Douglas Carswell's Blog

Sensing a decisive shift in the popular mood, politicians are starting to drop hints that they want us to renegotiate our relationship with the EU.  Hummm ...

Perhaps we should be as sceptical of suggestions of a "new deal" with the EU as we are of the European project itself.  Haven't we heard this all before?  Maastricht was the "high water mark". Europe was "coming our way".  Weren't we committed to repatriate the Common Fisheries Policy?  What happened to that promise on the social chapter?  

Before we get too carried away by decade old arguments about subsidiarity or a muti- speed Europe, ask why none of these promises has ever amounted to a row of beans.

Regardless of which elected politicians hold office, our Europe policy is authored and implemented by a Whitehall mandarinate.  Ask yourself why every single Europe minister, throughout the nineties and the noughties, has read from the same script?

The "official mind" that drives our Europe policy remains resolutely, immovably integrationist.  Until those we elect assert themselves over the pro-EU Whitehall mandarinate, nothing ministers say will change that.

The government has just appointed Jon Cunliffe as our most senior negotiator in Brussels.  He is one of the key officials behind the deals to hike up our budget contributions, to subject us to pan-EU economic governance, and to make us liable for bailing out a currency we chose not to join. 

So dreadful have our team of deal-makers been, they've managed to make us part of a Euro debt union, despite successive politicians promising never to entangle us in the Euro as a currency union.  To blame it all on former minister might play to the tribal atmosphere of the House of Commons, but it ignores how policy is actually made down the road in Whitehall.   

Depressingly, current ministers continue to offer praise and promotion - rather than P45s - for the civil servants who got us into this mess.

We will only know that ministers are serious about getting a good deal from Brussels when they send to Brussels negotiators who know what a good deal for Britain looks like.  And remove those who don't.  Until that happens, it is all talk.

It is a good thing that some in Westminster are starting to recognise our existing relationship with the EU is intolerable.  It is interesting how those who pledged not to "bang on" about Europe are starting to grasp that they cannot deliver on their domestic agenda without fundamental change. 

But renegotiating our EU relationship means leaving it to the SW1 people who got us into this mess to sort it out.  It is time to trust the people with an In / Out referendum instead.