Holder of the 2014/2015 Ganshof van der Meersch Chair, Professor John Spencer recently granted us an interview on the UK’s next general election.

Polls show the Tories and Labour are neck to neck and there is much speculation about the coalitions that could result from these elections. What are your impressions so far?

Journalists are spilling much ink in predicting, but even more than at the last elections nobody can really guess the outcome. In principle a lot of people have had enough of the Conservatives who dominated the coalition. Normally the Labour Party would be on course to win, but the Labour Party seems to be gaffe-prone at the moment, and it looks like the Scottish nationalists will be replacing Labour in Scotland. One of the predictions which is being increasingly made is that we shall end up with a coalition between Labour and the Scottish nationalists, who at least are both vaguely left-wing in their views and incidentally both pro-European.

The Tory/Lib Dem coalition was on the contrary very divided on Europe.

The big fault line in the coalition was on matters of the EU. The Conservatives have a strong eurosceptic wing while the Lib Dems are strongly pro-European. When the coalition was formed, both parties initially thought the whole matter could be resolved by setting up an official inquiry (the Balance of Competences Review), which would then produce a report towards the end of the coalition. The Review has taken place, it was well run, and it concluded that in almost every area the balance of competences between the UK and the EU is fine as it is.

Meanwhile Mr Cameron was pushed further towards euroscepticism by the one third of his party which is vocally Eurosceptic and frightened by the strongly Eurosceptic majority of our newspapers. So we’ve ended up with divisions within the coalition on the matter of Europe. I believe the only reason the coalition hasn’t fallen apart is that neither party wanted a general election which they feared they both might lose.

David Cameron has pledged to hold an in/out EU referendum should the Tories win, and it’s been widely predicted that the UK would vote to leave Europe…

I personally question whether that’s so. In the elections for the European Parliament it’s true that UKIP did extremely well, but the total number of votes cast in the European Parliament elections was very low. UKIP only scored rather less than one in ten of the votes of those able to vote. Many people, including myself, think that if there was a national referendum, a lot more people would vote, and probably would vote to stay in rather than leave. But the situation is volatile.

Do you believe that the referendum would destabilize the Conservative Party, just like the 1975 referendum deepened the divisions within the Labour?

Yes, it would very likely divide the party. David Cameron has said: “If I win, I will renegotiate the UK’s position within Europe”. But those who looked at the matter think his chances of securing any of the concessions that he really wants are zero.

What are those concessions?

He never really made the matter clear! Voices in his party have said that they want for example to be part of the free market, but without having to accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice: not a chance. Some want an EU that is simply a trading organisation, others want to have the UK completely removed from all criminal law aspects. I think that the main concession they wish for is to somehow be free to choose or not choose to implement all EU legislation, and there’s absolutely no chance the UK would be able to negotiate that. Also, why would the other Member States, the Commission and the Council wish to give concessions if at the end of it they don’t know whether the UK would vote to stay or leave?

In other words, this renegotiation would be completely useless?

There are two possible outcomes. Mr Cameron might come back and say: “Look chaps, I’ve got this wonderful deal” (don’t forget that before he became a politician, Mr Cameron was an advertising executive, so he’s quite good at dressing up unsalable products). Alternatively, he would have to say: “I couldn’t do it, sorry, so let’s vote to leave”. We think Mr Cameron probably doesn’t want to leave (though it’s hard to say, nobody really knows what he really wants about a lot of things). He seems to be the victim of pressure rather than the person giving the lead. The consequence of this is that the UK has lost a lot of influence within the European Union over the four and half years we’ve had the coalition.

Most parties seem to agree on one thing: the solution to many of the UK’s problems is curbing immigration, including European immigration.

There’s much public concern about immigration. A lot of the immigration we have is from outside of the EU, so even if the UK left the EU that would not resolve the issue. In fact most of the immigration we have from the EU is of people who want to work, and these people are creating an economic benefit, not an economic disbenefit. They are mainly young people, who work hard and who pay their taxes. There are incidental problems when they settle in particular areas, so you end up with cities where English seems no longer to be the dominant language, , and this makes people feel it’s not their country anymore. But I don’t think it’s true to say that immigration is causing severe economic problems: it’s causing limited social problems in particular areas. I think that the immigrants from the European Union are likely to integrate thoroughly if they stay. And anyway, a lot of them simply want to make some money and go back to their own country in the end.