In tough times it is only right that the EU budget be trimmed, but the left must never forget the benefits of membership
Politics is often a rough trade, everyone knows it and the public despises its practitioners for it. It was ever thus, back to ancient Greece and Rome. Whenever two people form a party they must compromise; the bigger the party, the nearer to power, the more compromises are required. MPs of all parties are whipped through lobbies to vote for things that make them queasy.
So it was on Wednesday night that a mournful cadre of Labour MPs found themselves voting with a rabble of 53 Tory Europhobics for whom cutting the EU budget was another triumphant step towards EU exit. Liberal Democrats could, for once, claim the moral high ground as they strode off to vote, as usual, with David Cameron. Labour MPs found themselves ribbed and ridiculed by their new friends, with "Welcome on board!" and "Glad we've converted you!" from the likes of Mark Reckless, Douglas Carswell and Bernard Jenkin. Not surprisingly, some Labour MPs looked hang-dog after they had sat through speeches such as theirs.
Tory rebel Mark Pritchard has said, while "brave forces are spilling their blood in Afghanistan … are we going to continue to ask families throughout this country to stop putting new shoes on their children's feet in order to pay for the very large Mercedes fleet in Brussels?" Sammy Wilson of the DUP denounced the "arrogance" of "the Bisto bureaucrats who think that the gravy train is still running". Bill Cash said: "They are saying, 'We are going to go off and have a federal Europe.' Well, let them have it!" Many of these ultra-rightists who called out for "More, more!" when George Osborne cut state spending, now wept crocodile tears contrasting the plight of shoeless children at home with "an obese Brussels that needs to go on a diet like everyone else".
Labour stands accused of "rank opportunism". John Smith did the same over Maastricht: oppositions rarely miss an exceptional chance to defeat the government of the day. But there was special relish on this occasion: Cameron and his party deserved to be devoured by the Eurosceptic monster they created. William Hague's 2001 battle cry that Britain was turning into "a foreign land" has led to the selection of more extreme Tory MPs ever since, the entire party infected with the Euro-virus. Why should Labour rescue them from themselves?
The symbolism of Labour running with the Europhobic pack was excruciating, but what matters most is the substance of the issue itself. Labour's motives may be mixed – but nonetheless they are on the right side on this. The people of Europe enduring the hardest of times cannot let the EU keep the only protected budget: a public vote across all 27 nations would surely want a cut. Brussels risks looking even more remote if it fails to respond to people's suffering by cutting its own cloth. Labour may be populist, but public opinion is dead right on this.
To be a strong pro-European has never meant supporting whatever Brussels does. Few can justify the extravagant parliament travelling between Brussels and Strasbourg. There is no need for 27 commissioners, each with their own cabinet. Even the reformed common agricultural policy still pays most cash to the wrong farmers – the Queen and big landowners. Every organisation, public or private, needs constant vigilance over its accounts. Finding waste in Whitehall or Brussels is only a good excuse for demolishing those institutions to those ideologues who want to do that anyway.
There is one far more serious charge: the EU's economic austerity has become a "death spiral of deficit cutting", according to Jonathan Portes of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, which this week computed the total impact on growth sucked out of the 27. This is a gigantic failure of its first great economic test. However, that's the one charge against the EU these Tories would never make.
The cost of membership is not high: we pay a net 1% of GDP, the same as France, 85% of it redistributed to poorer countries. What we get back in trade is far greater: let's hope we never get the chance to measure exactly what we lose in cash, influence and trade if we quit. Emma Reynolds, Labour's shadow Europe minister, who worked in Brussels and for Robin Cook before returning to her native Wolverhampton as MP, has no trouble spelling out to her constituents the trading benefits to Jaguar Rover and the aerospace industries where many work. This multilingual pro-European MP plainly enjoyed Wednesday's vote no more than the rest – but how could she look her city in the eye while it faces 30% cuts, with low to middle incomes stagnated for years past and years to come, according to the Resolution Foundation report this week?
Telephones were buzzing today with the shadow cabinet calling every pro-European to impress on them their deep pro-EU credentials. I've been inundated with old articles, speeches and pamphlets dusted down and emailed to prove their various authors' eternal Europhilia. The truth is that there would be little embarrassment over this week's vote if indeed Labour had been roundly supporting the European idea over all the Blair-Brown years.
But the state of national opinion bears witness to their lack of any attempt to make the pro-Europe case – except for the tireless former Europe minister Denis MacShane. Tony Blair, a French speaker and committed European, wrote a shameless "no surrender" article in the Sun to appease Murdoch on the eve of the 1997 election. He never made speeches at home to explain the value of membership. Every Brussels meeting was a "fight" to defend "British red lines". So any Blairites incensed by this week's vote might pause to consider that British anti-Europeanism is also his legacy. Brown was even less inclined to challenge attitudes pumped out by our 80% Europhobic press.
That pusillanimous record, along with Labour's vote this week, puts a heavy onus on both Eds and all the shadow cabinet to start speaking out for Britain's membership. Today I spoke to several who were earnestly pledging that they would. A referendum hangs in the air, though it looks unlikely other countries want any treaty that risks triggering one in any country. Lib Dem and Tory manifestos in 2015 will carry some referendum pledge. If Labour is obliged to offer one too, then it had better start making an earnest pro-European case at every opportunity from now on.
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