 Celw'r amser chi'n ddweud i lift i ddweud eu ddweud am yr aeiskormau i'r ystod yn gweithio'n broedden ar y Llys, ac mae'n rheswm yn'i gweithio'n Gweithno Gwynym Pryddyn yn gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio daeth cyhoeddiol ar hwnnw, ac mae'n ddweud i'n gweithio'n mynd i'r llyfradau yn meddiad. Nghymru, mae'n ystod i ddim yn gyf Gebol yn gwirio i'r lleoliadau ym Llyfr. Felly, I'm going to talk mainly about the Conservatives approach to Europe. We meet on a day after shock by election results in Britain. I don't know how many of you followed that overnight, but these results demonstrate both in a previously conservative held seat in Clacton and in a Labour held seat in Haywood and Middleton in Lancashire. fuddwch, ond gydag o'r ein gynhwys sydd ein gynhwysau ffugor, y cyhoeddaint y unig o ran ymdweud, yr unrhyw hwn yn ei gynnig bwyllhau i gydag i gynhwysau ffugor, a dweud bod phobol yn fawr ar y ffugor, y gynhwys, mae'n ddweud yn amlwg, ond roedd yn ei gofynau. UQIP's success tells you very little, in my view, about the position on Europe in Britain. It also tells you very little about what is likely to happen at the next general election. I am assuming for the purposes of this talk that David Cameron will remain Prime Minister y Prif Weiniddo sydd wedyn ysgolion ymarfer, ac mae'r Prif Weiniddo yn ei gobeithio i'r ffordd mwy o'ch ddelwyd i ysgolion ac yna'r Prif Weiniddo. Rydym wedyn'i chyfreunio'r cyfan am ein pethau i fynd ar gyfrifbu yllteid öfyrdd o'r Prif Weiniddo yn yn yw eu rhwng ddechrau'i leoliadau y rhaid i'r rei'r reisio bwysig, fel y rhaid i'r referendum arbennig, yn 2017. Yr hyn, rydyn ni'n gwybod i'n gweithio i chi, ymddangos i'r bwysig y prospectau yma, i'r pleddau hynny'n gwneud hynny. Yn y bwysig, i'r prospectau ar gyfer y reisio bwysig, i'r referendum ar gyfer y rhaid i'r Europe could be one in Britain so that's basically what I'm going to talk about. On the political background, David Cameron never wanted to be in this position as I'm sure many of you are aware. When he was elected leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, he urged the Conservative Party to stop banging on about Europe because he felt that this was not an issue in which the public were really interested in this. Polling evidence all suggests that to be the case. Not an issue which gave the Conservative Party the kind of modern centrist image that he felt was essential for them to win a general election. So he never wanted this. What brought it about was the Conservative Party's reaction to the Euro crisis. When the Euro crisis broke, a lot of Conservatives who peed, they'd been proved right about the Euro. It was an absolute disaster and the sooner the whole thing broke up, the better. That was the attitude. I could see it in the House of Lords, the Conservatives opposite, I could see it in the Commons. That was their basic instinct that the sooner the whole thing collapsed, the better we'd all be. Now, George Osborne, to his great credit as Chancellor of the Exchequer, recognised that this would be a national disaster for Britain as much as for Europe. That the break up of the Euro, that Britain hadn't escaped, as it were, the problems of the Euro by not being a member of it. And that the break up of the Euro would be a very, very difficult background to the huge fiscal consolidation he was having to undertake for domestic UK purposes to get our economy right. And so he said to the Conservative Party, and it was very clever, understandably at the time, he said, look, we can't afford the Euro to fail. It's essential to us that they rescue the Euro. But the only way that the Euro can be rescued is if there is much more integration in the Eurozone, of which Britain can never be part. And therefore there is going to be in future a two tier European Union with a much more tightly, the inescapable logic, I can't remember his phrase now, of integration in the Eurozone, there is going to be inevitably a two tier Union, and this provides us, the British, with the opportunity you Conservatives have all been waiting for all these years to go in there and say yes, we want to stay part of a trading arrangement, we want to stay, we want to cooperate with you where we agree with you, and only where we agree with you. But this is an opportunity for a fundamental renegotiation of Britain's position in the European Union necessitated by the integration that would be forced by the Euro crisis. This was, of course, in terms of British foreign policy, a very significant statement. It's the first time since the Second World War, first time possibly ever, that the British government had said that it was not prepared, that it was prepared to accept that it would not be a leading member of Europe, that it was prepared to be a second class citizen on the sidelines. So it was a very significant statement, but that was the statement that was made and that was the logic of this renegotiation argument. Now, it then emerged, of course, that the Euro was going to be rescued without the fundamental treaty change, or at least without the fundamental treaty change in the short term that George Osborne had envisaged