Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, but we’re in the middle of the worst recession in Britain’s history, a recession of Brown’s creation.

The EU is hated by the people of Britain, rightly, but it’s also gut-scorchingly dull as a topic. The electorate would never forgive us if we spent our time wanking on about the EU, rather than focusing on trying to repair the devastation that Brown has wrought on the economic fundamentals of our nation.

That’s why Tories are largely silent on the matter. There are more important things to worry about.

Also, Sunny, you leftie spoons still don’t get it, do you?

Apart from a hilarious Sun headline reminding people of Brown’s deceit, treason and general debased subhuman wretchedness, what you’ve done is gifted a free news cycle to David Cameron.

YOU DO NOT GIVE DAVID CAMERON A PLATFORM. Especially not for an entire news cycle. He’s smarter and more likeable than you lefties. It’s terrible strategy, and yet you do it repeatedly.

Not that I’m not grateful, of course. Never look the gift horse of a free news cycle in the mouth…

Oh dear. It’s not about hating the EU – elementary mistake. It’s about democracy. No-one in Britain signed up to joined a political body. We signed up to join an economic group. The fact that so many laws that directly affect the British people are made outside our shores by people we didn’t elect is a startling democratic deficit and one which makes a mockery of the notion that we are a democratic country.

I always thought the Left were passionate about democracy, about fair representation. Tony Benn, Tam Dalyell were figureheads in protecting and promoting democracy from the Leftist veiwpoint. Now we have lost their voices the Left are only too happy to cede the will of the people to the unelected.

No hate. Just a determination to rule ourselves in the manner that our forebears initiated.

The fact that so many rabid, frothing UKIP loonies also have this viewpoint is irritating but democracy throws up some strange bedfellows.

It’s not a question of being pro-EU or anti-EU, it’s whether you are a democrat or not.

Simples.

Democracy? 27 elected parliaments have voted to approve this treaty. How much democracy do you want? If referendums mattered the tories would accept the one we had when we voted to be part of Europe, complete with a commitment to ever closer union.

If the EU was “hated by the people of Britain,” we wouldn’t be in it. We’d have voted for Michael Foot in 1983. Or, if managed to miss that chance, we’d have voted for William Hague. Europhobia is electoral suicide in Britain, which is why this is such a problem for Cameron. He’s desperately trying to persuade the rest of us that the raving nutters who signed that EDM and the barking mad party which stands behind us doesn’t matter. It does. The thought of them getting into power is terrifying. Thanks to the tory Europhobes the chance of it happening is receding every day.

Dan Hannan is the leader of the Euro-sceptics. If he can come to an accommodation with DC everyone else will.

Martin Coxall is guilty of believing what he reads in the Sun.

The British people do not hate the EU, they are largely indifferent to it. The right-wing press hates the EU – not the same thing at all.

Martin, you should welcome Lisbon – it provides a mechanism for countries to leave the EU. So why not now campaign openly and honestly for what you really want, which is a referendum on staying in or getting out?

If you really believe Brown has wrecked the economy, that the EU costs too much and places too many restrictions on business competitiveness, why not make getting out a central piece of your economic recovery policy?

I happen to disagree with you about the EU, but I’d welcome a referendum because, when push comes to shove, I think the British people will vote to stay in.

@Martin: the point is, the people of Britain mostly don’t hate the EU, that’s a Tory delusion. They aren’t too bothered about it; some are slightly pro; some are slightly anti. For weird reasons, most right-wing Tories have an all-consuming irrational hatred of the EU, whereas sane Tories know that it’s the only sane future for the UK. Therefore, anything which resurrects that bunfight, and distracts the electorate from the grim economy onto Cameron’s allies accusing him of being a liar and a traitor, has got to be a good thing.

@Stepney, all three policymaking institutions of the EU – the parliament, the commission and the Council of Ministers – are democratic. MEPs are voted for directly (you may have noticed this earlier in the year); the Council of Ministers is made up of the democratically elected governments of the EU’s member states; and commissioners’ appointments are confirmed by both MEPs *and* the Council of Minister, with the Parliament having (and using) the power to dismiss the commission. So, err, no.

