Simon Usherwood, Senior Lecturer in Politics at Surrey University, says that the 2015 party manifestos contain little enlightening material about a future government's policy on the EU.
This week’s release of manifestos for the general election is a good opportunity to review how parties are planning to handle the key question of Britain and the EU. Both as political statements to voters and bargaining positions for the almost-inevitable post-election coalition talks, they set out the broad parameters of policy.
As such, it is disappointing to see that this policy remains driven by narrow, party-political interest rather than by a broader sense of what might be achieved.
In all cases, parties have focused on the question of a referendum on membership, something now promised across the board, albeit with some differing conditions. The success of those pushing for a referendum –the Tory backbenches and UKIP in particular – is quite striking and marks a considerable long-term shift in the way that debate has become framed in the UK. Indeed, one could go further and argue that it has become something of a substitute for debate about the EU: it doesn’t matter what you want to reform or develop, because you’ve not given the people a voice.
At one level, there is a strong argument about popular involvement in policy-making. But at another level, politicians seem to be unwilling to talk about what should change and what ‘in’ or ‘out’ should look like. A vote without a debate would be deeply unhelpful.
And this is reflected in the manifestos we have so far. Aside from the referendum question, the Tories, Labour and LibDems all agree that the single market should be completed and red-tape be cut, that national parliaments should have a ‘red card’ mechanism to block EU legislation that the budget needs reform (and, ideally, cutting) and that Euro membership is bad. All of these are long-standing British positions that reflect national trade interests and the eternal struggle for CAP reform. As such, they form something close to the ‘motherhood and apple pie’ of British EU policy: so axiomatically good that they need no real thought or discussion. Just the sort of thing to stick in a manifesto to ‘flesh out’ policy.
Beyond this, other policy positions reflect the rise of immigration as a political issue. While the LibDems and Labour don’t go quite as far as the Conservatives on tightening free movement and access to benefit, it is evident that the debate has been driven by efforts to close down as much policy space to UKIP, rather than by a serious consideration of the economic costs and benefits of a mobile labour force.
Indeed, it’s telling that changes in this area are as close as the parties – particular the Conservatives – come to setting out an agenda for their planned renegotiation. That the main party of government isn’t willing (or able) to indicate what it hopes to achieve in such a process is indicative of how policy on the EU is conceived: party management and biffing your opponents are the order of the day.
As Michael Emerson has pointed out on this blog, there is a wealth of evidence and analysis available to all parties, through the Review of Competences. That no one seems to want to use that, nor to engage in the other major questions confronting the EU, should be a cause for concern. Britain is deeply linked into European society and economy: problems there are problems here too. Muse then on the absence of any mention of how the UK might help the Eurozone to emerge from recession and reform its governance. Whatever the outcome on May 7th, the UK is very likely to have a government that continues to struggle to know what it wants to achieve with its European partners.
Simon Usherwood is Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Politics, University of Surrey. His work has focused on euroscepticism, both in the UK and more widely across the EU. He is coordinator of the UACES Collaborative research Network on Euroscepticism and co-author of The European Union: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2013).