassment, it seemed there was a plausible defense for Brown. When the elections fiasco happened, it could be argued that Brown hadn’t “intended to call an election and then chickened out,’ but had rather failed to squash unprovoked rumors of an election early enough. When the Northern Rock bank run and bailout happened, many, such as the ECB, believed that the government stepping in was probably the best option. When the government lost the identity records of thousands of people in the second largest data loss in history, one could say it would be foolish to blame Brown because he had nothing to do with it. And as the controversy over “dodgy donations” has unfolded, with new stories of Labour improperly accepting campaign money unfolding every day, it seemed that the only reason this was a story was because Labour had put those campaign finance laws into effect in the first place and these were the inevitable growing pains as the system figures itself out.