Britain's general election on Thursday is one of the most unpredictable in recent memory. Taking a broader view, the vote itself is but the latest step in a fast-moving process of redefining Britain's role in Europe. A referendum on EU membership is likely to take place no matter who takes office at 10 Downing Street (only Britain's political right explicitly wants one). But even if the British people choose not to step out of the union - even if indeed they never do get the chance - it is already clear that British leadership and influence within Europe have taken a drubbing in recent years.
RealClearWorld caught up with Simon Hix, head of the government department at the London School of Economics, to discuss a potential "Brexit" - a British exit from the European Union. The below interview has been edited slightly for length and clarity.
After the election, what position will the various parties take toward a referendum on Britain's EU membership?
Hix: First off, the Conservatives and UKIP are the only ones saying that they would definitely have a referendum. Having said that, the Lib Dems have announced that if they were in a position to go into government, it wouldn't be one of their red lines. There's growing support among the Lib Dems to have a referendum just to get it over with.
On the other side, Labour are opposed to it, but here's the situation when you think about all the scenarios after the election: With a Conservative majority government, we're going to get a referendum. A Conservative minority government will propose a referendum bill, and that will probably pass. I think there are sufficient Labour backbenchers and Liberal Democrats now who want a referendum. And I'll come back to that.
In a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, if it's a majority, I think they'd propose it and it would get passed. Under a Labour coalition with the Lib Dems, if that coalition has a majority, I think we would not see a referendum. Only if Labour has a majority, or if Labour has a majority with the Lib Dems, those are the only conditions under which I think we won't get a referendum. In a Labour minority government, the Conservatives would propose it as a private members bill, like they did in the last Parliament. The private members bill in the last Parliament got 304 votes in favor and 0 votes against, because Labour and Lib Dem leadership were too scared to whip their members to vote against it. So, you can imagine Labour in a minority government situation. The Conservatives deliberately propose it; they've already got Conservative support; they can count on UKIP support; the SNP I think would be split, because I think there's a bunch of SNP members who think that if we have a referendum and England votes to leave and Scotland votes to stay, we're going to get a second referendum on Scottish Independence. And then there are a bunch of Labour backbenchers - there's euroskeptic backbenchers who want it, there's pro-European Labour backbenchers who want it. Euroskeptics want it for obvious reasons. Pro-European backbenchers are saying let's have the referendum now, because we think we are going to win it. The opinion polls have been moving back toward the EU for the last six months.
Is there substantial and sustained movement back toward Europe?
Hix: I think it's hard to know that it's substantial or sustained, but it definitely looks like the opposition turned a corner. Four, five months ago, it was clear that if we had a vote, the majority would vote to leave. That was in the YouGov monthly referendum tracker. But since then, it's interesting how it's shifted. The rise of UKIP has raised a real question for moderate voters, who are kind of fashionably anti-European. Now they see (UKIP leader Nigel) Farage, and they think, "Oh, if I'm opposed to Europe, does that mean I agree with Farage? Maybe I'm actually pro-European." For a lot of moderate voters who never really thought about this issue, the rise of UKIP has made it more salient. It's made them think, "Actually, I'm not crazy, and the people I trust tend to be pro-European, and therefore I'm not anti-European."
There's a lot of other things going too. I think there are a lot of Conservative backbenchers who want the referendum early; they don't want to wait until 2017. They want to say that the sooner we have it, the sooner we can get it over with. Business uncertainty is one issue, and they also want to lance the boil of UKIP. The sooner the better.
Labour, it's a similar argument among the backbenchers - pro-European and anti-European. If we're going to have it, let's have it early, and the sooner we have it, the sooner we can split the Conservatives. So let's have it now and put the Conservatives in a difficult position. So you can see, for strategic reasons, I think there is probably a majority in the House of Commons in favor of a referendum.
So for everyone's own domestic political prerogatives, we're well down the road toward a referendum.
Hix: My bet is we will have a referendum in 2017.
What's the lead-up to that going to look like? And how is the United Kingdom going to talk to Europe in the meantime?
Hix: Cameron has made a bunch of demands. And then he made another speech in November where the whole list of demands he made were narrowed down to just immigration, and the immigration demands he talked about were actually pretty narrow, and he didn't ask for an emergency brake, i.e. a block on the absolute numbers coming into the country. What he asked for was a limit on access to benefits. And he actually asked for limits on access to benefits that are lower than the limits that now Germany and Denmark are asking for. So it's not hard for the EU to come up with a reform on the 2014 directive on the free movement of people that would actually meet what Britain demands.
