Bernard Ingham: Until we recover our sovereignty, Britain will suffer from the politics of indecision

Labour has never been the same since 1979 – or perhaps more accurately 1986 when Thatcher economics brought about a recovery. The party lost all its old certainties 27 years ago when she smashed the post-war Attlee consensus. Try as he might to find a “Third Way”, Tony Blair never came up with a satisfactory substitute, though to be fair he was greatly encumbered by Gordon Brown and Ed Balls.

As a result, Ed Miliband is being torn in two. Those responsible for his election and financing his party – the unions – would turn the clock back and lay waste to what is left of the economy. Sensible Labourites look for moderation but without any driving belief. Miliband’s “One Nation” Labour is a sick joke when you have the likes of Len McCluskey and Bob Crow stalking the land.

Among Labour’s fringe allies, no one looks for common sense among the Greens. Their remedies for the supposed plight of the planet are as barmy as their belief, in the face of the evidence, that global warming is out of control.

Nationalists in Scotland and Wales are to all intents and purposes Labour wrapped in a flag with all the impractical fanaticism that drives the Greens. Between them the SNP and Plaid Cymru are doing an effective job in wrecking their glorious land and seascapes with useless wind turbines.

The Liberal Democrats have never believed in anything much that did not serve their purpose in winning local and national government seats. After being out of national office for nearly a century, they have been found out by coalition government. It is not that they are useless administrators. In fact, some of them have done rather well. It is just that the likes of Nick Clegg and Vince Cable lack the necessary disciplines of office.

All of them – Labour, Nationalists, Greens and Lib Dems – are more or less happy in Europe because they share its pale pink socialism and political correctness.

Which brings me to the Conservatives. Their problem does not primarily stem from having to keep the Lib Dems on board, though it tarnishes their escutcheon and helps Ukip to flourish as a protest group. It is quite simply that, after Thatcher, they don’t know what they really stand for, either.

David Cameron conceived it his early duty to detoxify the party from Thatcher “nastiness” and, God save us, make Tories seem nice. In some ways, he has succeeded only in convincing many of his grassroots that he is as barmy as the rest of the political class what with his ludicrous “greenest” energy policy and same sex marriage.

He also fell hook, line and sinker – and this is a real sinker – for Blair’s preoccupation with the media. This has manifested itself in perpetual movement, producing a policy a day. Where these do not rapidly unravel, most of them achieve little and damage the Tories’ old reputation for relative competence.

Having said all that, a majority of the country probably recognises that the Tories have their heads screwed on the right way when it comes to handling the nation’s damaged finances and are on the right side of reason in trying to reform education, the NHS, welfare dependency and the criminal justice system.

This is not to say that the majority of voters necessarily conclude that, given their messiness, they will succeed but they might give them the benefit of the doubt in 2015 if, as seems possible now, the economy starts to grow and the budget deficit comes down.

But we are a long way still from recognising as a nation that, even with sensible economic management from now on, no future government can sort Britain out so long as we are bound hand and foot by the European Union.

Look how the EU controls or compounds serious current political issues: the economy, immigration, social provision, employment law, regulation and criminal justice. Like it or not, the EU is a failing haven of social democracy. That is why the Left has ceased to regard it as a dirty capitalists’ club, more a backdoor route to far more “social” regulation than they could get out of Westminster. Until we recover our sovereignty, political fudge rather than clarity will be the order of the day. The route to real political choice is clear.