If a very dear friend does something really stupid the inclination is to brush it off and help them out. If a spouse, with whom relations over fundamental principles of how the partnership should operate are at odds, does something really stupid it can be the last straw which leads to walkout and divorce. The demand that the UK taxpayer cough up £1.7 billion by December 1st in order that it can be given to Germany, France, Poland, Denmark and Austria because their economies are now not doing so well, is a proposition which affronts everything the British believe in. It is so universally unacceptable that any brave politicians who think they might gain a bit of publicity by supporting it, will find themselves electoral toast. At a time of cuts, shortfalls, deficits and pay which does not keep pace with inflation in Britain, meeting this demand is a democratic impossibility. Any attempt to enforce it would almost certainly drive Britain out of the EU. This is why Brussels has to think again.
This blog is committed to Britain in Europe. It regards the EU as the greatest achievement in human politics since the fall of the Roman Empire. The millions who died in all the wars in Europe since the barbarians sacked Rome can feel at peace with the notion that a great swathe of warring nations are now friends, sharing common institutions and a parliament and can trade work and wander wherever the fancy takes them. All the member countries are content with the arrangements they have created to share bar one; the United Kingdom.
The reasons for this are subtle but emotional. Britain is in favour of a united Europe, but it has never thought itself European. European is another word for foreign. Moreover there is a temperamental difference about several features of governance. In Europe freedom is interpreted much more on a community or national level; Brits see it as an individual notion. The freedom of the individual is first above everything.
In Europe where there tend to be loads of political parties operating in coalition, the idea of rules and regulations organised and run by a bureaucracy, provides stability and protects against extremes. This has lead to a multi headed system of governance involving a Parliament, a Council, a Commission and three separate Presidents. Only the parliament is elected and its powers are limited. But the power of the Commission is apparently omnipotent and backed by the law of several treaties. It is not elected but appointed and most of its members are politicians whose star has failed to shine in the democratic firmament of their own countries.
These are arrangements not wholly unlike those in the UK, with only one house of its parliament elected, its powerful establishment and its thousand plus quangos, so you would think the Brits would be okay with the deal in Europe. But there is a difference, which makes all the difference. In the UK the bureaucrats are Brits. But in Europe they are foreign. Even the Brits in Brussels are thought of as foreign. And yet here is a very strange thing. The Brits do not regard Americans as foreign. They regard Americans as Americans; just another branch of the same family. This perception has shaped history and will continue to do so. And here is something else. Europeans regard Brits and Americans as two sides of the same coin.
Budget spats in Europe are not unknown and this one will no doubt blow over. But it has come at a very bad time, in the context of the widespread anti-EU tide of opinion driving UK domestic politics. Soon it may happen that the Brits will actually start to think not just about threatening to leave Europe, but about actively planning for the consequences of doing so. And when that happens the Brits will not look east. They will look west. As they have always done.
