Now the Irish people have been scared into delivering the required ‘yes’ vote on the Lisbon treaty, a “deeply unwelcome ball” has been bounced into David Cameron’s court, says Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail. Cameron promised that Britain would hold a referendum on the treaty if it had not been ratified by every other country (ie, was fully operational as the European constitution) by the time he comes to power. Only the Poles and Czechs now stand in its way.
But frankly, unless the Lisbon treaty is stopped, “there is little point in Cameron or anyone else busting a gut to win the general election. That’s because parliament will be reduced to the status of a ‘Westminster regional council in the empire of Euroland’.” Every national interest, from foreign policy to internal security, will be “subordinated to this new anti-democratic entity”, which in all probability will have Tony Blair, “the man who did so much to damage Britain”, as its president.
That’s why Boris Johnson was right to say that the Tories should offer the British people a referendum on coming out of the EU, whether or not the Lisbon treaty has been ratified – and why David Cameron’s “refusal to address this issue transparently is so alarming”.
This “parochial paranoia” is “lazy and wrong”, says Rafael Behr in The Observer. Every prime minister since Edward Heath has “apparently colluded in this nefarious project” to “subvert British democracy” and yet “stubbornly the UK still governs itself”. The boring truth is that the Lisbon treaty is “just one in a parade of flawed but worthwhile compromises required to make a multi-national alliance work”.
Under EU treaties, including Lisbon, the vast majority of decisions that have an impact on Britain are made with sovereign consent. “The only sneaky part of the process is that national governments indulge the illusion that power is located elsewhere to avoid scrutiny of their decisions.”
Ireland’s ‘yes’ vote describes, in essence, the whole point of the European project: “negotiated political integration is a source of security, stability and strength”. Alone, the punching weight of European nations is bantam at best. Collaborating on a range of global issues is one of the biggest foreign policy challenges of our times. So “it would be reassuring if Britain was ready to play its part”.
For the most part it is, says Peter McKay in the Daily Mail. The Tory anti-Brussels crowd may be a “vociferous” lot, but the public are largely bored. There are no marches on Westminster demanding the return of our sovereignty. “Most of us would likely settle for our politicians fighting our corner in Europe.” Privately, shadow cabinet ministers say there’s no way Tories will “spend their first months in power faffing around with a referendum”, says Rachel Sylvester in The Times. Yet by refusing to face down the eurosceptics, Cameron gives the impression he is “in hock to… his right-wingers”, a “dangerous position for the Tory leader”.
Cameron’s stance is “pathetic”, agrees Mary Riddell in The Daily Telegraph. “A statesman-in-waiting could construct several satisfactory responses” when asked what he’d do if the Lisbon treaty is ratified before the election. “‘Dunno’ is not among them.”
A “distinctive, radical new Toryism” takes shape
“Britain’s welfare system is one of the most complicated in the world with more than 50 allowances and benefits up for grabs”, says Patrick O’Flynn in the Daily Express. What started as a safety net has “morphed into a £150bn monster that makes idleness a rational choice for millions”. Welfare reform is a “great moral cause for a new Tory government”.
The headline plans include new medical checks for the 2.6 million on incapacity benefit (IB). The Tories believe that as many as 500,000 IB claimants are fit for work, and a proposed £25 benefit cut will fund a £600m back-to-work programme. Benefits will also be withdrawn from people who turn down job offers and long-term claimants will be forced on to community work schemes in return for continuing state support. The role of specialist private firms, which have proved more efficient than Jobcentre staff at getting the unemployed back to work, will be expanded.
This agenda marks out a “distinctive, radical new Toryism”, says Phillip Blond in The Times. The Tory transformation owes much to Iain Duncan Smith and the ground-breaking work of his think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, on ‘Breakdown Britain’. For the right, welfarism “compounds and extends deprivation as it comes with a whole host of factors that destroy social stability and eliminate life chances”.
But although there is much good in the Tory plans, they aren’t so very different from Labour’s. Perhaps that’s because David Freud, Cameron’s welfare guru, was the government’s chief adviser on welfare too. The difference is that Cameron had the courage to spell out the necessary proposals, says the Daily Mail. The welfare mentality is “so deeply embedded that it will take a politician with a will of iron to dislodge it”. Cameron’s task is to convince us that he “has the ruthlessness to succeed where Labour has so abysmally failed”.