Holding The Centre

Harry’s Place is having a go at no2eu.

Where is “the centre ground”, where elections are said to be won and lost? Wherever it is, its inhabitants are allegedly delighted to be at the very heart of the European federalist project.

But it is not moderate, mainstream or centrist to wish to be subject to a legislative body, the Council of Ministers, that meets in secret and publishes no Official Report. Nor to wish to be subject to the legislative will of the sorts of people that turn up in the coalitions represented in that Council. And, indeed, in the European Parliament. Stalinists and Trotskyists. Neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis. Members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura. Neoconservatives such as now run France and Germany. Before long, the ruling Islamists of Turkey.

When Jörg Haider’s party was in government in Austria, the totally unreconstructed Communist Party was in government in France. In the Council of Ministers, we were being legislated for by both of them. In the European Parliament, we still are, because we always are. People who believe the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland may not take their seats at Westminster. But they do at Strasbourg. And so on, and on, and on.

Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin rejected even the European Coal and Steel Community out of hand. Douglas Jay called it “the blueprint for a federal state”. Herbert Morrison, who once defined Socialism as “whatever the Labour Party says it is at any given time”, said of the ECSC that “the Durham miners would never wear it”, so that was just that. Hugh Gaitskell denounced the Common Market as “the end of a thousand years of history” and liable to destroy the Commonwealth.

Peter Shore, Bryan Gould (the only MP to resign from either front bench in order to vote against Maastricht) and Gwyneth Dunwoody were a very long way indeed from the Hard Left. Ian Davidson, Austin Mitchell, Frank Field, Kate Hoey and Roger Godsiff still are. The Parliamentary Labour Party was overwhelmingly opposed to European federalism when it was overwhelmingly comprised of economically populist and social democratic, morally and socially conservative, profoundly patriotic, strongly pro-Commonwealth and moderately pro-American, often church-based politicians.

By contrast, the New Labour Project is riddled with those who have never said that their Communist or Trotskyist activities, including the deselection of many such traditional Labour MPs, were wrong at the time. They have only changed their tactics from economics to the social, cultural and constitutional spheres. Including European federalism.

Half of UKIP’s vote at the last European Elections came from disaffected Labour voters who had been, and who still are, been disenfranchised by the disappearance of the patriotic, social democratic, morally and socially conservative party that they had known. UKIP’s star turn was a former Labour MP. Combining its and the Tories’ vote in the North, the Midlands or London gave, and gives, a ludicrously high figure for the number of natural Tories living there. It has failed to keep those voters, including that former MP. But they still want an alternative to New Labour. These are people who would never vote Tory in a million years. But then, as patriots and as moral and social conservatives, why would they ever have done so? So the void is being filled. By the BNP. Is that what Harry’s Place wants? Perhaps so, since it endorsed the same London Mayoral candidate as the BNP.

On the Tory side, some of those who voted against Maastricht were Thatcherites. But most were not. Sir Nicholas Winterton (as he has become): a moral and social conservative, a diehard patriot, and with a strain of economic populism. Richard Shepherd (scandalously still unknighted): an unyielding constitutionalist and civil libertarian. Sir Peter Tapsell: an ardent Keynesian and Commonwealth enthusiast who has gone on to be a magnificent opponent of the neoconservative war agenda. Sir Richard Body: an anti-nuclear Quaker, a conservationist, and a Small Is Beautiful agrarian. And others besides.

If there is a centre ground, then its inhabitants are with Attlee, Bevin, Jay, Morrison, Gaitskell, Shore, Gould and Dunwoody in that they believe in the universal and comprehensive Welfare State. In the strong statutory and other (including trade union) protection of workers, consumers, communities and the environment. In the former paid for by progressive taxation. In the whole underwritten by full employment. And in all these good thing delivered by the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government.

Those inhabitants are also moral and social conservatives, diehard patriots, and economic populists. They are unyielding constitutionalists and civil libertarians. They are ardent Keynesians and Commonwealth enthusiasts. They are opponents both of the neoconservative war agenda and of nuclear weapons (and yes, that did include the Gaitskellites). And they are conservationists, and Small Is Beautiful agrarians.

Refuse to vote for anyone else.