It won’t be forgotten that the LisbonCon was signed after Labour and LibDem MPs broke their Manifesto Commitments to hold a Referendum on the Treaty. Every time someone asks Cameron what he intends doing about the EUSSR, he will remind the electorate that it was Labour and the LibDems who betrayed their trust.

There is a General Election approaching very fast now – and the electorate couldn’t have a better demonstration that nothing in either Labour or the LibDem’s Manifestos can be trusted. The documents aren’t worth the paper they are written on and all the assurances in the world are just hot air.

A Democracy depends on the relationship between the governed and their Government. Break that trust and the relationship is fundamentally damaged. ‘Democracy’ in the UK has been attacked by Labour – by a PM with no mandate, relying on appointed Ministers in the Lords, a gerry-mandered electoral/devolution settlement and the compliance of the LibDems.

Cameron and the Tories will be the winners from this situation. It remains to be seen whether the UK and our Democracy will be. I hope he starts playing hardball with the EUSSR. Legislation should be passed in the UK to repatriate all powers from the EU which have not been sanctioned by the electorate in a Referendum. And when the EU Politburo squeal – he should stop the UK contribution until they have completed ‘negotiations.’

@8, since there’s no such institution as the EUSSR, it seems unlikely that Cameron would benefit from talking about it, as it would make him sound insane. For the record, neither the Lib Dems nor Labour promised a referendum on the Treaty, they promised a referendum on the proposed-and-rejected Constitution, which is Different Not Same.

9 – have you read the Lisbon Treaty? Name five specific ways in which it differs from the Constitution. I can think of two, neither of which are significant.

I have read the Constitution, and even gone so far as doing some of the work involved in checking to see what the Lisbon Treaty does. Where the Constitution replaced all existing treaties leaving Europe with a Constitution introducing certain new powers for the EU, the Treaty amends all existing treaties leaving Europe with an Acquis Communitaire including the same new powers for the EU.

They are (practically) identical in effect, and different in execution.

@macuser_e7

Wishful thinking, I’m afraid, and not borne out by polling evidence.

All polling on the issue shows that the UK electorate are distrustful and resentful of the EU, and it’s only via a process of coercion and deceit that the left have scuppered us in a vast, unelected bureaucracy against our will.

That said, because the EU is so monstrously dull, people rarely vote for it as a primary issue in General Elections, which is how the left have been able to get away with this treason for so long.

@John B:

Most lefties gave up trying to pretend the Constitution and Lisbon were different things as a non-starter years ago, when they realised that the electorate are not quite as thick as you hoped they were.

This article should be titled “Why oh why won’t the Tories have a fight amongst themselves?” That is what you want and the obvious answer – because they want to win the next election. is so obvious you feel the need to stir.

Pointless, if the Tories are going to have a fight it won’t be because of your pin pricks. I can understand your frustration. Tory EU meltdown is about the only thing that could deny them victory at the next election. But then they know that which is why there won’t be one.

I’m sure you’ll find another straw to grasp.

@11 stop lying that it’s unelected.

@13:

Perhaps I missed the last elections of the European Commission?

I also look forward to voting for the forthcoming President of the European Council.

OH WAIT. I didn’t, and I can’t, because they’re NOT ELECTED.

@DevonClap:

Yes, you can feel Sunny’s and the more erratic left becoming beside themselves with anger at the Tories’ failure to tear ourselves apart over Europe.

It’s almost as if it’s not 1993 any more and the party is now almost uniformly Eurosceptic or something.

“OH WAIT. I didn’t, and I can’t, because they’re NOT ELECTED”

Well, I didn’t vote for David Cameron – why should my views on suitability for prime minister candidacy be held slave to the whims of the people of Witney – hundreds of miles away.

Oh, wait, we live in a REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY!

@14 I assume you also hate the fact that the cabinet and the Prime Minister aren’t elected? Because they’re selected in EXACTLY THE SAME BLOODY WAY as the EU Commission.

