The Spectator’s Notes | 4 June 2005

I wish I could share the widespread joy at the great European ‘No’. Yes, the word ‘No’ is good. Yes, I feel the normal human pleasure at the discomfiture of the politicians. I have enjoyed seeing Peter Mandelson trying to worm round the result and Neil Kinnock raging against his former friends on the French Left and Jean-Luc Dehaene telling France that it, not the EU, now has the problem, and the outside broadcast team sabotaging John Major, sounding like a Dalek on Valium, as he tries to tell us all over again about his wonderful ‘opt-out’ and the importance of ‘variable geometry’. But I fear there is very little chance of any serious break with the European ideal that has dominated Continental politics since the Fifties. This is because it retains complete control of the relevant institutions. The Commission, with its power to frame legislation, is an unanswerable bureaucracy. The Council of Ministers, with its control of the levers of power, can almost always broker a deal. The European Parliament, with its lack of responsibility to member states, wants always to increase European integration. The European Court is mandated to give the European ideal the force of law and find all cases in favour of ever-closer union. These four will continue, and they will never relinquish power unless they are forced to do so by member states with an electoral mandate to reclaim power to themselves. Referendums can delay the worst things, but unless they produce new political leadership, that is all. In Britain, they are seen by politicians as a way of avoiding difficult questions about Europe, of sloughing them off. Already you hear people saying that the ‘No’ vote takes Europe ‘off the agenda’. ‘No’ will only mean ‘No’ when people understand that it puts the subject on the agenda more than ever, when we begin to reverse what has happened, not just to throw a block in the road.