President Tony Blair?

The current British Prime Minister is a strange animal. Having come from a socialist background, he remodeled the old Labour party into the new Labour party, in the process shedding many of the old socialist policies. The rightward shift came as a response to the success of Thatcherism, which rendered old-style socialism all but unelectable in Britain. Just as the Tories were running out of steam and started to tear themselves apart, Blair's New Labour won a massive election victory in 1997, and repeated the performance in 2001. He's achieved the highest post available to a Briton. What more could he want?

Well, a Legacy of course. All politicians want a legacy, but those who deliberately set out to create a legacy end up in the most trouble. Blair's weak spot has always been Europe. The relationship between Britain and Europe has been a difficult one ever since Edward Heath took the UK into the EU in the early 70's. The Europhiles have urged Britain to join the European mainstream. It's a natural progression, away from the insular nation state to the warm embrace of the community of Europe. Not going along with the European Project would mean that Britain would get left behind, become irrelevant, its economy would suffer and its people would live in misery. Catching the European train is like catching the train to the future. Europe is the future. At least according to the Europhiles, and not being part of Europe means being left behind in the past.

It's a strain of argument that relies on the belief that the "European Project" is both benign and inevitable. It is neither. The European Union lacks democratic legitimacy. It's an instrument that the European political elites are using to remove decision-making and its accoutability ever further from the citizen. It's insulated by many layers of politicians, each of whom dilutes the message from the grassroots. Often European polticians even at the national level are well-insulated from the electorate. Nor is further integration in Europe inevitable, as the Europhiles in Britain claim. The aim of turning the European Union into a United States of Europe is more likely to be the undoing of the European Project rather than its grand achievement. But arguments about historical inevitability are dangerous too, because once you've convinced yourself that a certain outcome will happen anyway, then the temptation becomes overwhelming to take a shortcut to that outcome. Communism held that the downfall of capitalism was inevitable leading to economic collapse and poverty from which the wonderful communist future would rise. So the communists took the shortcut to poverty and misery without waiting for capitalism to deliver for them.

One of the biggest mistakes of Thatcher's career was to agree to British entry into the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). This was the precursor to the fixed exchanged rates of the euro, and it served as a platform for managing currency fluctuations in Europe. Thatcher finally caved in to pressure from all sides: the usual kneejerk euro-cheerleading of the Liberals, the politically motivated euro-cheerleading of Labour and the constant harping of Europhile Tories. All of them said the same thing: the train is passing Britain by. We must jump on now. Membership in the ERM became symbolic with sound economic management. It was inevitable after all. There was no point in not joining. So finally Britain joined, and by tying its exchange rate (and thus indirectly, interest rates) to the German Mark, it almost wrecked the British economy. The early 90's saw an extremely painful and deep recession in Britain, from which the country only emerged after Britain had been forced out of the ERM by currency speculators. They did Britain a great favor by liberating it from the ERM straitjacket.

But the lessons of the past are hard to learn, it seems. The same arguments are being used now in favor of British entry into monetary union as were used at the time of the ERM debate. The difference is that escape would be a lot harder now. But Blair has that glimmer in his eye for a legacy, and he appears to have set his sights on Europe. Today's editorial in the Times by William Rees-Mogg spells it out:

The Prime Minister foresees other measures to increase the power of the European centre at the expense of the individual nations. He wants to reduce national vetoes to a minimum, though, implausibly, he hopes to keep Britain?s veto on taxation policies. He wants a large extension of qualified majority voting, even beyond what was agreed in the Nice Treaty. Tony Blair wants a ?fixed chair of the European Council?, a new President of Europe. Perhaps he sees himself in this role.

If the new constitution for Europe follows the lines of the Cardiff speech, let alone the still more extravagant federalist proposals of Romano Prodi, Europe will have a more centralised and far less democratic constitution than the United States. The European nations will have lost their independence; they will, in effect, be colonies of a centralised European empire, ruled by the Franco-German political class.

Perhaps a Blair or a Jenkins will occasionally be allowed the temporary appearance of authority as the President of the Council or the Commission. The British electorate will have lost the core power of democracy, the ability to throw out a failing government. There will never again be a 1945, a 1979 or a 1997. Even if a British government is thrown out, that will have no more consequence than the electoral defeat of a county council. The real power, the European centre, will never be thrown out. It will be a self-perpetuating bureaucratic oligarchy.

Tony Blair has his own description of this new Europe. He says that it ?can be a superpower, if not a super-state?. That is the kind of glib, false distinction that from time to time makes the Prime Minister?s rhetoric uniquely repulsive. The opening passage of his Cardiff speech makes it obvious that he has been taken over by the idea of a European empire, in which he himself hopes to be a leading figure.

President Blair of Europe? The concept must be appealing to a politician who's young enough to aspire to more. Yet he's already exhausted the opportunities at home, so the escape to some grand European role might just be the kind of escape he needs. Great schemes, great legacy: be afraid. Be very afraid.