One thought on “My tweets”

1. After five years’ experience of Cameron in government, I am forced to the conclusion that he is a clever tactician in the extreme short term but finds strategic thinking (or even longer-term tactical thinking) far more difficult. The result is that, in any even slightly difficult situation, he will abandon almost any goal in favour of an immediate advantage.

   So I am quite willing to believe that at the moment he has a European negotiating position that might even be likely to mesh well enough with that of the other 27 countries to produce an agreement that he could easily bring back as a victory. However, with a smaller majority than any majority government since the October 1974 Labour one, I don’t expect that position to survive past the first time that, say, John Redwood has an opportunity to present some additional redlines.

   So, the British negotiating team will go to Brussels and, probably quite unexpectedly to Cameron and nobody else, the negotiatons will fail. Cameron will have been manoeuvred into a position where he has little choice but to recommend an “Out” vote in the referendum.

   In this situation, the “Out” side is likely to win the referendum fairly easily – not only will the government be joined in this recommendation by UKIP and most of the English press, but a rather messy civil war that looks likely to break out in the Labour Party may well lead a significant proportion of the Labour Party to become semi-detached (or possibly draw much of the Labour Party along with them) and try to attract “traditional” ex-Labour voters (some of them only occasional Labour voters since the early 1980s) by adopting an English nationalist position, rather similar to UKIP on the EU and immigration though probably differing on other policies.

   After an “Out” vote, it will, of course be necessary for the British (rUK?) government (whether still led by Cameron or by someone else) to negotiate an agreement with the EU on post-withdrawal arrangements. In this situation, there is a very high chance that negotiations will end disastrously – any agreement come to will be deemed as a betrayal of the referendum outcome by enough of the “Out” voters that any English politicians associated with it will find their political careers abruptly terminated. As not having any arrangements with the EU would obviously be damaging, I would expect further negotiations to ensue – but these are most likely only to inflame the situation further.

   The end position? Well, in the worst instance, England no longer has the military forces for an effective European war, but I would rather expect it to pull up the drawbridge, remember 1940, go into nearly complete isolation and wait for the EU to collapse. Of course, in 1940, the UK did not have any land borders with the enemy, which leads to further interesting speculation.

   The above is admittedly close to a worst-case scenario – but I find it far from impossible.

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