Viewed from Brussels, the rise of Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats in Britain’s election campaign is a fantasy come true. For most of its 37 years in the European Union, Britain has been the bloc’s most awkward, cussed member-state. Now, the unthinkable is happening. Britain’s opinion polls are topped by a party whose leader spent five years working at the European Commission and another five years as a MEP in the European Parliament. Gott im Himmel! A Brit who actually understands the place!
And it doesn’t stop there. Clegg studied at the elite College of Europe in Bruges, an institution geared to producing crop after crop of graduates with a lifelong enthusiasm for EU integration. He speaks Dutch, French, German and Spanish, making him as proficient a linguist as such dedicated Europeans as Herman Van Rompuy, the EU’s full-time president, and Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg premier.
Clegg has a Dutch mother, a half-Russian father and three children called Antonio, Alberto and Miguel. There has been no British party leader like him since the EU’s 1957 Treaty of Rome. In fact, you may have to go all the way back to Charles James Fox, the Whig who briefly served as foreign secretary in the Napoleonic wars, to find a British statesman whose mental outlook was so naturally rooted in Europe. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive! Clegg’s emergence is enough to make even the most agnostic Eurocrat think that there must be a god, after all.
Of course, almost no one in Brussels or national EU capitals seriously expects the Lib Dems to win the election and Clegg to become prime minister. They know the quirks of the British electoral system virtually rule that out. But if the Lib Dems were to form a coalition with the Labour party, Clegg might reasonably expect a role in government. For European leaders who had been getting used to the uncomfortable prospect of Tory Rottweilers such as William Hague as foreign secretary and Mark Francois as EU affairs minister, this is cause for celebration in itself.
What, though, does the rest of Europe make of the Lib Dems’ policies? They certainly appreciate the party’s opposition to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. They are intrigued by the line in the party’s manifesto that states: “The Iraq War, and allegations over British complicity in torture and in secret ‘rendition’ flights of terrorist suspects, highlight the dangers of a subservient relationship with the United States that neglects Britain’s core values and interests.” Could it be, they ask themselves, that the rise of the Lib Dems signals the decline of Britain’s self-identification as Washington’s most loyal ally in Europe?
Continental Europeans are also pleased by the Lib Dems’ emphasis on tackling climate change and tightening financial regulation. They like the sound of the Lib Dems’ call for closer European co-operation on defence procurement, but they may wonder how the party squares this with its commitment to pulling out of part of the Eurofighter project.
And when you dig a little deeper, you discover that the Lib Dems are capable of defending traditional British positions just as strongly as the Labour party or Tories. For example, the Lib Dems want subsidy-slashing reforms to the EU’s common agricultural policy. They want to stop the expensive circus in which MEPs have to travel from Brussels to Strasbourg once a month to attend European Parliament sessions. Such stances will not endear them to the French, Germans and others.
Moreover, the party says Britain cannot join the euro until the economic circumstances are right. This is, of course, simply common sense – and it is true that the Lib Dems hope to achieve eurozone membership in the long term. But for most eurozone countries, Britain will always be semi-detached from Europe until it adopts the euro.
Still, as Clegg rides high in the polls, Europe has a big beaming smile on its face – but it is doing its best to hide it, for fear that British voters spot it and punish Clegg accordingly.
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