I like this argument of Hannan’s: ‘in any case, no one under the age of 52 has had the opportunity to vote on the EU.’ Not only does this presume that EU membership is like renewing your gym card or driving licence (debatable), it also assumes that Hannan was either a Eurosceptic/phobic in his infancy or that he’s frustrated that the adults took a decision at the time which he subsequently objects to (a bit like complaining about decimalisation because you like the tradition of pounds shillings and pence). Still, at least he’s clear about wanting an in-or-out vote, even though he’d be a sore loser if his side lost (and there’d be plenty of 17 year-old Europhobes who would pull the same argument as Hannan’s next time round).

9 – any luck in finding five specific differences between the Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty yet? It’s tricky of course, because the Treaty is so unreadable, but then that’s the point after all

“All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.”

Valery Giscard d’Estaing, one of the authors of the Constitution.

citizens’ initiatives

@19 as I’m sure you’re aware, the main point of the constitution was to tie together existing EU powers in a single, symbolic document, while adding limited extra ones mostly connected with making further enlargement feasible as a minor and secondary aim. The main objection to the constitution was the symbolic one that it set up the EU as something akin to the USA, not the negligible extra stuff.

With the symbolic importance ditched, it just becomes another dull set of amendments that nobody outside of policy wonks would care about in the least had it not been whipped up into OMG THE EVILS by mad xenophobes.

Fascinating debate.

I’m inclined to agree that it’s about democracy – not generally on the EU – but on the issue of a referendum for the Lisbon Treaty. Tony Benn himself did say that we as voters loan the power to Parliament, and it’s not for them to decide whether they can pass those powers onto someone else. The fact that the EU itself is democratic is kind of irrelevant.

I’m not anti-EU though – far from it. If what we all want is to divide the human race along ancient arbitrary lines, breaking economies up into smaller less stable chunks, and believing that the name you give your currency is somehow an important part of your national identity, then the EU should be disbanded.

I am amused to see one or two screamingly anti-EU idiots here, blaming both Labour and the Lib Dems for there not being a referendum. Um, it’s not for the Lib Dems to decide…

And the insistence that most people actually care about the EU always brings the smile. I’m waiting for someone to start listing examples of EU regulations “imposed” on us, so we get to point out the ones that are copied and pasted from UK legislation.

redpesto: I like this argument of Hannan’s: ‘in any case, no one under the age of 52 has had the opportunity to vote on the EU.’

Similarly, no one under the age of 320 has any choice of the existence of Parliament.

* BTW, I’m not suggesting that there should be a referendum on everything, nor necessarily on the Lisbon Treaty. I don’t know enough about it (nor care enough) to know whether it is significantly different from the original Constitution proposals.

You’re right about one thing on the right – the EU is interminably dull. Plenty of issues I feel far more passionately about. Rather spend my time on those.

21 – so you can find no specific differences between the Constitution and the Treaty, and agree with the former Italian Prime Minister that

They decided that the document should be unreadable. If it is unreadable, it is not constitutional, that was the sort of perception… Should you succeed in understanding it at first sight there might be some reason for a referendum, because it would mean that there is something new.

Your argument that the Constitution/Lisbon Treaty creates limited extra powers linked solely to enlargement is ridiculous and strongly suggests that you have not read either document. The creation of a legal personality for the EU, the creation of the new roles of President and Foreign representative, the substantial increase in votes on QMV rather than unanimity (40 new areas): all these are substantial alterations to the position before the Constitution/Lisbon Treaty.

There are reasonable arguments that such a significant transfer of power should not be subject to a referendum – the principle of representative democracy for example. However, they do not apply now since all three main parties pledged in their manifestos that they would hold a referendum on the Constitution.

@23:

All the QMV extension stuff goes under “enlargement”.

The President of the European Council will be the 3rd EU official to be ‘President’ of something (alongside the PCEU and the PEC), so calling the role ‘President’ is grossly misleading.

The “High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy” is a role replacing the “High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy”, with the same duties.