would be necessary. But the Conservatives stuck themselves with this renegotiation commitment. So, in his Bloomberg speech, the Prime Minister switched the emphasis from, he still went on a bit about the inevitability of closer Eurozone integration and the need for some protections against discrimination by Euro-ins or against Euro-outs, he mentioned that, but he shifted the emphasis to a more broadly-based reform agenda, and that was the speech that he made at Bloomberg in January 2013, which after he'd resisted for about a year the pressure from his backbenchers to commit to a referendum, he actually came out and said, there, we'll have this renegotiation, and I pledge that by the end of 2017 we'll have an in-out referendum. But implicit in this reform agenda, which he was pitching, was quite a lot of high-level ideas that a lot of people would have some sympathy with, like a greater role for national parliaments in the design of the union, the idea that powers can flow back to the member states as well as to the centre of flexibility of approach, the idea that we could do far more to promote the single market, the idea that we could, in Europe, that we could do far more to promote the single market, there was an agenda of economic reform that had to be achieved in order to do that, the idea that we could avoid unnecessary intrusive regulation. I thought the pitch of this speech was quite skillful, and it won support in a lot of northern Europe. I found, as I went round, that quite a lot of northern Europe were quite sympathetic to what Cameron had to say. They weren't sympathetic to his concept of a renegotiation and a referendum, but they were sympathetic to the kind of objectives that he was setting for change in the European Union. But since Cameron made his Bloomberg speech in January last year, he thought that by making the speech, this would kill the Europe issue between now and the 2015 general election. That was a gross miscalculation that was. The principal reason it was a gross miscalculation was because of the strength of UKIP. Now, UKIP actually doesn't win votes primarily on its anti-European position. It is, of course, wholly committed to British withdrawal from the European Union, and people do see some linkage between the European Union and the immigration issue, which is one of their main public discontent. But it is much more about a general mood of dissatisfaction with the political class of all kinds, and it's much more about an alienation of a specific section of the electorate in particular, less well educated, older, white working class men for whom globalisation hasn't worked, really. It's who see themselves as having a declining and more insecure position in society. And there is a very, very sharp demographic about the UKIP support. Most of our political parties draw fairly evenly across the social range nowadays. Demographics are not a very good predictor of who supports Labour and who supports Conservative. A lot of AB voters, people who have been to university, now support the Labour Party. But in terms of UKIP, the social demographic is very clear and very, very specific, and it's this group. But Conservative MPs interpret the threat of UKIP to their position in Parliament, and they interpret it. They think that the way they deal with this threat is by toughening up their rhetoric on Europe. And that is what Cameron has done. So in the last month, we have had a considerable toughening up of the rhetoric and a more and a clearer pledge that he will do something about migration. So we're on a slide here. What started off as something to deal with the inexorable logic of the Euro crisis is now becoming something which is about responding to massive populist discontent about immigration and trying to contain what is believed to be UKIP erosion of the Conservative Party position. How much further this will go and what will be said in the Conservative election manifesto, obviously you'll have to ask them, but I fear the worst. Next point then. If assuming that Cameron has gets his renegotiation and is there to implement it, what are the prospects? Well, I think in some respects, the prospects are quite good. For instance, a lot of his Bloomberg speech was about the need for economic reform. Well, there is actually a lot of economic reform going on in Europe. There are ambitious plans for extending the single market in the Junker programme that has been agreed by the European Council. There is actually big economic reform taking place in the member states. The Italian Senate yesterday voted through a pathbreaking labour market reform in Italy, which no one else has succeeded in doing. This demonstrates that Renzi should not be underestimated as an aside. He is, I think, a remarkable phenomenon. So, there is economic reform taking place. There is also acceptance, I think, that there is an issue about European regulation. Franz Timmermans, who is the deputy to Junker, is obsessed, is perhaps a strong word, but he is certainly very concerned about how we introduce more proportionality and subsidiarity into the way that Europe operates. And I think that everyone would like to see a