And if that happens will the momentum for a referendum slow?
Hix: I think the other way around. I think if that happens, I think the idea is, let's have a referendum because now we can win it. We asked for it, we got it, let's have a referendum. We're now in a different EU, is the argument.
How did we get to this moment?
Hix: Originally Cameron sent a list of demands that were about reforming the free movement of people, more powers for national parliaments, some limitations on the ECHR - which has nothing to do with the EU - a free trade agreement with the United States, protecting Britain's interests in the single market, a reform agenda for the single market, for a liberalizing agenda, and so forth. Looking back on this you can say, an FTA with America, well, that's TTIP and that's going to carry on being negotiated. Some restrictions on the free movement of people, the Commission could well propose something in 2016. As regards a liberalizing agenda, I think the UK government ironically is now pretty happy with this Commission, the direction it's travelling, cutting red tape. On preserving the interests of the City of London, well they've got a British commissioner for financial services.
The sticking point for Cameron is that a lot of his backbenchers want treaty reform for purely symbolic reasons. It's not clear why he wants treaty reform, maybe he's hoping there could be a sort of British opt-out from ever-closer union, some purely symbolic statement that says article such-and-such does not apply to the UK. It seems bizarre to the rest of Europe, but it's symbolic politics here in Britain.
It's impossible for there to be a new treaty by 2017. There may not even be treaty reform; most members don't want to open up the pandora's box of renegotiating the treaty.
If whoever is prime minister gets these concessions but no treaty reform, is that enough? Is the British electorate into anything more than the symbols?
Hix: Not really, but I think there's enough there for whoever's in power to say, we have a new EU and we have a new relationship of Britain to the EU. And in a very tight, 50-50 split public, that can swing 5 to 10 percent of people to the pro side, and that would be sufficient. And I think that's the situation most of the political elite in this country are operating on.
There's a big danger though, isn't there. Scotland already was closer than they thought, and here, opinion is already split 50-50. Anything could happen.
Hix: There's a confidence that people are status-quo biased. There's growing sentiment among pro-Europeans to say, well, bring it on. We think we can win this. We'll have the business community in favor, we'll have the trade union movement in favor, we'll have all the mainstream parties in favor; we can win this. We'll be up against UKIP and some loony Tory backbenchers and some crazy left-wingers, and the crazy right-wing press - that's the worry. (The opposition campaign) will be full-on about freedom, but there'll be a large chunk of that campaign that will be basically racism.
How would a referendum work?
Hix: They have to pass a bill through Parliament. And they will probably set up a "Britain for Yes" campaign and a "Britain for No" campaign, and there will be public money and some kind of rules set up governing access to media and slots on TV. The Conservatives will probably say there's no whip, because they know they will be split, so their politicians could go off. Some prominent politician would have to come forward as the leader of the campaign to leave the EU, and it would not be Nigel Farage. They would want it to be a prominent backbench Conservative who is anti-European. And they would have to find some Labour people who are anti-European as well to join them. The Yes campaign would essentially be very senior figures in all the mainstream parties.
(It will resemble) what we had in 1975. In 1975, we had the bulk of the Conservative party on the Yes, to stay, and we had Labour split. The No campaign was the left wing of Labour, plus a few odds and sods from the right of the Conservative party. But it was overwhelmingly the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats, and the moderate wing of Labour on the "stay in" campaign. It will be the same now, but flipped. Because in the 1970s, the EU represented liberalization of Britain's social democracy. Now it represents market regulations through the backdoor against plucky Britain.
Do you think there's an understanding of what Britain stands to lose, strategically, by being outside of the EU? The loss of influence, the loss of a check over France and Germany, anything like that?
Hix: The No side will run a campaign that says the EU costs us money in terms of what we pay into the EU budget, and we don't get enough back. We don't need to subsidize our farmers, so why does the EU do that? We can get rid of all this red tape. We can compete globally. We trade only about 45 percent with the rest of the EU, the bulk is with rest of the world. The growing markets are in China and India and Latin America. Why be hamstrung by the EU? We will have a Free Trade Agreement with the EU, maybe establish some rules on the free movement of people, but we'll be able to have an independent sovereign brake on that. They'll articulate a campaign that doesn't sound too terrifying.
