'Britain has to be prepared to walk away from the EU’
But the new Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, a noted Eurosceptic, is now more confident of 'meaningful’ restrictions on immigration – and spiking Ukip’s guns
Even 4,500 miles away in the intense heat of West Africa, the European Union is never far from Philip Hammond’s thoughts. The Foreign Secretary has just spent a day seeing the devastation left in Sierra Leone by the deadly Ebola virus, but he is now on the front line of a battle to prevent a Conservative meltdown caused by the upcoming Rochester and Strood by-election.
With Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and the rise of jihadist groups such as Isil in the Middle East, Mr Hammond is struggling with the busiest overseas policy agenda faced by a foreign secretary in years. But, in the official residence of the High Commissioner in Ghana ahead of a seven-hour flight back to the UK, his focus is on the EU, immigration, and the by-election.
Ahead of Thursday’s crucial vote, which the Conservatives face losing to Ukip, Mr Hammond has chosen to go further than even David Cameron in warning that Britain could leave the EU if the country does not gain control over its borders. Britain must get “substantial, meaningful reform” from Brussels ahead of the in-out referendum Mr Cameron has pledged to hold in 2017, Mr Hammond says. He makes clear that the Government is now “prepared to stand up from the table and walk away”.
The next seven days will be critical for the Tories and could do more to determine the outcome of May’s general election than any other moment in the last four years. If the Conservatives lose badly to Ukip defector Mark Reckless – as pollsters predict – it could trigger a crisis for the Prime Minister that will lead many in his own party to conclude that they cannot win the election.
Senior Conservatives believe that the only way to confront the “existential threat” posed by Nigel Farage and Ukip is to take an increasingly hard line on immigration and EU reform.
And Mr Hammond does just that by making clear that “we have to be prepared” to leave the EU if reforms to the immigration system are resisted. “We’re in the beginning stages of a negotiation and – first of all, never, never go into any negotiation unless you’re prepared to stand up from the table and walk away,” he says. “We have to be prepared to. In this case it isn’t even our decision because there’s going to be a referendum at the end of this process.
“We have to be candid with our European Union partners as we’re negotiating about what we think the verdict of the British people would be. I’d like to be telling my German counterpart honestly, if you draw the line there, I don’t think we’re going to get this past the British public in a referendum – but if you could move your line to there, I think we might.”
When Mr Hammond replaced William Hague in July’s reshuffle, it was seen as a promotion that took Britain closer to leaving the EU.
Mr Hammond is a noted Eurosceptic and has said he would vote to leave the EU if Britain is unable to achieve substantial reforms. In recent months, he has not disappointed those in the Tory party who passionately support an EU exit by saying that it is “lighting a fire under the European Union” by holding an in-out referendum.
Mr Hammond appears to concede that when he stood in Mr Cameron’s Downing Street office and accepted the role of Foreign Secretary, he took it thinking Britain would ultimately leave the EU. However, following a series of behind-the-scenes negotiations with his counterparts across Europe, he now says he is “much more optimistic” that Britain can get reforms to the immigration system that will lead to a vote to stay in the EU.
He makes clear that a vote to stay in Europe is “definitely not a certainty”, but adds: “I’m much more optimistic about that now than I was before I started doing this job because – perhaps I read too many newspapers – I slightly had the impression that I was going to be going into battle as a lonely voice. And what I found in fact, was that I was going in and saying this is our problem, and people were saying we completely get it, it’s our problem, too.”
In recent weeks, a series of European leaders including Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, appeared to torpedo Mr Cameron’s attempts to reform EU freedom of movement rules. Mrs Merkel told Mr Cameron that Germany would not accept any of his demands on freedom of movement. German officials were reported to have said that they would be prepared to countenance the possibility of a “Brexit” if the Prime Minister insists on changing the rules that allow an unlimited number of EU citizens to come and live and work in the UK.
But Mr Hammond insists it is “nowhere near as black and white” as the noises off from within the Bundestag would suggest. “It isn’t the case that either the Germans agree that we can have total control of our own borders, or we’re never going to do a deal with the Germans,” Mr Hammond says.
“If your ambition is that we have total unfettered control of our own borders to do what we like, that isn’t compatible with membership of the European Union, it’s as simple as that. And people who advocate that know jolly well it is not compatible with membership of the European Union. So if that’s what you want, you’re essentially talking about leaving the European Union.”
The Foreign Secretary makes clear that his negotiations can result in Britain having the “ability to avoid the kind of destabilising movements that we’ve seen over the last decade or so”.
It is not the case that Britain will be unable to actively reduce the number of migrants coming to the UK, Mr Hammond insists. Plans floated in recent weeks by senior Conservative sources suggested that Mr Cameron wants to announce plans for quotas – limiting the number of EU migrants who can come to the UK annually.
After those plans were firmly rejected by allies – including Germany – that idea looked to have been scrapped. But Mr Hammond suggests that the possibility of quotas in all but name is still very much an option. It is just a question of the language and tone used during the negotiations, he says.
Britain will push for a “stretched definition” of existing EU treaties, Mr Hammond says. It will allow freedom of movement rules to be altered without treaty change, something Germany has said is impossible.
Asked if the idea of imposing quotas on EU migrants is now dead, Mr Hammond says: “There are bits of language which make things more difficult. I wouldn’t go into a discussion with my European colleagues talking about quotas. But I might be talking about a mechanism that delivered the same kind of outcome. But if you put a word like quota on the table, you immediately cause shutters to go up. So I think it’s about exploring the ideas and engaging, talking and that’s what we’re trying to do now. This negotiation isn’t going to begin until after the next election. What we can do at this stage is try to understand where people’s red lines really are, what they’re really thinking.”
In an attempt to recover from the expected loss to Ukip in next week’s by-election, Mr Cameron will in the coming weeks give a major speech on the EU and immigration to try to convince Ukip voters to return to the Conservative Party. The message will be that only Mr Cameron and the Tories can deliver change for those angry Ukip voters.
Some people are seeing Mr Cameron’s speech as his last throw of the dice on immigration before voters go the polls in May. According to Mr Hammond, it is a roll of the dice that may just work.