As I said, this is all wonkish stuff that less than 0.5% of the population would care about if your side didn’t tell ridiculous lies exaggerating its importance.

The evidence suggests that the Conservative Party membership’s views on Europe mirrors the country. In June a Channel 4 poll found that 38% of the electorate want to leave the EU. I think it’s about one in three in the Conservative Party.

Concerns about the EU’s perceived ‘democratic deficit’ are misplaced. When judged and analysed against prevailing standards in EXISTING advanced industrial democracies, rather than those of an ideal plebiscitary or parliamentary democracy, the EU is democratically legitimate.

The institutions of the Union are limited by varying checks and balances: narrow mandates, fiscal limits, super-majoritarian and a well-placed separation of powers.

People argue that the EU institutions are ‘out-of-touch’ and ‘insulated’ from the realities of the world; these arguments simply reflect the sub-set of functions the EU performs: central banking, constitutional adjudication, civil prosecution, economic diplomacy and technical administration, which are matters of low electoral importance and have little to no traction in the imaginations of people.

Most people making comments on here overlook the democratic controls within the functioning of the Union as they tend to analyse the EU in ideal and isolated terms. Comparisons are made between the EU and an ideal, ancient, Westminster-style, or frankly utopian form of deliberative democracy.

The use of idealistic standards, which no modern government can meet, obscures the contextualisation of contemporary European policy-making, encompassing the real-world practices of existing governments and the multi-level political system in which they act.

24 – so your argument is, yeah whatever, no-one cares.

I was vaguely ambivalent on whether or not there should be a referendum on the Constitution – except that it would definitely have been voted down in the UK. What is irritating is the casual mendacity of those who try and argue that it is somehow different to the Lisbon Treaty. The only way in which it is different is presentational, and that was done specifically to make it unreadable and thus not worth a referendum. It’s spectacularly dishonest.

@johnb

commissioners’ “appointments”

There you go.

Oh and I’m not so sure 26 bodies of “elected” representatives from other countries voting on how my society is run is democratic.

Particularly when no-one in this country has been consulted on whether they want to be ruled from abroad in the first place. And no, they haven’t.

One simple referendum would solve it all.

I’d be only too happy to abide by the result whether it was yea or nay.

That’s democracy.

What are you afraid of? The voice of the people?

If we have to have periodic referendums on our constitutional arrangements, when do we get to vote on the Monarchy?

Incidentally, I agree with Phil H. The EU is interminably dull. If it weren’t for reasons of academic necessity I would never have bothered ploughing through the whole acquis communitaire fandango.

On the other hand, there’s something compelling about politicians thinking that, because no-one will have read a Treaty, they can lie through their teeth about what’s in it.

TIm J @ 27 is spot on.

Watching and listening to Dan Hannan on Newsnight last night was like watching a car crash…

“If we have to have periodic referendums on our constitutional arrangements, when do we get to vote on the Monarchy?”

When the government decides to ruduce/increase its powers.

@27 no, you’re completely missing the point. My argument is that the *changes in how the EU works* that were proposed in the Constitution and under Lisbon are both the same and the only difference is presentation – but that the presentation *was the whole damn point* of the Constitution. “To send a message”, as Home Secretaries and Shadow Home Secretaries seem to like saying.

And when they got resoundingly told to sod off with their message, they returned with something that had the same minor amendments as the constitution and lost the triumphalist message. Which, aside from wonks and mad people, was the thing that caused annoyance in the first place.

@28 yes. Appointed. Based on the will of Parliament. Like the fucking UK government. You fucking moron.

“Oh and I’m not so sure 26 bodies of “elected” representatives from other countries voting on how my society is run is democratic”

I don’t recall the referendum when I voted that hicks and yokels from true-blue constituencies in the backwoods would have a right to screw over Londoners, either. But that’s precisely how any referendum on the EU would work.

Sunny H. Peter Shore, the Labour politician was very critical about the EEC/EU and many of the points he made has come true.

