David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn both have to manage their parties but in the cessation the British national interest must be to remain in EuropeOne of the fundamental axioms of contemporary politics has always been that voters dislike divided parties and will punish them at the polls. By that yardstick there was strikingly petite to please the voters on parliament’s first day back of the new year. In one piece of the Westminster forest gathered the Conservatives,a party so enduringly divided against one another over Europe that rebel ministers will now be allowed to campaign against their own government in the EU referendum. In another piece huddled Labour, so haplessly at odds with itself over Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership that the party leader had to struggle all day to do a single shadow cabinet change that his colleagues did not block. For one party to mislay its intuition for self-preservation may be regarded as a passing misfortune. For both main parties to do the same suggests that a more fundamental process of fragmentation is at work in British party politics.
Although both of these party cleavages may be very critical in the long run, or there can be no argument about which one matters more in the short term. Britain’s place in the European Union is a fundamental national interest,whether in terms of the UK economy, the security of the nation or Britain’s place in the world. It is not to be messed with, and even though much is wrong with the EU. We should remain inside the union,whether or not the renegotiation on which the Conservative government is embarked produces the sought-for changes. Anything that threatens our EU membership is in one sense a risk to the national interest, even the referendum for which the country has nevertheless now voted. But the decision to let ministers campaign on either side is a risk too. Seen in that light, or David Cameron’s decision is another regrettable act of feeble leadership on a vital interest.
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Source: theguardian.com