It was the neatest black hole in Brussels' history: a deal done too late for last Saturday morning's papers and already old news when Sunday came. By then, politics was pushing off for the Christmas holidays. Has anybody seen our missing rebate? Does anybody -- apart from Britain's finance minister Gordon Brown, reported to be "fuming" as usual -- care?
And that, suddenly, is the immediate future of Euro-debating. After the constitution debacle and the familiar histrionics of making a budget, we have what polite society dubs "a period for reflection."
Come back around Jan. 1, 2007, and ask whether it's over. Meanwhile, make those reflections something that British opposition leader David Cameron would call "practical and non-ideological."
In this practical union of ours, for the time being, there is no point pushing for reform that needs strong leadership, because strong leaders who might make a difference have suddenly gone AWOL.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is decline and fall, French President Jacques Chirac a busted flush and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi a simple bust. Maybe new German chancellor Angela Merkel will gather more influence, but for the moment she is at best a casting vote. A jigsaw democracy of 25 going on 30 members is always going to wait to see how the big pieces fit. That is what is happening now -- and is what this Brussels agreement means.
The budget just stitched goes on until 2014. It will, with a little darning of holes in Santa's sock, cater for Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia coming through the door -- but leave Turkey outside as future business. It holds things in place. But who truly expected anything else?
Too many years without proper industrial disputes, and thus proper labor reporting, mean that we've lost track of a once-familiar routine. We credulously believe that what our chief negotiator says on day one -- things like "the rebate stays" -- is fact rather than a position to be adjusted as everyone else around the table adjusts in turn. We buy the supposed majesty of a "presidency" without remembering that, in fact, it's six months chairing a fractious board that takes two months off in summer anyway. We kid ourselves that merely saying something must be done is enough, that words about reform and flexibility endlessly recited somehow equal action. Triple phooey!
In fact, with an almost feline twist, this deal gets most of the possible things right. It means we pay a little (a tiny percentage of our own budget) more; it means that the newcomers from the east have learned what Brussels bargaining entails; and it means that, come 2008, when the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and financing in general are there for a hard-won general review, we can have our new players in place. And that isn't just a question of who rules in Paris or Rome (or, because it matters as well, in Washington). It also meets every London requirement.
There's no need for Gordon Brown to fume over anything when this review comes around, for he'll be leading the charge, not sitting at home or picking up honorary degrees in New York. It will be his show, his moment to lecture 24 other nations about growth rates and market economies on the basis of his own continuing British success (if any). It may also be the moment for him to finally address realistic future alternatives. No more glowering scope: mainstream stuff from our new main man.
And as for young Mr Cameron, where do he and his legions stand? Their members of the European Parliament, after an odd spasm of fundamentalist idiocy, will be plonked somewhere in Strasburg outer darkness, a little to the left of Jean-Marie Le Pen, a little to the right of the Polish peasant party, a little washed up on the shores of history.
But there will be a 2009 election on the horizon, pressure and hope rising together.
Perhaps the manifesto that Cameron wrote last time will still serve: "working to bring in new members" while striving for a "flexible, liberalized" continent where we've opted right out of the social chapter, withdrawn from the fisheries policy and insisted on "deeper reform" of the CAP.
Standard stuff -- but also stuff to weigh against one late night in Brussels. Wouldn't Blair have loved the legacy triumph of less CAP if he could have contrived it? Didn't he lust after more opt-outs to keep Rupert Murdoch happy? Of course. But his friends in the east, the ones that Cameron is also "working to bring in," don't just keel over and let Britain do what it likes. There's a rough, tough, multilateral bargain or there's nothing. Impractical talk without responsibility is cheap. Reality at the bottom of the black hole has a practical, non-ideological price worth paying.
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