It’s one of the most eagerly awaited events of the European Union’s 2009 political calendar. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is giving a speech on Tuesday to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, and everyone who’s anyone in Europe wants to be there to hear it.
One reason is that people remember the last time a UK premier addressed the EU legislature. It was Tony Blair in June 2005, and those who were present recall it as one of the finest speeches of his entire political life. Looking at Blair’s speech almost four years later, how well does it hold up?
The first thing worth noting is how different today’s political context is from that of June 2005. Blair delivered his speech against a backdrop of multiple ”crises” in the EU: the rejection by French and Dutch voters of the EU’s proposed constitutional treaty, a split between European supporters and opponents of the US-led war in Iraq, and a sense that Europe was too inward-looking and lacked the self-confidence to meet the challenges of globalisation and economic modernisation. These “crises” were real enough. But the first two, at least, have either faded away (Iraq) or seem niggly rather than momentous (EU treaty change).
On economic modernisation, though, Blair’s words look as relevant as when he spoke them. “Some have suggested I want to abandon Europe’s social model. But tell me: what type of social model is it that has 20m unemployed in Europe, productivity rates falling behind those of the USA; that is allowing more science graduates to be produced by India than by Europe; and that, on any relative index of a modern economy – skills, R&D, patents, IT – is going down, not up?”
Blair was speaking at a time when Britain’s economy and financial markets were going great guns. This permitted him to strike a slightly preachy note. He derided “the idea that Britain is in the grip of some extreme Anglo-Saxon market philosophy”, and boasted that Britain had virtually abolished long-term youth unemployment, regenerated its cities and lifted several million children and pensioners out of poverty and hardship.
If Brown gets preachy on Tuesday, his speech won’t go down well. For Britain today is about to tip into its worst recession since 1945. Its budget deficit is forecast to hit 10 per cent of economic output. Its banking system has just been semi-nationalised. Continental Europe will want to hear Brown’s thoughts on whether the UK’s economic model – held up since the 1980s as a shining example to the rest of Europe - bears any responsibility for these outcomes.
Brown is more than capable of striking the right note in a grand set-piece speech. He did so when addressing a joint session of Congress in Washington on March 4. But if there is one reason why he can count on a good reception in Strasbourg on Tuesday, it’s because his audience knows only too well what may lie round the political corner in Britain – a Conservative party election victory next year, and the emergence of an abrasively anti-EU Tory government.
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