Anglosceptics on the march to Brussels (but on the quiet)

IT IS often assumed that if you are not a Euro-sceptic, you are a pro-European. That you tend either towards federalism, or towards the preservation of British sovereignty. But this is not true. There are a few MPs in Parliament who hold a completely different view on all this - a view that is neither Euro-sceptic nor essentially pro- European - and who may well, in the months to come, turn out to hold the balance of power.

They are the MPs who say that more power should be given to Brussels because they will make a better job of things than our Government does.

'We go on and on about the evils of taking power away from Westminster,' says Hugo Mall, Tory MP for M25 Eastbound, 'but when you look at what Westminster does with that power, you begin to wonder if it isn't a good thing to take some of the power away. Having power in itself is not a good thing or a bad thing - it's what you do with that power.

'Now, I maintain that we have a Government at the moment which has been in power too long. It has become fat and lazy and complacent and incompetent. You'll hear ministers going on the whole time about the need for industry to become lean and efficient, but my goodness, do they ever apply the same lessons to themselves?'

So if Hugo Mall is not a Eurosceptic, nor a very keen European, what is he?

'Basically, I think I'm an Anglosceptic. I honestly think the British Government tends to make a hash of things. Norman Lamont made a hash of the ERM, Mrs Thatcher made a hash of the poll-tax, Mr Major is about to make a total hash of the railways - I mean, if we can get our British railways run from Brussels in time, we might just be able to get the same level of rail efficiency and investment here as they already have on the continent.

'Anyway, it's already well-established that most of the loonier Euro-regulations turn out to be inflicted by our own Government, and not by Brussels at all. John Selwyn Gummer is the ace example, of course, of a man who tried to be more European than Brussels by gearing up agricultural requirements even higher than anyone asked him to, but he is not the only one. What has Westminster done for our fishing industry? Our coal industry? The theatre? And so on and so on. All these things would have flourished more if protected by Brussels. They could not have flourished less.

'And the trouble is that we British tend to be more law-abiding than most Europeans, so when the British Government brings in the crazily strict regulations that it loves to do, there is more chance of them getting away with it here. I think that, governed from somewhere far-off in Belgium, we would tend to be more scornful of regulations made there. That would bring us into line with the rest of Europe, which is already far more cynical than we are.'

How many MPs are there who think like him - who believe that power should be taken away from Westminster and given to Brussels, to make sure that things are run better in Britain?

'Well, you've got to remember that MPs, better than anyone else, know how power works in this country. We see the complicated network of committees and civil servants and ministers and lobbies, and we hear people saying that we don't want the Byzantine bureaucracy of Brussels, and we think: 'My God] It's bloody Byzantium here in Westminster already]', So although there are only a few MPs who are openly in the group, I think you can take it that when the crunch comes there will be 30 or 40 of us coming out of the woodwork.'

But surely the lesson of the Union of Scotland and England teaches us that regional discontent soon replaces discontent with your own government? That the Scots now chafe at having the same laws imposed on them as the English,

by what they see as an English government?

'Oh, but they don't have the same laws as us. Scottish law is different from English law, and often better. And that was achieved without even having a Scottish government. I don't think we need to worry too much about being bossed around by Brussels. No, it's being bossed around by Westminster that worries us. And being bossed, moreover, by a Government that is so incompetent that it can't even get the Maastricht treaty ratified. The opposition is just as bad. No wonder we Anglosceptics are on the march, albeit clandestinely.'