Behind some of the drama of the UK’s restless membership of the European Union is a philosophical struggle between Individual and Collective, which has echoed down the ages and resonates loudly still today.

Differences between the British and continental Europeans’ approach to the rule of law (and indeed to the very idea of what law is) run deep. That remains the case, even though in recent years ‘European’ processes have made significant inroads into British public life as more issues affecting ordinary people directly have come to be decided by EU majority voting – a phenomenon set to accelerate as the Lisbon Treaty gathers steam.

But we are not alone. Look at this fine row between the EU and Sweden over how far (if at all) Sweden should go in implementing robust new EU instructions on monitoring Swedish citizens’ emails, text messages and telephone calls: http://www.thelocal.se/24784/20100204

Sweden is a tech-savvy highly networked society, and public indignation against e-Big Brotherism runs wide and deep. Not surprisingly the Swedish government does not want to commit suicide by implementing the directive concerned.

So here’s the problem.

On the one hand we all want the state to track down terrorists and would-be terrorists, which is not easy to do without significant official data-mining and sophisticated hi-tech international cooperation, requiring vast piles of data to be stored neatly for security agencies to pore over it.

On the other hand, we are most reluctant to outsource all our privacy to the state, which can be relied upon sooner or later to mess up and/or abuse the information it holds.

And in any case most Brits would probably suspect that a one-size-fits-all EU-level directive laying down the law is just what is not needed – better to let member states themselves get the balance right according to their own ideas, then hope for the best.

What a magnificent policy issue for the main political parties here to place before the public in the looming election campaign. Vital high principles and operational subtlety all in play, yet clear differences ought to be obvious between a Conservative position emphasising the rights of the individual/nation, and Labour collectivist hankering after ever-more state (and ever-more EU too).

Somehow I fear we’ll get something less … substantial.

Charles Crawford, a former British Ambassador turned blogger and policy pundit, looks at how UK policies shape global events – and how global events shape UK policies. For more information or to contact Charles Crawford, click here.

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