Watching and listening to Dan Hannan on Newsnight last night was like watching a car crash…

Dan Hannan v Fraser Nelson: it threatened to become a stare-out contest between the swivel-eyed (especially when Nelson predicted there would be an in-or-out vote within 5-6 years, a view echoed by Trevor Kavanagh on BBC R4 this morning, which must mean Rupert wants it).

PS: Here’s David Davis looking for the exit door.

34 and the Irish obviously. If ‘the people’ were so placated by this minor presentational alteration, why was our Government so unwilling to ask them?

And you’re also wrong about the reasons given for France and the Netherlands voting no on the constitution. Nowhere was it suggested that it was the flummery of the constitutional treaty that was the reason – instead we were told various elements of the policies contained within the treaty itself had proved unpopular. Obviously we can’t be certain whether or not this actually the reason they voted no, but no-one suggested it was the document’s triumphalism.

They put their constitution to ‘the people’ and were resoundingly told to sod off. So they went away, changed the packaging but kept the contents and said that ‘the people’ didn’t need to be asked this time. That’s sending a message all right.

@30. TimJ

On the other hand, there’s something compelling about politicians thinking that, because no-one will have read a Treaty, they can lie through their teeth about what’s in it.

The only politicians lying about the Lisbon Treaty are Tory, UKIP and BNP ones. The madcap anti-EU nutters in other words.

Other politicians have been refreshingly honest about it. Always amuses me to watch a pro-European politician explaining EU matters versus swivel-eyed Europhobe ones. The antics of europhobes makes me wonder why on Earth anyone gives them any credibility on anything at all whatsoeve, let alone EU matters where their mendacity is open for all to see.

38 – I think you might have to provide some examples. The argument that the Treaty is substantially different to the Constitution is, for the reasons given above, utterly mendacious.

Knock yourself out, guys and gals

http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/comparative.pdf

@11: “it’s only via a process of coercion and deceit that the left have scuppered us in a vast, unelected bureaucracy against our will.”

Didn’t a Conservative government negotiate Britain’s entry into the EC in 1973?

Who was it who signed us up to the Single European Act of 1986?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_European_Act

Which party was in government when we ratified the Maastricht Treaty of 1992?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastricht_Treaty

For the 1983 election, the Labour Party’s manifesto included a commitment to negotiate Britain’s withdrawal from the European Common Market. In the event, a Conservative government was re-elected with a majority of 140.

Just asking.

@Bob B

Have you just realised that the Conservative Party was pro-EU in the past?

WELL I NEVER. It’s like you’ve uncovered some startling dark secret nobody ever knew. Have a biscuit.

However, back in the present, the Tories are Eurosceptic, and so are the electorate.

“I don’t recall the referendum when I voted that hicks and yokels from true-blue constituencies in the backwoods would have a right to screw over Londoners, either. But that’s precisely how any referendum on the EU would work.”

Difference is that they are at least in the same country. People tend to accept being outvoted by others in the same nation. There is not, however, an EU “nation” or a common feeling of European “solidarity”.

In any case I’m all for devolving power down to county level. That way the “hicks and yokels” from true-blue constituencies (who actually tend to be wealthy and well-educated if my experience in Surrey is anything to go by) wouldn’t be able to decide policy in Labour’s heartlands and vice versa.

but we’re in the middle of the worst recession in Britain’s history, a recession of Brown’s creation.

The Tories keep drinking a lot of Kool-Aid I see.

YOU DO NOT GIVE DAVID CAMERON A PLATFORM. Especially not for an entire news cycle. He’s smarter and more likeable than you lefties. It’s terrible strategy, and yet you do it repeatedly.

Then why are you complaining? Worried your beloved leader might look stupid when exposed to his own back-tracking?

“and so are the electorate”

yet, as Bob B illustrated, they keep voting for pro-euro parties, over and over again.

As I understand it, Members States are required to abide by the Convention and ECtHR decisions.

Violations in these respects means that the rogue State will be suspended from the EU.

In December the Committee of Ministers meets and on the agenda will be an interim resolution requiring the UK to abide by its obligations, and specific actions to be implemented to comply or else.

