Yet More On The Tories And The EU

I've touched some raw nerves in my time, but never anything remotely like this! Thank you all so much for your emails, and do please keep them coming.

As I remember, most Tory MPs voted for Maastricht and had no time whatever for those very few of their colleagues who did not. And who knows how large the Tory majority would have been if they had won in 1997, making it so much easier for the triumphant Major, Clarke, Heseltine and Hurd to join the Euro?

Nor am I convinced that most Tory MPs are Eurosceptics even now: most of them very pointedly never say anything on the matter, no doubt, in at least a good few cases, to avoid falling out with the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, and those papers' readers among their constituency activists. But, in fact, undoubtedly Mail and Telegraph-reading bodies of Tory activists have never actually deselected anyone over Europe except the anti-Maastricht Sir George Gardiner.

Likewise, most Labour MPs also very pointedly never say anything about Europe, no doubt in order to avoid falling out with the Guardian and with its readers in their Constituency Labour Parties. But they are quite mistaken: many Guardian readers (and some Guardian writers) at least have doubts, while most Labour activists and almost all Labour voters are decidedly not from the "aren't gîtes in Burgundy fabulous!" crowd, that being the sum total of the British Europhile "argument" in any party or none.

European integration has only ever been passed on a cross-party basis: first by most of the Tories, by the Liberals, and by some Labour rebels; then by most of the Tories, and by the Liberals; and then by most of the Tories, by almost all the Liberals, and by the majority of Labour MPs (though with a significant minority opposed).

Had the Tories won in 1997, then the Euro would have passed on the votes of most of the Tories, almost all the Liberals, and either a very narrow majority of Labour MPs, or else a significant number of Labour rebels against an instruction to oppose it. The only thing that stopped the Euro was the election of a Labour Government in general, and of a Labour Government with Gordon Brown as Chancellor in particular.