Fear is the key

[Suff]

Cameron arrives in Brussels to tell the Council that he does not want a rabid EU federalist to be selected as the new president of the commission.

For once others are listening.

Fear is an amazing motivator. Not just Cameron's fear, but the fear of the other countries which were punished in the last elections.

The really great thing about this is that Cameron has to reveal some of the truth about the situation. He made a really big play about how this election would "change the EU" if we voted Tory. Yet when we didn't we have motivated and empowered him to make serious changes. Because the parliament can't select candidates. Only the Council can do that and the Council members can be replaced with senior members of the Government at any session. Including, if required, Cameron himself.

We have also sent a huge kick in the teeth to the Lib Dems and, for once, shut them up on Europe in this government. They should never have been given any power with a Euroskeptic population. What has happened now should have happened 4 years ago. But for Clegg and the EUphiles in the Lib Dems.

Which reveals the lie to the whole thing. Voting UKIP/FN/Golden Dawn, whatever, has done more to change the course of the EU than any voting for "soft" parties who will not listen. All the governments now fear the rise of the right at home except for Hungary who are already very far right.

So WM, you get what you want, Britain IN Europe but shaping Europe. Sadly it won't last. Even more sadly, now the election is over nobody is listening or cares. This is how democracy dies.

More interestingly WM, without the EUphile Lib Dems, we might not have been offered the change of an In/Out referendum because Cameron would not have been undermined on the EU at every turn by his coalition partners. As we saw in the last election, they are PROUD of destroying their credibility in UK politics because they stayed ON MESSAGE. Forgetting, for the meantime, if they ever remembered, that they are our representatives charged with representing our views at parliament and in the EU.

Time will tell. Fear is not a good motivator because it fades over time.

[cromwell]

Which reveals the lie to the whole thing. Voting UKIP/FN/Golden Dawn, whatever, has done more to change the course of the EU than any voting for "soft" parties who will not listen.

True. You can't vote for the established parties and just hope that things might change.

[pederito1]

My fear of another disastrous labour administration is not likely to fade, Suff, yet that seems the most likely outcome of the next election.
In the nigh impossible likelihood of Cameron continuing as PM I am sure he will seek a way of getting out of his promise of a referendum
knowing his record on promises.

[TheOstrich]

Fear is the ongoing key in this country as well as in Brussels.

I think swathes people initially didn't have much of a problem with the formation of a Conservative / LibDem coalition after the last general election as it brought the ruinous Labour years to an end. And by and large, for all I rail at them, I think the coalition has been the best method of running this country over the last 4 years.

I'm avowedly anti-Europe, and the thought of a Lab / LibDem coalition after 2015 is a horrifying prospect. It is that prospect which I think will make most ex-Tory UKIP people turn back to voting Tory unless it becomes absolutely clear that the LibDems face a total wipe-out.

So yes, the politics of fear will be in full play between now and 2015 at a local level. Thankfully, I won't have any conscience decisions to make as this is a safe Tory seat, but if I were in a marginal, I think I'd seriously have to consider voting Tory rather than Ukip, as much as I detest the former, because the alternative of letting two pro-Europe parties into power would be far, far worse.

[Workingman]

The "fear" in Europe is manufactured, it's fake. The politicians and media are over-egging a situation for their own ends. The vast majority, some 90%, of people who voted did not vote for extremist parties and yet it is almost being presented as the other way round.

Early this morning the first article on the BBC website proclaimed that "One third of Britons are racially prejudiced". That sort of reporting, and its impeccable timing, is what is used to drive this fake fear. Neither Europe nor the UK are suddenly being overrun by people with weird logos and kinky uniforms chanting slogans, but if that image can be used to persuade the majority that something has to be done it will be used.

The reality is that the EU has to do nothing more than, as Van Rompuy says: "re-evaluate" the bloc's agenda. Once that is done, and it will take its time, it can carry on as before safe in the knowledge that come the next EU elections, five years hence, the likes of Cameron and Hollande will have been consigned to the history books.

[Suff]

The "fear" in Europe is manufactured, it's fake.

In Brussels maybe. But in the countries, there is a huge fear that the EU election surge may spill over into the National elections. That fear will spill over to the Council which is essentially a group of National representatives with and elected and generally useless head who will say anything to try and calm things down.

The commission and parliament will go on as ever until someone really kicks the anthill over.