The Yes campaign will say this is a jump into the unknown. If we leave the EU, they aren't going to let us back in. And they aren't going to let us have market access to the EU. And we'll end up having to apply to all of the EU's regulations to get access to the single market, like Norway does, like Switzerland does. Fifty percent of our GDP is integrated with the single market. For us to be able to carry on trading with the single market, we'd have to apply the EU's rules whether we like it our not.
Those arguments are all about economics though.
Hix: In the British debate, it will come down to that.
Since we're more than likely headed toward a referendum, if you're a Europhile, what coalition would you like to see?
Hix: If all I cared about was Britain's membership of the EU, here is a nightmare scenario: Labour comes to power with a minority government. Cameron is sacked as leader of the Tory party. Theresa May gets elected as leader of the Conservative party. The Conservatives officially adopt a position of Britain leaving the EU. Labour eventually gets bullied into having a referendum, two years into a very unpopular Labour government. The Yes campaign is Labour and the Lib Dems, whom everybody hates. And the No campaign is a Tory party on the rise and UKIP. That's a Europhile nightmare scenario.
If all you care about is keeping Britain in Europe, you'd want (the most recent Conservative-Lib Dem) coalition to carry on. Either a Conservative-Lib Dem majority, or a Labour majority, or a Labour-Lib Dem majority, so they can stop a referendum.
How are Europe's other leaders going to manage relations with Britain, after this election, in the run-up to a possible referendum?
Hix: I've been a lot to Brussels and the other European capitals, and there's a deep frustration I sense among the rest of Europe, saying Britain just needs to make a decision. This is a British issue, and Britain needs to resolve it. There's a difference not just across countries but within countries. In France and Germany, the center-right don't want Britain to leave, but the center-left couldn't really care. Britain leaves, so what? Anglo-Saxon bankers who screwed the world economy, Britain is always going to protect its own financial interests - that's the kind of narrative you hear from the left in Paris and the left in Berlin. Scandinavia, the Benelux, and the center-right in Germany and France, as well as the center-right in Eastern Europe, are saying we really don't want Britain to leave. But they're not willing to give Britain very much to make them stay.
Cameron has also pissed off a lot of people who are his natural allies. He's not only pissed off (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel, he's also pissed off the Scandinavians. (Former Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik) Reinfeldt was a close personal friend of Cameron's, but he was furious when Cameron left the European People's Party grouping in the European Parliament. (Former Polish Prime Minister and current President of the European Council) Donald Tusk is exactly the same. Tusk, Reinfeldt, and Cameron had this strategy to create an AngloScandic-East European, liberal Atlanticist bloc within the EPP to act as a counterweight to the FrancoGerman, more corporatist, more Euro-defense-oriented bloc. Cameron leaves and suddenly he pushes Tusk and Reinfeldt into the arms of Merkel. Poland has been an ally of the United Kingdom, but UKIP's anti-Polish rhetoric is like a red rag to a bull with Tusk, because that plays so badly in Poland. Tusk can't possibly be seen as being close to Cameron. So you can see how Poland is being pushed into Germany's orbit.
Take Alexander Stubb, (former) Finnish prime minister: He's anglophile, he's married to a Brit, his kids are dual nationals, he has his PhD from the London School of Economics, speaks fluent English. He's a classic Scandinavian, Anglophile, center-right liberal; a natural ally for Cameron. Yet he cannot be seen to be anywhere near Cameron, because the UK Conservatives sit with the True Finns in the European Parliament. And the True Finns not only are more loony than UKIP - they have as one of their major policies the withdrawing of language rights for the Swedish minority in Finland, and Alexander Stubb is a Swedish minority.
You could see all of this in the "Stop Juncker" campaign. Cameron said we're gonna stop Jean-Claude Juncker (from becoming head of the European Commission), and he was totally convinced of his power to stop Juncker. And he went to this summit, I think in Stockholm, and there were Merkel, and Reinfeldt, and Alex Stubb, all these center-right politicians, as well as Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who is center-left but Anglophile. These Scandinavians are all very pro-British, but they all one-by-one said to Cameron: "You cannot stop Juncker." And it was a slap in the face. Collectively they all stopped him.
This sort of fits the framework of a country that has turned its back on having a coherent foreign policy.
Hix: Well, this is the point, I think Britain has become very parochial. Not just in Europe but in the world. I don't know what it is. We're stepping back from our global role, but it's a sort of arrogance too, an assumption that the rest of the world is going to do what we want it to, without having to engage. We just assume that Britain is enormously influential because the world speaks English. There's no understanding of our rapidly declining power. And the more we turn away from global issues, the more it's going to redouble the reduction of our global influence.
(AP photo)
