Insularity is the curse of this island people

As one who was for European unity even before the referendum in 1975 which told Harold Wilson that most of us wished to remain in Europe, I feel some reply is needed to those clichés favoured by the EU-phobic about our laws being made in Brussels by faceless unelected bureaucrats and our identity eroded.

The latter point is ridiculous, as is clearly shown by reference to the experience of that much older union of states, the USA. Those states have their own laws as well as federal law, which is why, in some, the death penalty persists. A Texan is no less a Texan because he is also a US citizen, nor is a native New Yorker less entitled to sing about being one.

If challenged with the mistaken belief that Americans have only one language and the Europeans many, I would point out that many US citizens, while still using their version of English as the language of officialdom and commerce, converse in the vernacular of their mainly European forebears, notably the growing Conquistador-descended Hispanic population. And it is worth noting here that English is the lingua franca of the EU – possibly because the Europeans recognise the inability of the British to learn to converse in any other.

As for faceless, unelected bureaucrats making laws which cover all EU members, including Little Englanders, Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalists and Ulster Unionists, we can put a face to at least one: the Spanish-born female former EU employee who now sits in the European Parliament as a UKIP representative.

Ironically, UKIP - largely made up of disgruntled ex-Tories of the kind the usually mild John Major called 'bastards' - and the British National Party, though both committed to destroying the EU, are happy to have representatives in the European Parliament, riding the gravy train which they say MEPs enjoy, even though the parliament, despite the Lisbon agreement, lacks real legislative teeth.

Although admittedly appointed, rather than elected, the executive EU commission is not alone in responsibility for legislation. Don’t forget the Council of Ministers from all EU states, most of whose members were elected back home, though not always, as in the case of the odd British life peer, for instance.

Commissioners have also often served time as members of their home parliaments, like Neil, now Lord Kinnock and Peter, now Lord Mandelson.

To the navel-gazing nationalistically-inclined, who object to aiding the Third World in dealing with climate change, I would point out that, if it is going to happen to the Third World, it will also happen here, and we, despite recession, are the relatively wealthy ones.

I would like to see more European integration on defence matters and object to much of our national defence spending - though not to properly equipping frontline troops - wondering against whom we need to defend ourselves, by, for instance, spending billions on building two of the biggest aircraft carriers ever seen, or replacing our American-made submarine nuclear deterrent?

Of course, as a sometime squaddie myself, I believe our troops should have the helicopters and other equipment they need in Afghanistan; where, but for the Blair-Bush special relationship, they would not need to be getting killed, seeking, probably in vain, to nip at the roots of Islamic terrorism.
 

The argument of those who would have us withdraw from Europe is not enhanced when one of its leading proponents, UKIP's Nigel Farage, MEP, launches in the European Parliament an unwarranted juvenile tirade against the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, and describes the president's homeland, Belgium, as a "non-country".

Such behaviour sits oddly with UKIP's burblings about Britishness, with fair play and all that supposedly on their minds. But then Mr Farage is the would-be iconoclast who palns to opposed the election of the Tory John Bercow, MP, who, as Speaker of the House of commons, should by convention be given a free return to his seat.

Since, like the equally anti European unity minded British National Party, he knows that withdrawal, which the starry-eyed elected him for, is not achievable by MEPs, he is clearly making a serious effrort to gain a toehold in Westminster, where any decisiion to pull out will have to be made.