Leading Article: Tory whining belittles us

BRITISH Tories do not readily tolerate other elected politicians. Does the Greater London Council wish to pursue such foolish fancies as an integrated transport policy for the capital? Then abolish it. Do counties and boroughs expect to pursue their own ideas about how money should be spent on colleges and schools? Then strip away their powers. Do our partners in Europe want to do more to protect the environment or the health and safety of people at work? Then fiddle the arithmetic, so that, even when we are heavily outvoted, we still get our free market way.

Once more, ministers are 'standing up for Britain against Brussels'. At issue is the admission of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Austria to the European Union. This should be an exciting moment: for the first time, the Union will stretch from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle. It marks another step on the road to a Europe that could extend as far as the Urals, embracing countries that, only five years ago, were regarded as beyond the pale of democratic discourse and marking an end to a millenium of suspicion and conflict and bloodshed. Impossible dreams, perhaps, and they may all end in tears, but think what Churchill or Gladstone or Pitt might have made of them. But Douglas Hurd and John Major? They reduce the whole thing to a preposterous dispute over future voting procedures, like crabby old cousins arguing over the seating arrangements for a family wedding. Yes, they have a case - those people who bob up at the back of meetings raising points of order always do have a case. Unfortunately, only Spain agrees with it. The case is lost. What usually follows - in parish councils, in company boardrooms, in squash clubs, almost anywhere, in fact, except when the British government is involved - is that everyone proceeds to the next business. Our leaders, however, insist that, unless other countries play by the British rules, the game is cancelled, and the four new entrants to the EU must wait for at least another year.

Here, a brief explanation. On most matters, the EU Council of Ministers acts by majority vote. (On some, such as industrial policy and public health, it can only act unanimously.) But a proposal is vetoed if the dissidents can muster 23 out of the total of 77 votes in the Council. In the past, Britain has used this blocking mechanism for such causes as allowing tobacco companies to continue advertising their lethal products. When Norway and the rest are admitted, the total votes go up to 90. Most other EU nations think the votes needed for a veto should go up correspondingly to 27; the British think they should stay at 23. Yes, that's it.

It is all very puzzling for anybody who remembers that the British are supposed to be enthusiasts for an enlarged EU and that was why they opposed moves to a tighter union. But the Government approaches everything from the narrowest political standpoint. The Tories have suddenly realised that the new entrants have long social democratic traditions and, worse, are inclined to fuss about the environment. None seems to have ambitions to follow the British route to a low-wage, low-regulation economy. So there is a risk that they will favour more EU law-making, not less. But if the British oppose EU regulations, they should make the argument case by case. They cannot expect to rig the rules against regulation indefinitely. Free trade areas cannot survive a continual free-for-all in offering multinational companies the lowest wage costs and the most lenient environmental and safety laws.

The truth is that Britain's commitment to Europe remains unresolved. Even the arithmetic of EU voting, trivial as it looks to everybody else, is actually too lofty a matter for British ministers. What they really care about is the arithmetic of the Tory party. The Prime Minister thinks himself too weak and his majority too slim to face another clash with those backbenchers (and some ministers) who would rather we left Europe and became an uninhibited version of Taiwan. His fellow ministers are too unconfident of his survival to forget that they may soon need right-wing votes in a leadership election. To say that we live in an age of pygmies is an injustice to pygmies, who are as likely as other folk to have some largeness of spirit or vision. Mr Major's political weakness is making Britain a joke on the international stage; someone should tell him that we cannot go on like this.