stronger role for national parliament. So, in that respect, I think he could make quite a lot of progress on his reform agenda. But there are really difficult subjects, and there are three, I think. First, there is a question of migration. What does Cameron actually want on migration? Secondly, there is this pledge that the Conservatives have made which takes Britain pretty close to the exit of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is linked to our EU membership. And thirdly, there is the question of what treaty changes might be possible because Cameron has not ruled out treaty changes. On migration, it is clear that some of the British concerns about migration are shared in other countries. I don't know what the position is in Ireland, but certainly in Germany there is major concern about the so-called issue of benefit tourism. And benefits being claimed by Polish workers for their families that are back in Poland. That is certainly, and I think that it is possible that that might be addressed. I don't personally find this discourse a very pleasant one, but I think that probably something will be done about it. I think there's also clarification that the freedom of movement rights actually apply to people who seek work, not to people who don't seek work, and therefore if they're not seeking work, they have no right to stay in your country. Now that is something I think that Cameron will be pressing for quite hard whether this is compatible with the treaties or not. I don't know, but I think it is an issue in contention. But in his conference speech, Cameron implied that he would do something about controlling numbers. Now it is possible to control numbers in the case of new member states, not that there are going to be any new member states in the next five years, but it is possible that you could have tougher transitional controls, that you could argue that as part of those transitional controls the right of free movement wouldn't come into effect until they got to two thirds of the GDP of the EU average or something like that. So you could insert those kind of provisions in new treaties of enlargement, but you can't insert those kind of provisions into the existing rights of members of the European Union. And I just don't know what the Prime Minister envisages on this score. It may be that he doesn't envisage very much, it may be that he hasn't understood the issue, but I think that it is quite a serious commitment, an error that he has made. Secondly, on the European Convention on Human Rights, this is a highly technical legal subject, but the idea that Britain could withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, which of course Britain was one of the leading founder member states in the late 1940s, the idea that we could withdraw from this and that people in the EU would say, oh that's fine, I think it would raise lots of difficulties about the fact that the EU is committed to the convention principles in its own right. And then there's the question of treaty change. Now, there is one treaty change which I think is perfectly doable, which is doable without generating referenda in other countries, possibly in Ireland, but certainly not anywhere else. I think you could do a treaty change which strengthened the principle of non-discrimination by Euro-ins against Euro-outs in relation to the single market. I think that probably could be done, and I know there have been discussions with the Germans about this. But the other things that Cameron probably wants are more tricky. The Conservative Party would love some kind of opt out from social legislation, in other words, a return to the opt out of the social charter. I think it would be extremely difficult to persuade the French president to agree to any such measure, which he would regard as Britain attaining an unfair competitive advantage over France. So I think that that is extremely difficult. And then there is Cameron's specific demand for an opt out from the ever closer union preamble of the treaty. Now, I think that I am sceptical about whether this is any legal value or substance of any kind one way or the other. But I can see that people in the EU might get very upset about it, and he has made this one of his bottom line points that he wants to achieve. I'd be interested in others' views. My impression of our partners is that Germany is very keen to keep Britain in the EU. I actually think France is very keen to keep Britain in the EU as well because of security reasons. The new commission is obviously very keen to keep Britain in the EU, but I think there is a certain amount of indifference among other members who are just fed up with the British, frankly. And I think that it will be interesting to see how much of a response from other member states the British demands get if they are put after May 2015. Then there's my final point about the referendum itself. Could a referendum be one, assuming that Cameron can negotiate a set of terms which he's prepared to put and recommend to the British people? I think that on this, the British public opinion is not the fundamental problem. It's not the fundamental problem. If you look at British public opinion, 15-20% generally are in favour of the European Union. 