Saturday 18th May

We are living through a period of intense ‘conservative-little-Englander-paranoia’.  We have UKIP stoking up the fires with their anti-Europe rhetoric, and now Tory MPs are queuing up to declare their Eurosceptic credentials, leapfrogging each other with their xenophobia.

I know that Europe is going through a bad patch at the moment; so is the UK, so too did America.  But there will be light at the end of this tunnel, things will get better and the economy everywhere will improve.  It may take a while but they are just as determined in Brussels to work their way out of it as we are here.

But in any case the argument for Europe has never been just an economic one.  It is about sharing; our culture, our ideas, our joint history and about a quality of life that is NOT determined solely by economics.  After the Second World War the major countries of Europe were determined never to fight again, and so joined each other to prevent that happening.  They may have created a monster, but that monster is capable of, and actually always is changing and every new set of politicians must address and reform it as needed.

But the current frenzy is threatening to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Do these Eurosceptics really believe that ‘at a stroke’ all our problems will fade if we get out, pull up the drawbridge on European workers, stop our farmers from selling British regional produce and forcibly re-patriate hundreds of thousands of people who have decided to go and live in another European country.

International co-operation will be the only way the human race really succeeds.  And without the solidarity that Europe offers do you really think we will stand a chance against China and the ‘Brics’ in this leaner and meaner Twenty-first Century.

All of us who love Europe must stand up now and fight these backswoodsmen who want to take us back to the days when Britain had an Empire.  Together we will succeed, divided we must surely fall.