Even as we considered Britain’s relations with the Caribbean Community last week, as British Foreign minister Hague met with our countries’ foreign ministers in London, it was clear that Hague had something else on his mind, specifically the campaign being led by his Prime Minister David Cameron to get his own choice of President of the European Commission.
But as most commentators expected, in spite of much diplomatic motion and political comment, Cameron found only one supporter, Hungary, among the ranks of his colleagues of the European Council with 24 of the 26 member states deciding to vote for Jean-Claude Juncker of the small principality of Luxembourg, who contrary to what Cameron had originally anticipated, obtained the unreserved support of both Germany and France.
Cameron had desperately tried to influence Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany who had, at first, seemed not particularly keen on Juncker. But recognizing the strength of support for him on the continent, Merkel was quickly persuaded to support the majority, as Cameron, in spite of much diplomatic manoeuvring and harsh condemnation of Juncker, failed to persuade any other influential leaders of the Union.
It appears to be the case that Cameron’s decision, in the context of much political pressure from within his own Conservative party, was that he could not afford to go against what seemed to be prevailing support from many of his own parliamentary members, influenced by the conservative offshoot, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) campaigning for Brexit (British exit from the EU).
Cameron seems to have been under the impression, and have drawn the conclusion, that a large section of the British public has been losing its enthusiasm for membership of the EU, particularly on the grounds that the economic union permitted virtually untrammelled immigration of largely working class Europeans into Britain. And as in the case of West Indian immigration to the United Kingdom in the 1950s and 1960s, he succumbed to popular pressure from within his own Conservative party and other fringe groupings, to propose new arrangements for the EU which would inhibit the extent of freedom of movement of persons that its single market and economy framework mandates.
As is evident from the vote among European leaders, Cameron failed to influence the large majority of them. At first his strategy seemed to rely on the support of Chancellor Merkel who seemed to be sympathetic to British Conservative Party internal sentiment as reflected in recent by-elections, and the apparent growth of support for the UKIP. But it seems also to have been the case that Merkel herself came under strong pressure from within her own governing coalition not to bend to British sentiment, especially as it appeared that Cameron’s strategy was to be strongly condemnatory of the orientation of the EU which had, in German parliamentary opinion, been originally decided with full British support.
Much British opinion, even among commentators not wildly supportive of integration trends within the EU, has felt that Cameron was being politically opportunistic in seeking to lean towards negative opinion in his own party. In addition, many commentators have felt that Cameron was making no real effort to consolidate wider British party and public opinion behind his strategy, first, since he was objecting to closer EU integration essentially on the basis of anti-integration trends dividing his own Conservative Party; and secondly, since he was evidently alienating the leaders of other European states who began to see his domestic political strategy as over-influenced by electoral considerations.
It is apparent that Chancellor Merkel, not only in response to rising anti-British sentiment in her own party, but also perceiving that support for Cameron’s position would alienate her from a European consensus that included France in particular, increasingly began to feel that Cameron’s strategy, even though it might be successful in uniting opinion against the apparently majority choice of Juncker, ran the risk of creating division particularly between Germany and France.
Merkel seems to have felt that France’s President Hollande, under substantial domestic pressure at home virtually since his election, could not be deserted, given the historic underlying sentiment on the continent that a continuing consensus between Germany and France provided the key linchpin to the success and consolidation of the European integration system. Merkel would have been aware that popular sentiment behind Hollande has not grown, but indeed has diminished, and a defection from France to Britain would further weaken Hollande’s domestic support, and therefore the decision-making cohesion of the EU.
Cameron’s domestic, anti-Juncker, political strategy, in a context in which the two key players in European integration, France and Germany, seemed to be essentially political fodder in support of his of loss of support at home, ceased to have any attraction for Germany in particular. And Cameron seems to have miscalculated the extent to which Merkel, initially wavering in support of Juncker, could be seen to be consequently wavering over essentially the unity of the two pivots of the EU system, her country and France.
The result for Cameron has, undoubtedly, been a substantial defeat for British diplomacy. Indeed it is considered, even in some British opinion, that the Prime Minister had ceased to use the diplomatic strength of his country to attain his EU ends; and that instead, had resorted to a kind of public haranguing of those in support of the leading candidate for the EU Commission presidency, hoping that European leadership sentiment would turn to Britain on the grounds that a pro-Juncker decision would have a decisive negative effect, at home, on the standing of the British government.
In this connection, no doubt, European leaders, and European public opinion would have come to perceive Cameron as being placed between a rock and a hard place – between being seen, in Britain, as too pro-European while at the same time not doing enough to ensure the unity of the United Kingdom in the face of the upcoming referendum in Scotland on its future status.
It appears now to be the case that Cameron is being seen as having been politically gauche in his approach to European diplomacy. It seems to have appeared, from a European perspective, that in his strategy on the continuing unification of Britain itself, he is opportunistically and excessively leaning on political trends within his own Conservative Party, in his bid to influence wider European sentiment.
And Britain has now learnt that, even as a key economic and political influence within the EU, it no longer has the strength to autonomously influence European opinion when the government’s strength at home is insufficiently homogeneous, and the governmental leadership seems to be playing to maintaining its domestic party cohesion, without sufficient consideration for the sentiment of wider Europe.