35-40% are extremely hostile and would vote to withdraw. So you have a third, at least, of the voters who would vote to withdraw in any circumstances. A lot of those, of course, would be people who vote for UKIP in elections. But there is definitely a substantial number who will against staying in. But the other 40% is sceptic about Europe, not enthusiastic about Europe, but open to persuasion. And polling that has been done suggests that if the Prime Minister, supported by the Labour leader and the Liberal Democrat leader, recommended a set of terms that they might well be able to win a referendum. Peter Kellner of YouGov has written a paper about demonstrating that this is, in his view, perfectly possible. So the public opinion, the key section of public opinion, is sceptic but malleable, is how I would put it, sceptic but persuadable. The real problem about this political problem about this whole exercise is the Conservative party. It's a very Conservative party problem. There are a lot of Conservative MPs who say, yes, I would like Britain to stay in the European Union if we have a successful renegotiation. My problem with them is that their terms, what they mean by a successful renegotiation, are wholly unachievable. Because what they mean by a successful renegotiation is turning the EU into an arrangement where British membership is essentially about free trade and there is political cooperation between the member states, of course operating on the unanimity principle. I don't think that model of trade and cooperation is an acceptable within the EU framework. I can't see any of our partners agreeing to a British membership on that basis. It's also the case that most Conservatives fail to understand that the single market is much more complex than a straightforward free trade area. It's in fact a whole body of regulation which requires an independent supranational commission and court to supervise it and make it work. And yet they find that supranationalism extremely difficult to cope with. So there are fundamental problems in attitudes about what is achievable. I also think that it will not be possible for David Cameron to meet the expectations that he has himself generated on the question of migration. I just do not think that the outcome of the negotiation will be that we can prevent polls coming to work in Britain. But that is what a lot of voters and Conservative party members will think that he's talking about. So the question is given that the renegotiation won't satisfy quite a lot of Conservatives and given that there is a section of the Conservative party that wants to pull Britain out of the European Union in any circumstances and given that the UKIP idea, the UKIP threat is not likely to be a flash in the pan but something that continues after the next election Would David Cameron actually be prepared to put to the British people a set of terms of renegotiation that would in all likelihood split his own party? Now Harold Wilson got away with that in 1975. He got in the way with an agreement to differ within the Labour party. Is it doable within the Conservative party? I think that there is a fundamental tension in the Conservative party between on the one hand the interests of the wealth creators, how they would self describe themselves as it were, the wealth creators who recognise the necessity of Britain remaining part of Europe and its single market in the vast majority of cases. Something like 70%, 8% of city opinion for instance takes that view. The CBI reckons that three quarters of British business takes that view. So there obviously are dissenters but the vast majority of the wealth creating class which has been traditionally the Conservative constituency in the country wants Britain for its recognises that Britain has to stay and the tension therefore between the wealth creators on the one hand and the populists on the other who want to pursue a kind of English nationalist agenda which has control of immigration as its number one priority. David Cameron is a sort of traditional Conservative of a very pragmatic frame of mind in my opinion. I personally believe he would like Britain to stay a member of the European Union. I don't doubt his commitment to that. But he is also a person who I think comes from a tradition anyway but it's put it like this. Comes from a tradition that believes that the best interests of the country are served by keeping the Conservative party in power and keeping the Conservative party in power means keeping it united. So this question of whether on Europe he is prepared to risk what I think would be a very damaging split and possibly a major realignment of British politics if UKIP remains a significant factor after the next election which I think it will. I think these are deeply problematic political questions which is why I am pessimistic about the prospects of this renegotiation and referendum if the Conservatives win the next general election and why from as a pro-European I ffervently hope that next year Edmilliband will become Prime Minister. Thank you. Thank you.