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Being Right Can Be Lonely Sometimes

There is precious little thanks in politics, especially when you're right, says Mark Seddon. He predicts there will be an EU referendum within 5 years. Place your bets...

By Mark Seddon

1 Jul 2011, 15:13

There is an old maxim that there can never be any thanks in politics – and by extension political commentary – for ‘being right’. If our screens and newspaper were full of people saying “I told you so!” we would soon turn them off or stop buying them in even greater numbers. I have frequently been wrong. I remember for instance predicting that the miners would beat Margaret Thatcher back in 1984, or rather willing them on to win, especially as my old university Conservative opponent Iain Dale, was  predicting the opposite. He was right sadly, and I was wrong.

But there are at least two seismic matters of war and peace that I have been right about, even at the time I had absolutely no idea that I would be right. I thought I would rehearse them here, because to read and listen to assorted politicians and hacks, you would think that everyone back then was agreed. I also rehearse them because both were used against me – and others, by the powers that be.  Today, only Tony Blair still thinks he was right about the Iraq War, but that is because he fears being hauled off to the International Criminal Court in The Hague if he said anything different. Back then, virtually every Government Minister, bar the late and lamented Robin Cook, agreed with Blair as did most of the Parliamentary Labour Party.  I told Blair that a war on Iraq would be illegal under international law, having taken myself off to the United Nations to find out for myself.

Today, it is virtually impossible to find anyone except perhaps Shirley Williams or Denis MacShane who believes Britain should join the Single Currency. Back in the heady days of the first Labour Government, virtually everyone – except some curmudgeons on the Tory Right and Labour Left were counting off the days for Britain to join the Euro. Tony Blair thought he would go down in history as the man who took us in – to the Euro, not Iraq – and there was a positive avalanche of pro Euro editorials in The Guardian and The Independent.

I found myself in a minority on this too. For what it’s worth I sounded off about the perils of the Euro in Tribune and the Daily Telegraph, and doing so I remember with far less confidence than I would or had shown over other big issues. For a start, I wasn’t an economist. Back then I was also a member of the Labour Party’s Economic and Social Commission chaired by the then Chancellor Gordon Brown, and perhaps because I picked up his vibe about his ‘five crucial pre entry tests’, I was emboldened to attack the Euro in our monthly meetings in Number 11 Downing Street.

By sheer dint of superior intelligence – or was it luck, I, along with a few other brave souls appear to have been proven right. No one in their right mind would advocate joining the Euro now...

So here is another prediction, and one that I not only support, but am working towards. There will be a referendum on Britain’s whole relationship with the European Union within five years. I’m prepared to break the habit of a life time and go to the bookies to lay a bet to that effect.  It is not that I am anti European, or a ‘little Englander ‘– far from it. But clearly the institution has grown and changed to such a degree and more importantly seeks to accrue yet more powers at a time when global recession means that it has not a great deal to offer in return, that popular will in this country may soon dictate that there has to be a referendum.

Will I be right? Who knows? The trouble is that once this out there there can be no rowing back. I hope that I am.

 

*Mark Seddon is a former Editor of Tribune and was New York Bureau Chief for al Jazeera English TV