If the UK fails to comply, the case goes to the ECtHR for the final resolution. The Court will then suspend the UK from the EU.

Difference is that they are at least in the same country. People tend to accept being outvoted by others in the same nation. There is not, however, an EU “nation” or a common feeling of European “solidarity”.

Proof by assertion; excellent. I’ve got far more in common with an educated Frenchman or Czech than a Daily Mail reader; YMMV.

“In any case I’m all for devolving power down to county level. That way the “hicks and yokels” from true-blue constituencies (who actually tend to be wealthy and well-educated if my experience in Surrey is anything to go by) wouldn’t be able to decide policy in Labour’s heartlands and vice versa.”

I had a waking dream the other day whereby instead of having two parties, we had two equally balanced houses – the Tories were permanently in charge of revenue generation policy (tax), Labour were in charge of spending it and PMQs was fortnightly, so everyone got a crack of the whip and mocking the others for their policies.

It was kind of like lawyers specialising in defense or prosecution, I suppose.

Then again, I also had a dream where I was interviewing Nigel Farage on local radio but he left because his microphone wasn’t working.

@28

“Particularly when no-one in this country has been consulted on whether they want to be ruled from abroad in the first place. And no, they haven’t.”

And they aren’t! The whole point of being part of the EU is that the UK gets to take part in the decision-making process too. The HRA, much-maligned by the right*, was practically a UK-authored document!

“Ruled from abroad”, indeed! Just goes to show who’s thinking in slogans rather than taking a substantive look at the issues.

@43

“(who actually tend to be wealthy and well-educated [, narrow-minded, selfish and largely interested only in making sure that they remain the privileged few] if my experience in Surrey is anything to go by)”

Correction in square brackets mine, you don’t have to thank me.

* – largely because it makes the more objectionable parts of the Murdoch/Dacre business model legally dicey

@40.

There’s europhobe mendacity in all its blazing glory. (Open Europe? That’s like quoting Taxpayers Alliance on tax issues – you get the slanted, inaccurate version only!)

The Lisbon Treaty intentionally includes the internal institutional amendments that were part of the original constitution.

That is its whole raison d’etre.

What it doesn’t include is all the guff about anthems and flags and other nationalistic paraphernalia in the old Constitution which understandably put the Dutch and the French voters off.

51 – that is indeed the one difference. One clause that mentioned an official anthem (Ode to Joy – first adopted in 1972); the flag (adopted in 1985); the currency (dating from 2000); a wanky motto (also adopted in 2000) and ‘Europe Day’ (9 May – first selected in 1985).

The Constitution included several hundred clauses. Saying that it is defined by Clause 1-8, which provided for five symbols of the EU, none of which were new and all of which remain in existence is just fatuous. Do me a favour and go and read the fucking Treaties.

Open Europe at least provides an attempt at cross-checking the Lisbon Treaty against the Constitution. If you can point me to an instance where they got it wrong in their analysis please do so.

Um, I’m pro-europe and want us to join the euro; it’s just a comparison between the treaty and constitution which happens to sit on a right of centre site. I can’t see anywhere that bias can creep in in that simple task (although there is a selective quote from Gordo about the manifesto)

“yet, as Bob B illustrated, they keep voting for pro-euro parties, over and over again.”

Why did Blair not have a referendum on Euro membership? Why did Brown not have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty? Because both knew rhey would lose. Support for Labour at a GE does not mean endorsement of its European policy. Look who did well in the European Elections which was on the subject of Europe…

“Proof by assertion; excellent. I’ve got far more in common with an educated Frenchman or Czech than a Daily Mail reader; YMMV.”

Whether you like it or not, most people in the UK don’t feel the same way. Otherwise we would be part of a country called European Union or something similar. National loyalty has always trumped class loyalty, must to the frustration of hardcore Marxists.

@43: “Have you just realised that the Conservative Party was pro-EU in the past?”

