SPECCAT THE OR
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THE QUIET REVOLUTION
The Parliamentary summer recess of 1991 has been the most momentous since 1939. It has seen two revolutions: one in the government of Russia, the other in Britain's relations with the outside world. Summer somnolence has let the succession of fundamental changes in British foreign and defence policy go by with only brief flickers of interest from the media or politi- cians. Even the most contentious question of the last days of Mrs Margaret Thatcher's last months in Downing Street, Britain's attitude to economic and monetary union within the European Community, seems to have been decided without public debate or parliamentary scrutiny. All the recent bally- hoo about an impending general election and the Prime Minister's travels has obscured the fact that Mr John Major's Government has taken a number of deci- sions on issues about the country's future with scarcely anyone noticing.
The Foreign Secretary has committed Britain to the practice of a common Euro- pean foreign policy. Although he went into the recent meeting of EEC foreign minis- ters resisting immediate recognition of the independence of the Baltic States, Mr Dou- glas Hurd emerged saying that we should recognise the sovereignty of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia because it was Commu- nity policy. For once the Community was on the side of the angels, but the Foreign Office has seen how the requirement for unanimity in the Council of Ministers can serve its traditional goal of liberating its activities from parliamentary scrutiny, let alone restraint. Now, when MPs clamour for action by the Foreign Office, it can point to the lack of consensus in the Com- munity as justification for its passivity. Mr Hurd's comments, after he had squashed the various Dutch and Franco- German proposals for some form of (admittedly half-baked) intervention to separate the warring parties in Croatia, made clear that Community-wide unanimi- ty was the criterion for any future action by individual states, and not just over Yugoslavia. The period just before the out- break of the Gulf war when the Foreign Secretary might even hint at irritation with his indecisive partners in the Community, now seems an age away. Then, locked into a pro-American policy by his predecessor, Mr Major went through with Britain's com- mitment to fight to liberate Kuwait; today it seems Belgium could veto our involvement in a similar course of action, but probably would not need to.
Mr Tom King's Options for Change appeared in the dog days of summer and not even the Soviet coup could stir up much of a debate about his plans to render the British armed forces incapable of overseas operation. Paradoxically, the decline of a clear and present Soviet military threat makes more defence spending necessary rather than less. So long as our Nato and EEC partners shared a common fear then the burden-sharing of common defence was accepted. Today, however, as we have seen over the Gulf and Yugoslavia, the different member-states take very different stands. At the moment Britain has become the champion of consensus among the Twelve, arguing that even agreement to do nothing is really a policy.
Although the French press has sneered at Francois Mitterrand as the modern Metter- nich because of the French President's inability to come to terms with the dramatic changes to the East, in practice Britain has been the slowest state coming to terms with the disintegration of the old order. From Anatoly Sobchak, the Mayor of St. Peters- burg, via the Baltic States to the Balkans, the same complaint can be heard: that the British are the worst, in trying to cling to their old contacts rather than forging new links. As belated converts to the outmoded credo of the inevitability of West European integration, the British Government has been the most vocal in alienating the newly independent states and those on their way to statehood. Remember Mr Douglas Hogg's words en route to Lithuania, of all places, 'Let no one think we are in the busi- ness of recognising Slovenia and Croatia.' Finally, last weekend, the Foreign Secretary started to consider that 'the time may be coming when in effect we must say that the Yugoslavia with which we have been deal- ing no longer exists.' Of course, a nostalgia for the predictability of the old order is one thing shared from Brussels to Washington, but committing a common mistake does not make the error less egregious.
The Chancellor's announcement at the weekend that Britain had effectively aban- doned its hard policy and instead was in the vanguard of a scheme for monetary and therefore economic and ultimately political union was the latest fait accompli awaiting MPs when they drift back to Westminster. So far election fever has silenced doubters on the Tory backbenches; who wants to split the party over such issues when there is a general election around the corner? But failure to obtain parliamentary consent or even to grant time for debate, given that a pre-emptive decision has been taken, sug- gests that the British revolution is approaching another stage: the abandon- ment of the fig-leaf of parliamentary sovereignty.
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