Let Us Build A United Europe With Britain At Its Heart

So at long last all 27 member states of the European Union have ratified the Lisbon Treaty. Now we can get on with the important job of building the effectiveness of Europe as an economic and political entity, but first the EU has to build trust among its citizens, it also needs to prove that it can operate with fairness and integrity, and above all, it must take its people along with it on this exciting journey.

Make no mistake about it, British governments are going to have to work exceptionally hard to put Britain at the centre of Europe. Britain needs to think about what is in the common interest of all 27 nations and not simply what is good for Britain. Britain should start to concentrate less on what it can opt out of and concentrate more on what it can opt into. Schengen, for example, and of course, the Eurozone.

Euroscepticism in all its insidious forms has to answered robustly. For far too long, a profoundly Eurosceptic press in Britain has been allowed to get away with attacking and belittling the European ideal. This press is owned and directed by foreign nationals and British tax exiles who have a vested interest in keeping Britain on the periphery of Europe, weak and increasingly isolated. They are consumed by ‘little Englander’ nationalism, all too willing to forget the carnage wrought on European battlefields in the name of crude ideology and the arbitrary territorial and succession claims of ‘precious’ nation states.

Now is the time to put all that behind us and build for the future as part of a proud alliance of European countries capable of cutting the USA’s apron strings and standing up to a resurgent and increasingly nationalist Russia.

The question to be answered is: Have we got the politicians with the vision and the will to make Europe happen? In David Miliband we appear to have one with such qualities, but it is going to take more than a single visionary.