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		Political developments in Europe - and their message for America. June 11 2004 As I write, the funeral is taking place in Washington of former President Ronald Reagan. For Britain, he was a great ally. For America, he was a great President. For the world, he was a great champion in the cause of liberty. For many like myself, who never met him, he none-the-less seemed like a personal friend. We shall mourn his passing. Across the EU, voters have been selecting euro-MPs to sit in the Brussels parliament for the next five years. And the results have come as a great shock to the European establishment, and to European political parties - not least, to my own British Conservative Party. They have profound implications for Brussels, for Britain - and tangentially, for the transatlantic relationship and the USA. Normally, the euro-election spoils are shared in Britain by the three main parties - Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat -- with minority parties like the Greens or assorted nationalists gaining one or two token seats. At the previous election, in 1999, a fringe, single-issue party called the UK Independence Party - UKIP - won three seats. Their policy position was quite simple - they argued that membership of the EU was damaging for Britain, and that we should withdraw. But their three euro-MPs, bedevilled by in-fighting, made little impression in Brussels. Three months ago, pundits doubted that UKIP would make much progress in the 2004 euro-polls. But several factors have come together to overturn that comfortable assumption. UKIP laid their plans well. They hired Max Clifford, a well-known celebrity publicist. They also hired an American strategist, Dick Morris, who had worked in Bill Clinton's team. They signed up some substantial donors. And they recruited a celebrity front man, Robert Kilroy-Silk. Originally a Labour MP, perma-tanned Kilroy-Silk later enjoyed a successful career as an outspoken TV talk-show host - though he was recently fired by the BBC for comments on Arabs which many critics regarded as racist. As it happened, RKS stood, and won a seat, in my own East Midlands electoral region. But if UKIP got its act together, we in the Conservative party, historically regarded as the natural home of euro-sceptics, left our flank unprotected. For years we have tried to bridge the chasm between a handful of distinguished, elderly euro-philes - Heath, Heseltine, Clarke - and the overwhelming majority of party members and activists who are deeply euro-sceptic. But the chasm cannot be bridged. In an attempt to keep the euro-luvvies on board, we have watched activists, members and the public quietly slip away. Our party leadership made a huge tactical error which came back to haunt us. In the EU parliament, Conservative MEPs sit with the passionately integrationist Christian Democrat group, the EPP. Earlier this year, we confirmed our intention of continuing this relationship for another five years. We regarded this as merely an administrative convenience. But it became an acid test of our commitment to the independence of our country. It proved impossible to explain to euro-sceptics why they should vote for MEPs who planned to sit with the enemy. A recent opinion poll in the London Times showed that more Conservative supporters want to leave the EU than want to stay. Yet the only party offering withdrawal was UKIP, and many natural Conservatives chose to vote for them. So our Conservative tally of euro-MPs has been cut from 36 to 27, while UKIP has leapt from three to 12. True, most of the Conservative defectors will return to the fold at the general (Westminster) election, but none-the-less the voters have delivered a stunning message to the political classes and the Brussels institutions. We have had enough of the European project. We want our country back. In many regions of the UK, more than half of the total vote has been cast for euro-sceptic parties. Nor is this limited to the UK. Across the EU, sceptic parties have made advances. The Foreign Minister of Holland - once regarded as a model integrationist EU state - has called for repatriation of a wide range of powers from Brussels to member states. For those unfamiliar with the European debate, it is perhaps worth summarising, in a few words, the case against integration. The EU's model of governance is the antithesis of Jeffersonian principles. The EU's institutions are profoundly unaccountable and anti-democratic - which is perhaps why turnout in EU elections is derisory. Even its supporters talk of the "democratic deficit". The EU believes in high taxes, big government, prescriptive and intrusive regulation, and political correctness run mad. It is undermining our democracy. Decisions are made in Brussels by people we did not elect and cannot remove. It is undermining our prosperity, and driving businesses off-shore, by the imposition of massive over-regulation. Economic problems are compounded by the euro currency, which delivers sub-optimal monetary policy. And by threatening the transatlantic alliance, and seeking to construct alternative defence structures outside NATO, the EU is arguably undermining our security as well. It is instructive to contrast the political systems of the UK and USA, on the one hand, with that of the EU on the other. In both the UK and the USA, an election can, and frequently does, deliver a complete