Federalism under fire from Tory sceptics

STEPHEN GOODWIN

Britain would have to consider withdrawing from the European Community if ministers failed to secure their decentralist aims at the Inter-Governmental Conference, Jonathan Aitken, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said as the Commons resumed its grand dance over Europe.

Though the Tory sceptics, with Mr Aitken firmly back among them, welcomed the tone of the White Paper, A Partnership of Nations, there were misgivings over whether the Government could actually reverse the tide of Brussels legislation and curb the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

Malcolm Rifkind, the Foreign Secretary, said the Government was "totally opposed to a monolithic, centralised, federal Europe". The Maastricht treaty called for "ever closer union among the peoples of Europe", not among the states of Europe, he added.

"This aspiration for strengthened co-operation and friendship across the whole of Europe is a noble one, fully shared by the Government. But it should not mean an ever closer political union in the sense of an inexorable drift of powers towards supra-national institutions, the erosion of the powers of national parliaments or the gradual development of a united states of Europe."

Robin Cook, the shadow Foreign Secretary, said the White Paper tried to please everyone and, as a result, would please no one. "This is a Government which cannot make progress in Europe because it is paralysed by its divisions at home."

Mr Rifkind's "greatest omission" was a failure to contribute to the debate on the single currency, Mr Cook said. The reason was that ministers could not agree on what to say about it.

In what was taken a hint that Labour would hold the referendum John Major is still agonising over, Mr Cook told MPs: "No British government can join a single currency without the consent of the British people."

Charles Kennedy, for the Liberal Democrats, said the Government's strategy for the IGC was in danger of imminent collapse.

Among the sceptics, Norman Lamont, the former Chancellor, said the real test of the statement would be whether Britain could "avoid being sucked into a European state" of the kind he had discovered at the last IGC that many EU states wanted.

The most pointed contribution was from Mr Aitken who welcomed "those parts of the White Paper which seem to strike some good Euro-sceptic themes for the first time", including limits on EU action and on the ECJ and the commitments to defend Britain's opt-outs and veto.

But he warned: "If by any chance those important battles ... fail, or if they were to be surrendered by the so-revealingly new Europhile Labour front bench, then for the first time for many years, this House would have to start to seriously consider the option of withdrawal."