EXCLUSIVE: Political parties simply don't get the public on Europe

Monday, July 13, 2009

The pasting that mainstream parties got in the European elections was put down to the expenses scandal but they got a bloody nose because they don't represent the public, writes Mark Wallace of the TaxPayers' Alliance

The mainstream political establishment was shaken to the core by the results of the European elections. Naturally, media attention was focused on the election of the BNP's first two MEPs and Labour's third place behind UKIP. However, while the party issues are interesting, of far more importance are the underlying public concerns about the EU expressed by the electorate as a whole.

While much has been made of the idea that this was an "expenses election", the public's views and indeed their voting patterns were clearly more considered and more complex than simply a blind backlash against political parties generally. There was a strong and coherent theme of deep concern about the European Union and its costs amongst the electorate.

It is telling, for example, that the voters who abandoned the main parties did not swing uniformly to smaller parties across the political spectrum. UKIP are the most prominent example of a party that did well, but if this was purely an expenses-driven swing then they would have struggled due to their own well-publicised financial scandals. By contrast, the entirely fresh but "pro-European" Libertas struggled at the ballot box, as did the Jury Team of independents standing on an anti-politician platform.

For that matter, if voters were looking for a pro-EU party that was relatively untainted by the expenses scandal, they could have chosen the Liberal Democrats. But they didn't and the Lib Dems crashed with 13.7 per cent of the vote, failing to hold up their vote even against the background of a Labour car crash. The Yes 2 Europe Party, untainted thanks to never having had anyone elected and in favour of unlimited EU integration, flopped on 0.2 per cent of the vote in the regions where they stood.

The evidence gathered in TaxPayers' Alliance opinion polls in the run up to the election make this unsurprising. It is not just over expenses that the public are frustrated by the political parties, they are utterly disillusioned with them over the issue of our relationship with the EU, too.

When asked by ICM, an outright majority of the public agreed that "none of the main political parties adequately represent my views on Britain's future relationship with the EU", by a margin of 67 per cent to 28 per cent. What should have the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and Labour particularly worried is that that majority exists amongst each of their support bases. Tory supporters will be most dissatisfied at 71 per cent, but Labour and the Lib Dems both have almost as big a problem, with 65 per cent of their supporters expressing dissatisfaction with the parties' line on Europe.

Nor is there any possibility that this result represents people who would like their parties to be more supportive of closer union with Brussels. Across all the core EU issues –referenda, the Lisbon Treaty and membership of the Euro – the public are as opposed as they have ever been, and again that scepticism is reflected among the supporters of all main political parties.

Indeed, not only would the public like the main parties to confirm opposition to the Euro, offer a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and commit to referenda on future transfer of powers, they are far more radical than Westminster has ever considered.

In the same poll, 69 per cent of the public supported a policy of simply breaking EU rules in the national interest, and a further 60 per cent would then refuse to pay the resulting fines. While politicians from the main parties fret about the precise wordings of their carefully phrased commitments on Europe, the people want to see them actively standing up to Brussels. Tired of politicians promising to get a good deal for Britain at the top table of Europe, they want to be freed of the costs of the EU's ill-considered and gold-plated regulations.

The mistake the main parties have made is to behave as though the EU is purely an issue of the political class, restricted to technical constitutional debates and complex foreign policy negotiations. In reality, it has a serious impact at the supermarket checkout, at the post office and even on your doorstep, through the EU's regulation of waste disposal.

All three main parties must abandon their assumption that the public do not care about the EU, and recognise that while they have been working within a cosy Westminster consensus that the current relationship with the EU is a good thing, the public's experience has been very different.

People simply do not accept that the transfer of so many powers to a regulation-loving, interfering European Union has been good for them. In a ComRes poll carried out for the TaxPayers' Alliance before the European elections, 49 per cent of the public said that they felt the EU was not a good thing for ordinary people, compared to 81 per cent of MEPs who though it was good for people.

The public are certainly disillusioned about the main political parties. That disillusionment is not just down to MPs' expenses, though. It is a serious problem that so many MPs have insulated themselves from the financial pressures of real life by abusing and exploiting the expenses system, and that does arouse great anger. However, just as serious is the fact that the political parties simply do not represent widespread concerns about the EU project as a whole. Had the MPs' expenses scandal not been broken open by the Daily Telegraph, the public would still have felt frustrated that Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems were committed to a vision of the EU that few in the real world actually share.

The political class have fallen severely behind the curve in terms of public opinion on the EU, and unless they listen closely to the people's opinions and adapt accordingly, they will continue to suffer at the ballot box.