A reshuffle of the dullards

If  David Cameron is serious about winning a referendum for a reformed European Union, this reshuffle shows little sign of his intent. From a European point of view, this is a reshuffle of the dullards.

Of course, to have a new Foreign Secretary who has openly said he would vote ‘no’ in a European referendum as it stands, is hardly likely to win hearts and minds in European capitals. But it is Philip Hammond’s reputation for being dull to which pro-Europeans might cling, suggesting he could at least focus on the detail of reform and the minutiae of the negotiations.

However in the catastrophic event the Tories win the General Election, there is a wide expectation in Westminster that Hammond would swap places with George Osborne – whose performance at meetings of EU Finance Ministers has consistently favoured confrontation over cooperation.

The truth is that David Cameron is straitjacketed to Osborne just as much as he is to his Eurosceptic backbenchers. Any sense of the British national interest weighs far less in his mind than the political fixes of his own divided party.

All the signs suggest that the Prime Minister has abjectly failed to learn any lessons from his grandstanding in opposition to the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker to head up the new European Commission – on the very same day Cameron’s humiliating defeat was finally confirmed in Strasbourg.

Foreign Office officials will warn the new Foreign Secretary against ‘megaphone diplomacy.’  But for the Tory Party on Europe, they know no other way.

Dull appointment number two arises from Cameron’s fear of UKIP at a by-election. This led the Prime Minister to renege on what I was reliably informed to have been another “cast-iron promise” on Europe – to appoint Andrew Lansley from my own patch in Cambridgeshire to be Britain’s next European Commissioner.

The nomination of the low-profile and low-key Lord Hill could be said to be based principally on the fact he speaks French, and was made despite the fact he had ruled himself out of the appointment in advance with the ode to xenophobes: “I like it here.”

Meanwhile, out of Ministerial office go Ken Clarke, who used his resignation letter to repeat his longstanding opposition to Cameron on Europe, and Dominic Grieve who spoke about Britain’s EU membership as essential to “the economic, physical and ethical well-being of the United Kingdom.” The real shock for pro-Europeans in business as much as politics in Britain should not be the fact of Ken Clarke’s departure, but that after forty years at the top-flight of Tory politics, there is no other Tory ‘big beast’ left who is prepared to fight the European cause.

Grieve’s main offence appears to be that he stood in the way of a Conservative manifesto commitment to pull Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights. It will be a sad day for Britain’s role in the world if we were to ever make such a spectacular retreat from championing the international rule of law.

So once again looking on from the Labour benches in the European Parliament as at Westminster, it is left to our Party to mend the damage caused by the Conservatives in Europe and to build understanding amongst colleagues to make the changes Europe needs to make.

Today, more than ever, it is Labour which is the true party of EU reform.

Richard Howitt MEP is Labour Member of the European Parliament for the East of England and is chair of the European Parliamentary Labour Party.