Tory split threatens Pembrokeshire in the EU

Ian Duncan Smith - "crocodile tears"

In the best part of a lifetime reporting on politics I cannot recall when a Conservative government was so bitterly divided. Ian Duncan Smith’s resignation last week was merely a surface manifestation of a fissure that runs deep through the party. I don’t buy Duncan Smith’s crocodile tears that his resignation was prompted by the proposed welfare cuts in the budget shambles. He has too much form of implementing cuts on the poorest in society over the past six years for that.

No, this was all about Europe. The headline in the Daily Express told you all you needed to know: “Tory split helps fight to free us from Brussels”. The Tory divisions are inevitably weakening the Yes side in the forthcoming referendum. Many voters still to make up their minds will undoubtedly take a lead from the Prime Minister and his Chancellor of the Exchequer. Their authority has been unquestionably been undermined by the events of the last week. And to that extent the strength of those arguing to remain inside the EU has been weakened as well.

Certainly, Pembrokeshire stands to lose heavily if by some misfortune Britain was to vote to leave the EU. First in the firing line would be our farmers. Wales will benefit by £1.7 billion between now and 2020 by Common Agricultural Policy Payments that support more than 80 per cent of farms. Moreover, if we were to leave, farmers would face tariff barriers at the borders of the EU which accounts for nearly the whole of our beef and lamb exports.

As for tourism, so vital for the Pembrokeshire economy, we have benefited from investment in developments such as the coastal path, while European water directives have ensured cleaner waters and beaches around our coast.

The fact is that Wales benefits from EU membership more than any other part of the UK, and within Wales our western rural areas and the Valleys benefit most of all. Wales is due to receive more than £3 billion of EU investment between 2014 and 2020, while Welsh exports to the EU will be worth in the region of £5.4 million.

Few would argue against dualling the 23 miles of the A40 between St Clears and Haverfordwest. It was proposed a decade ago but was put on ice by the Labour government in Cardiff which had other priorities. The only improvement since then has been the Robeston Wathen by-pass, completed in 2011 at a cost of £41.4 million. This was hugely necessary and indeed was first promised as long as the 1950s. The by-pass cut out an acute bottleneck in the village itself and removed an accident blackspot at Canaston Bridge. The European Convergence Fund contributed £20 million, nearly half the cost. Without it I very much doubt whether the by-pass would have been built. It’s just another example of how continued EU membership is so vital to Pembrokeshire’s interests.

What the EU has done for us

It’s an unfortunate aspect of Welsh life that only about 10 per cent of our people buy an indigenous daily newspaper. It speaks volumes for the difficulty of conducting a serious debate about matters that affect Wales, and not least the debate on the European Union.

Most people in Wales read newspapers published in London and these give scant attention to Welsh interests. More than 80 per cent of them are owned by right wing anti-EU billionaires: the Sun, Times, and Sunday Times by Rupert Murdoch, an Australian living in New York; the Telegraph by the Barclay brothers who live in tax havens in Monaco and Guernsey; the Mail by Lord Rothermere who lives in France; and the Express and Star by Richard Desmond who built his empire on the foundation of the soft porn business.

 

Media baron Rupert Murdoch campaigning for Brexit from New York

In the coming months all these papers will be conducting a noisy and strident campaign in favour of our leaving the EU. You can bet your life that none of them will give close attention to the following benefits that have resulted from our EU membership:

• Providing 57 per cent of the UK’s trade with the rest of the world
• The structural funds that have been vital in the regeneration of west Wales and the Valleys.
• Regulations that have underpinned our clean beaches and rivers in Pembrokeshire.
• Cleaner air.
• Lead free petrol.
• Restrictions on landfill dumping.
• Promotion of a recycling culture.
• Cheaper mobile charges.
• Cheaper air travel.
• Improved consumer protection and food labelling.
• A ban on growth hormones and other harmful food additives.
• Better product safety.
• Single market competition bringing quality improvements and better industrial performance;
• The break up of monopolies.
• Europe-wide patent and copyright protection.
• No paperwork or customs for exports throughout the single market.
• Price transparency and removal of commission on currency exchanges across the Eurozone.
• Freedom to travel, live and work across Europe.
• Funded opportunities for young people to undertake study or work placements abroad.
• Access to European health services.
• Labour protection and enhanced social welfare.
• Smoke-free workplaces.
• Equal pay legislation.
• Holiday entitlement.
• The right not to work more than a 48-hour week without overtime.
• Strongest wildlife protection in the world.
• Improved animal welfare in food production.
• EU-funded research and industrial collaboration.
• EU representation in international forums.
• EU diplomatic efforts to uphold the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
• European arrest warrant.
• Cross border policing to combat human trafficking, arms and drug smuggling; counter terrorism intelligence.
• European civil and military co-operation in post-conflict zones in Europe and Africa.
• Support for democracy and human rights across Europe and beyond.

But for me all this is as nothing compared with the EU’s role in providing more than 60 years of peace between European neighbours after centuries of bloodshed. Not only that the EU has assisted the extraordinary political, social and economic transformation of 13 former dictatorships, now EU members, since 1980. But, as I say, we can expect to hear none of this from the mainly foreign-owned London press.