change of administration. Regardless of the policy prescriptions of the old and new administrations, there is a case to be made that this wholesale changeover refreshes the political system and the vigour of government. In the EU, on the other hand, nothing changes (rather like Japan in recent decades - and with similar results). One of the first achievements of the 1999 EU parliament was to force the resignation of the EU Commission. Yet the out-going Commissioners were replaced with clones, who thought in exactly the same way. The brass plates changed, the policies stayed the same. Indeed four of the twenty new Commissioners were the old ones re-appointed - including Neil Kinnock, given responsibility for rooting out fraud, despite his collegiate responsibility for the scandals that had plagued the old Commission. The aspect of the EU which should most worry Americans is the endemic anti-Americanism of much of the EU establishment. Far from thinking in terms of co-operation and friendly competition, many politicians in European capitals think more in terms of challenge and confrontation. They openly speak of the euro "challenging the global hegemony of the dollar", and even of EU defence forces "counterbalancing American dominance" (though they are curiously reluctant to spend the money to back this objective). Even in the immediate aftermath of the love-fest following the recent UN resolution on Iraq, French President Jacques Chirac was blocking moves to involve NATO in the Iraqi stabilisation process. So how should Americans, and especially American Conservatives, look at the EU? Following the Second World War, a key objective of US policy was, quite properly, to ensure that American GIs were not called on a third time to pull European chestnuts out of the fire. Then came the tidy mind of Henry Kissinger, demanding to know whom he should call when he wanted to speak to "Europe". It's time to recognise that there is no unified political entity in Europe with which to conduct a bilateral dialogue. Dealing with a large number of independent European nations may be untidy, and time-consuming, but it is the only effective way to work, and it offers great potential benefits. The ten new accession states of the EU are, broadly speaking, much more committed to liberal trade, and to a transatlantic approach, than are the states of "Old Europe". (Thanks to Donald Rumsfeld, by the way, for his New-Europe/Old-Europe model - he was vilified for it, but it immediately passed into common usage). It would be uphill work to negotiate a liberal world order with Brussels. It might be much easier dealing with EU members one at a time - and especially the new central European accession states. There is another key area where the USA may benefit from a clearer focus - and could assist those, like myself, who are proud to regard ourselves as friends of America. The fact is that the Iraq War has done great damage to the esteem in which the USA is held in Europe. It is a sad comment on public opinion, and on the media, that the USA has done the right thing, yet is vilified in the European press. I have even seen commentators suggesting that the unpopularity of the war may drive Europeans away from the transatlantic alliance and towards the open arms of Brussels, although as the euro-election results show, there seems to be little evidence for this view. In Britain, we criticise our Labour government for focussing on spin and presentation rather than substance. From a British perspective, the USA seems to have done the opposite. You have focussed on the task and the substance, you have done the right things, yet you have failed to manage the presentation and perception. As a result, European public opinion has been alienated. European media love to report isolated incidents of terrorism in Iraq, and the uncharacteristic abuse of prisoners, yet they remain strangely silent on the reconstruction efforts and the improvement in the lives of ordinary Iraqis. I am astonished that one factor seems to have attracted no comment at all, and that is the towering ingratitude of the Iraqi people, or sections of it. The coalition has spent a great deal of blood and treasure to remove one of the worst tyrants of modern times. This man tortured and gassed his own people. He invaded his neighbours. He sent countless young men to their deaths in a futile war with Iran. He ruined the Iraqi economy, and twice called down the wrath of the international community on his country. The coalition removed Sadaam, and offered the Iraqi people freedom, democracy and prosperity. Yet instead of accepting these gifts, they (or some of them) chose to spit in the face of the coalition, and to bite the hand that freed them. Demanding that coalition forces leave, they set out to destroy the stability and security which would allow allied forces to do so. So if I may offer two suggestions for US policy, they would be these. First, recognise that there are growing political pressures in the EU to oppose further integration. Recognise that the nations of Europe are hugely disparate, and will reward individual attention rather than a pan-European approach. Second, recognise that in international relations, as in consumer marketing, it is not always sufficient merely to do the right thing. We must tell the world we've done it. As we lay to rest "The Great Communicator", let's remember that we still need those skills today.