Cameron speaks

It was almost worth the wait. The substance of David Cameron’s speech on Europe was disclosed in this magazine a fortnight ago, but his delivery was excellent. He offered a clear-headed and almost touchingly optimistic vision of the type of union that the British public would find acceptable: one based on free trade, not bureaucratic diktat. One where power can flow back to countries, not be leached from them. And one founded on genuine popular consent, rather than broken promises and dodged referenda. Such a settlement would be nothing more than what the British signed up to when last consulted.

The Prime Minister based his speech on the most important point: that the Europe question is no longer about political factions. It is about the people. As he said, there is much discontent about the European Union, vividly expressed now and again on the streets of Athens and Rome. But when the European Commission conducted the world’s largest opinion poll two months ago to ask people if they would be better off out of the EU, no one showed more appetite than the British. There is a limit to how long a democracy can be kept in a union against its people’s will, so any Prime Minister would have to act.

The Euro-fanatics love to explain this in terms of xenophobia or political obsessions, and say there will always be grumbles from swivel-eyed Tories or men drinking in pubs with the St George’s flag outside, that both want the world to go away. This completely mistakes the nature of this country. It is precisely because our horizons are global — not just continental — that Britain has far less fear of life outside the EU. We have never confused independence with isolation, nor have we ever felt the need for the EU to speak for us on the world stage.