I’ve been around since Britain’s history of relations with the EU and its predecessors started. In consequence, I can if need be readily post a resume going back to the Coal and Steel Community and the Treaty of Paris in 1951 or Harold Macmillan’s announcement in 1961 that his government was intending to make an application to sign up to the Treaty of Rome, which it promptly did, only to have the application vetoed by De Gaulle in 1963.

In 1975, I campaigned with a friend for a “Yes” vote in the national referendum and was an official observer at the local count which yielded one of the largest majorities for the “Yes” vote in the country – my friend went on to become a Conservative MEP and I went on to become a bureaucrat, in which capacity I briefly met with Roy Jenkins when he was President of the EC Commission.

On this latest referendum business, what is puzzling me now is why doesn’t David Cameron have the courage of his declared convictions and commit a future Conservative government to holding a national referendum on the straightforward question of negotiating withdrawal from the EU on the mechanisms provided for in the Lisbon Treaty? That ought to finally settle the internal turbulence within the Conservative Party.

55. Bob b . When we joined the EEC in 1973 did the British politicians and civil servants know or suspect that we would end up where we are today, in a European Union?

@56: “When we joined the EEC in 1973 did the British politicians and civil servants know or suspect that we would end up where we are today, in a European Union?”

It was, I think, always understood that some European governments and some politicians envisaged ever closer European integration, not least because closer integration was regarded by many as the only credible means by which Europe could hope to emulate the power, technological prowess and global influence of America.

An indication of popular European sentiment in the late 1960s and 1970s is the best-selling status of an influential political tract: Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber: Le Défi Américain (The American Challenge, 1967).

The book “sold 600,000 copies in France, unprecedented for a political essay, and was translated into 15 languages. This book was instrumental in creating a resurgence of French nationalism and drawing attention to the importance of transnational cooperation in Europe.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Servan-Schreiber

What is perhaps not fully recognised nowadays is the extent to which the balance of political sentiment in Britain has changed since the 1970s.

Sure, there were some Conservatives then who were unsympathetic or hostile to the idea of Britain joining the “Common Market” – like my local MP at that time – but the most vociferous opposition by a margin came from the political “Left”, who persisted in painting the “Common Market” as a “rich-man’s” or “capitalist” club. Conservatives who opposed Britain joining the Common Market were widely considered as verging on eccentric and certainly as unrealistic.

For the most part, business organisations strongly favoured joining. The performance of Britain’s economy was especially wobbly during the 1970s so it was entirely credible to present the case for joining the European Economic Community (EEC) – to use the formal title – as an affirmation of a preference for closer business and economic ties with relatively more successful market economies against the discouraging prospect of more socialism and centralist planning.

Tony Benn, minister for industry in Wilson’s government at the time of the referendum in 1975, was hugely active in making campaign speeches against the Common Market, calling for a resounding “No” vote. But the outcome of the referendum was a 67% “Yes” vote. Benn’s credibility was sorely damaged and Wilson seized on the opportunity to move him from the sensitive post of industry minister – where many had seen him as an embarrassment to the government – to the post of energy minister.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Communities_membership_referendum,_1975

The convincing size of the Yes vote did little to quell the extent of hostility in the Labour Party to the EEC. That hostility was stoked and revitalised during Thatcher’s first government and emerged in the Labour manifesto for the 1983 election as a commitment to negotiate withdrawal from the “Common Market”. The Conservatives won the election with a majority of 140: Gerald Kaufman notoriously described Labour’s manifesto as “the longest suicide note in history”.

The scope of the EEC was famously extended and deepened by the Single European Act of 1986 and then by the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, both of which were negotiated and eventually ratified by Conservative governments. With this history, Conservatives who now present themselves as die-hard critics of the EU and all it stands for are apt to look amnesic and rather peculiar.

IMO there is always room for discussion about the powers and functions of the EU – especially with the lingering consequences of the financial crisis – but I regard the likes of UKIP in much the same way as I think of Tony Benn and his followers. For that matter, I’m none too impressed with Tony Blair either and dreaded the prospect of him being President of the EU Council of Ministers.

“National loyalty has always trumped class loyalty”

Oh really? You’d better tell that to all those who are promising to flee to Dubai if they’re asked for a penny more tax.

