Tavish Scott: Cameron on the verge of a Major disaster

THE Prime Minister is due to make a speech on Europe tomorrow. More precisely, the Conservative Party leader is making a speech.

Cameron’s words will be objectionable to the Liberal Democrat half of the UK coalition, so this will not be a government speech. The approach he is expected to lay out will also be opposed by two Tory war horses, Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke. Heseltine was John Major’s deputy. Major was prime minister from 1991 to 1997. Clarke served as his chancellor and is in Cameron’s Cabinet. But for how much longer?

John Major’s government was hammered by Tony Blair in the 1997 general election. After 18 years of Tory rule, the country yearned for change and Blair brilliantly exploited that. But he was helped by a Tory implosion over Europe. Major was harried by eurosceptics. They were led by such luminaries as Iain Duncan Smith, now a senior member of Cameron’s government, and others such as Teresa Gorman, John Redwood and Bill Cash. Cash was on the Today programme last weekend. BBC Radio 4’s flagship breakfast show is compulsory for the political chattering classes. So when Bill Cash, a Tory MP since 1984, went on air, it was back to the future.

Cash was the self-appointed leader of the eurosceptics over the EU’s Maastricht treaty in 1992. Major returned from an EU summit with a deal that was judged to have been impossible to achieve before he left. But the opt-outs from various European mechanisms, notably the euro, were not good enough for his party. Civil war took hold. Blair rejoiced in the carnage.

Cameron may be on the verge of doing exactly the same. Without attending any summit, and in the absence of any concrete difference to the UK’s relationship with Brussels, he is opening up civil war in his party. Tomorrow’s speech will undoubtedly box clever on short-term tactics wrapped around the strategy of offering the British people a referendum on continuing membership of the EU. But a list of responsibilities that should be repatriated to London will be met with supreme indifference in Europe’s capitals, to say nothing of Washington. Last week, a senior Obama official made it clear that the much-vaunted special relationship between the US and UK would be weakened by any move to divorce Britain from the EU.

Cameron may have no choice. Heseltine and Clarke prove the Tories are as split in 2013 as they were in the 1990s under Major. Divided political parties lose elections. So a brave and decisive Cameron would say that Britain’s economic interests are in Europe. The country is in recession. Instead of banging on about European ideals that have no bearing on the economy, the coalition government will concentrate on jobs and growth. That would be the right thing to do. Making Europe the defining issue in the eyes of the electorate is just political madness. The Tories cannot win an election on Europe.

l Tavish Scott is the Liberal Democrat MSP for Shetland.