The real question in the European referendum

 If John Redwood, MP for Wokingham and former Secretary of State for Wales was Prime Minister then I’m sure Stephen Crabb would be campaigning for us to leave the EU. Redwood, of course, is the high priest of England’s sovereignty as expressed through Parliament and an arch hater of Brussels and all its works. Stephen Crabb was of a similar persuasion when he first entered Parliament in 2005. Certainly, like most of his fellow intake into the House of Commons in that year he was firmly on the Euro-sceptic wing of his party.

However, since Crabb became Secretary of Sate for Wales in July 2014 he has adopted what he calls David Cameron’s centrist position on Europe. Last week he gave a speech to the Cardiff Business Club urging a Yes vote in the forthcoming referendum based on the Prime Minister’s renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s membership.

Yet the matters being renegotiated are peripheral to the fundamental concerns at stake over Britain’s continued membership. These are to do with the economy, trade, jobs, the future of farming and above all Britain’s security in the world. The matters being negotiated – the opt-out from the Euro, Brussels red tape, the meaning of “ever closer union”, and benefits claimed by migrants – are insignificant by comparison. They are just a smokescreen to give Cameron an excuse to campaign in favour of a Yes vote, against the views of most of his party.

Security was always the main purpose of European unification and that continues to this day. The main prize was peace following the two catastrophic European civil wars that disfigured the first half of the last century. To be fair to Stephen Crabb he acknowledged this in his speech last week. This is what he said: “My late father-in-law grew up in Nazi-occupied Paris and was a teenager in 1945 when the war ended. He and I used to argue a lot about the future of Europe back in the late 1990s just before he died. For him, and for so many people of that generation including many here in the UK, the emergence of the European Union was a matter of cementing the peace in Europe and guaranteeing economic security. And it became for him and so many others an article of faith. What they lived through and what they saw meant this faith was unshakable.”

Crabb went on to say that though he respected this view it was not how his generation thinks: “The world that shaped my own political outlook has been one which has seen the rapid internationalisation of markets and the extraordinary global digital and communications revolution which has changed forever how we work and how we live.”

But in this globalising world we still need the security that European unity offers. Just take the challenge of terrorism. Tools such as the European Arrest Warrant, the European Criminal Records Information System and the Terrorist Finance Tracking System are essential in preventing and responding to terrorist activity throughout the continent.

And the basic question still remains, which is at the heart of the referendum debate and which Stephen Crabb is wrong to think is now just part of history and not relevant to the present day. Do we want to see a continent in which there is German roof over Europe, or one where there is a European roof over Germany? I know the answer to that question.

Six wishes for 2016

 Trying to predict the future is a fool’s game but that doesn’t mean one can’t harbor aspirations. So with a nod in the direction of those who warn we should be careful what we wish for, the following are six of my hopes for 2016.

First is an earnest plea to Pembrokeshire County Council to adopt a New Year’s resolution that it will take on board the responses to its consultations. On my reckoning they held three during 2015 on the future of secondary schools in Haverfordwest. This was on the basis that if the first and second didn’t produce the answer they wanted, they should try, and try again. All the signs are that the third will deliver the same result as the other two - that parents, pupils and staff want a new English-medium secondary school complete with a sixth form. Hopefully the county council might listen this time.

Stephen Crabb - will we remember him when he's gone?

Secondly, I hope that during 2016 the Westminster Government will allow the £1b tidal energy lagoon in Swansea Bay to go ahead. To do so, they need to agree a subsidy to underpin the project that would last more than 30 years. The price is high but the potential gains are enormous. If the Swansea lagoon is successful it is likely that half-a-dozen more will be built around the Welsh coast, creating a reliable renewable energy supply and creating more than 30,000 jobs in the process. Many of these would be based around Milford Haven. It had been hoped that work could start on the project this spring but that has been delayed for a year while the UK government makes up its mind. The commitments it made at the Paris Climate Change conference coupled with the mounting evidence of the perils of global warming – the recent floods being the most recent – ought to be persuasive.

Thirdly, I hope that the Secretary of State for Wales, Preseli’s MP Stephen Crabb will decide that he wants to be more than a footnote in history.  He has a chance to make his mark if he decides to face down the opposition of Whitehall departments like the Home Office and put some backbone into the Wales Bill he will be steering through the Westminster Parliament.  As it stands the Bill only tinkers with the powers of the National Assembly.  It needs to do much more than that if it is to result in a stable and lasting settlement. Does Stephen Crabb wish to remembered? Or will he be just another in the list of forgotten holders of his office, like his predecessor for instance? Does anyone remember him?

Fourthly, I hope David Cameron comes back from his negotiations in Brussels in February with a package that he can use to make a persuasive case for the peoples of the UK to vote to stay inside the European Union. A vote to leave in the referendum that now looks likely in the summer would be disastrous for the Pembrokeshire economy.

Fifthly, I hope we vote in the Assembly elections in May to change the Government in Cardiff Bay. Labour have now been in power there for 16 years, far too long for the health of our fledgling Welsh democracy. A new Plaid-led government would also be our best hope for restoring essential emergency service to Withybush hospital.

Finally, perhaps my most optimistic wish: for a fair spring and a fine summer. Pembrokeshire’s farmers and our tourist industry could certainly do with both. Happy New Year!