“National loyalty has always trumped class loyalty”

There is a curious sense in which that tends to be truish. Placed to do so, I was astonished to see declared “true-socialists” fervently supporting Britain’s cause in the Falklands war of 1982. It was down to middle-class sceptics – including, reportedly, Alan Walters, Mrs Thatcher’s personal economic adviser – to point out that for the financial and human costs of the war, each of Falkland Is residents could have been given verging on c. £1m to resettle somewhere else.

I tend to be reminded of Samuel Johnson’s reported comment: Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, which was probably a valid description of reality in his time when signing up to join the army or the navy was a ready means for avoiding prison or transportation or worse. As the Duke of Wellington said about the troopers who served in his command: “We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Wellesley,_1st_Duke_of_Wellington

“Mrs Thatcher’s personal economic adviser point[ed] out that for the financial and human costs of the war, each of Falkland Is residents could have been given verging on c. £1m to resettle somewhere else.”

Instead 1soldier died for the right of every 12 people on the island not to pay tax to Argentina. Pretty poor exchange if you ask me

58/9 – it’s a bit reductionist to consider warfare in solely economic terms. It would certainly have been cheaper for Britain to have bought peace with Hitler in 1940, and to have stayed aloof altogether in 1914. Whether that would have been the better policy seems to me debatable.

@60: “It would certainly have been cheaper for Britain to have bought peace with Hitler in 1940″

As Churchill and his war cabinet recognised in May 1940, had Britain negotiated peace peace terms then with Nazi Germany, the most likely eventual outcome would have been a mainland Europe subject to either complete Nazi or complete Soviet domination for decades to come.

Knowledge of the existence of concentration camps in Germany and of the gulags in the Soviet Union was already in the public domain in Britain although there was little appreciation then of the true scale of their horrors. The Moscow Show Trials of 1936/7 were not secret. An Anglo-German peace settlement would have been virtually certain to preclude the possibility of a second front by an invasion of the European mainland, absent a base in Britain from which to launch an invasion.

After the war, Von Rundstedt, c-in-c west in the German high command at the end of the war, was asked by Soviet interrogators to say which was the decisive battle of the war. To their disgust, he said: The Battle of Britain, and he was correct. Had Britain been neutralised by whatever means, Germany would not have faced the continuing threat of a second front entailing the commitment of all the military resources for western defences.

The signs are that Chamberlain foresaw the terrible likely consequences of starting a war in Europe, which is why he was willing to sign the Munich agreement in September 1938. In March 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded was was left of independent Czecho-Slovakia, he was obliged to accept that Hitler could not be trusted.

The immediate outcome was an unsolicited offer to Poland to guarantee its territorial integrity. The ensuing treaty with Poland is what led to Britain’s declaration of war with Germany on 3 September 1939 when the German government failed to respond to an ultimatum to desist from the invasion of Poland – an invasion btw which was supposedly a “liberal interventionist” measure to protect the civil rights of the German-speaking population in Poland.

I really don’t see any convincing parallels with the Falkland Is in 1982.

@55, yes: the Treaty of Rome 1957 called for “ever closer union”.

@60/61: the point is, Argentina had no better claim to the land than the UK (”it’s never been ours but we’re, erm, nearer to it than you”), and its inhabitants were British citizens who wanted to remain British citizens. It’s certainly the most morally clear-cut war the UK has fought since 1945: we *were* protecting the right to self-determination versus an unprovoked invasion by a military dictatorship. Supporting that has got very little to do with right/left-ery.

@62: All that still leaves open whether it would have made more sense to offer the residents of the Falkland Is a large sum in compensation to settle elsewhere and thereby avoid the costs and casualties of open conflict – which is basically the point Alan Walters, Mrs Thatcher’s personal economic adviser, was making.

IMO it’s rare that we see such intelligent interventions from official advisers or a willingness on their part to openly go against the grain of mainstream populism. There is absolutely nothing moral about going to war – all sorts of people get hurt through no fault of their own.