I HAVE always thought that four factors influence politics and politicians interests and ideals, of course, for much of politics is concerned with reconciling these, but also emotions and ideologies.
And when emotions and ideologies come into play in the political arena, rationality goes out the window, and the consequences of this can often be extraordinarily negative and destructive.
Ideology and emotion have in recent times destabilised political opinion in England, and in the United Kingdom as a whole. During the past two decades many English people, who have traditionally prided themselves on their pragmatism, have been brought to adopt a strongly ideological stance on social and economic policy.
On top of this there has now been superimposed an emotional xenophobic anti-Europeanism which is visibly threatening their capacity to protect and promote their national interest in the European context.
Britain's real interests in relation to European integration may well differ in some measure from ours, and from those of its continental partners. Arguments against, but also for, UK participation in the single currency were set out cogently and dispassionately by John Major in a House of Commons speech on March 1st, 1995, the last time this matter was seriously addressed by a member of the government.
And British reservations about some of the issues raised in the Inter-Governmental Conference were well and cogently expressed in a Foreign Office White Paper a year ago.
BUT Britain's capacity to pursue successfully its legitimate interests have for years been seriously eroded by the ever-increasing harshness of its ministers' and Conservative MPs' rhetoric, and by the blanket nature of their sound-bite opposition to a single currency and to any reform of the
Union's institutional structure.
Clearly Margaret Thatcher carries considerable responsibility for these developments. And yet, when she was elected leader of the Conservative Party 22 years ago, she was fully supportive of the terms of British membership that had been negotiated by her predecessor Ted Heath four years earlier.
Indeed, as I found out for myself when I first met her shortly after her election as leader, she presented herself as a committed European, comfortable in leading the pro-European Conservative Party of that epoch.
On that occasion we discussed the new Labour government's "renegotiation" of EC membership, which had been initiated a year earlier. She expressed the hope that after the conclusion of this process at the first Dublin European Council, a "one and indivisible" British government (in other words no free parliamentary vote should be allowed by Labour on this issue!) would come out and campaign for continued British membership.
It was, she said, an appalling aspect of the whole affair that Britain had lost support by so blatantly dishonouring an international treaty obligation.
In government after 1979, she showed no sign of recognising this danger of losing support when she sought to renegotiate Britain's financial contribution, stridently demanding "my money back".
As to ideology: a few weeks after that first London meeting I heard and noted down her economic and political views when our paths crossed again at an international meeting in Turkey. During a break in the conference agenda, she commented to journalist Andrew Knight and myself about the undesirability of the kind of ideological confrontation between left and right that had emerged during economic debates at the conference. She added that she had learnt a good deal from the debate, for example, the inadequacy of the money supply approach.
She had also come to recognise the need for an incomes policy when inflation was very high, but a statutory policy should be maintained only for a very short time. And she favoured a consensus of people who believed in a free society and a mixed economy, adding, to the surprise of Andrew Knight and myself, that her aim was to create a centre force in British politics, thus attracting social democrats from Labour.
ALL this was very different from the stance Margaret Thatcher later adopted as prime minister. No doubt historians will eventually trace the process of her ideological evolution, but for my part, as the 1980s wore on, I formed the impression that during her period as leader of the opposition she had been influenced by right-wing ideas emanating from people like Keith Joseph: thereafter she was increasingly seduced by her own rhetoric.
Because she could see, and present, issues only in simplified black and white terms, and because of the force with which she felt it necessary to express herself, her utterances became ever more emphatic and extreme.
Unfortunately, people respond readily to populism expounded emphatically by a powerful leader and the more extreme Margaret Thatcher became in regard to Europe, the more she dragged pro-European Conservative opinion towards a dangerous Europhobia.
All this could have been reversed when, partly because the establishment saw Britain's interests being endangered by this flight to an extreme position, she was eventually dethroned.
But this simply didn't happen. Her successor, John Major, has many qualities, some of them evident during the current election campaign, but he is not the kind of commanding figure who can take a party by the scruff of its neck and shake it out of a trauma or neurosis. And when, after a period it became clear he was not going to attempt this feat, the vultures within the party began to gather and feed on its decaying corpse.
How the Conservative Party is to emerge from its present chaos is impossible to foresee. Win or lose in the election, it is in deep trouble. Perhaps its best hope, and certainly Britain's, is that it find itself in opposition next weekend, even though in the short run it could then fall, temporarily one must hope, into the hands of extremist Europhobes.
The problem for Britain is that even if the Tories lose, their Labour successors have themselves been blown by this populist hurricane so far in the Europhobe direction that they will not find it easy to recover their balance in European affairs. At least in the short run Labour's capacity in government to pursue and secure Britain's interests in Europe has been diminished by these events.
However, in the six weeks that will remain before the European Council will be called on to conclude the negotiations on Europe's future in the Inter-Governmental Conference, a new Labour government will be the beneficiary of a lot of goodwill from its European counterparts. They will want to ease Britain's path back to sanity in European affairs, by conceding to a Labour government what they can in the final deal.
As for EMU, if there was ever a chance of Britain being among the initial participants in the euro, and this was probably never very likely, it has been blown away in Britain's recent Europhobe hurricane. Even membership later in the life of its next parliament may now be in some doubt, although a successfully launched euro could soon make apparent significant disadvantages of Britain's self-exclusion that could encourage a Labour government to challenge the Europhobic climate.
Our interest lies now, as it has always lain, with a strong self-confident Britain playing a major and constructive role in the future Europe. And this is not just because of any difficulties our economy may temporarily experience through having to ride simultaneously two unevenly-matched currency horses.
At a much more fundamental level our interests, and those of other smaller countries, will be best served by a Europe balanced between three major players, Germany, France and Britain, rather than by one led by a partnership of Germany and France.