Global Britain

David Cameron did not expect to spend Christmas being toasted as a conquering hero. The Prime Minister fully intended to sign a new EU Treaty that night in Brussels, subject to a modest condition that the City of London would be exempt from even further regulation. But the French refused him so much as a fig leaf, and Nicolas Sarkozy went off to cast Britain as the villain of the summit. Had talks started at 7 a.m., rather than 7 p.m., they might have ended more amiably. But much of history is decided by frayed tempers in negotiating rooms.

It could scarcely have ended better for the Prime Minister. He is aligned on this definitive issue not just with his own party but with the British public, who back his decision by a margin of four-to-one. This despite the Europhiles’ assertion that Britain is now somehow ‘isolated’ from the rest of Europe, and Nick Clegg’s striking claim that Britain would be a ‘pygmy’ on the world stage were it not under the union of states led by Herman Van Rompuy. To consider either complaint, we have to ask: precisely how isolated are we? And what would this country have going for it, if not for its membership of the European Union?

It is odd that Britain, a rain-lashed island on the edge of Europe, should occupy such a huge role in world affairs — or have ever built an empire that encompassed two fifths of humanity. The hard power of empire has now given way to the soft power of trade, but we have remained an outward-looking nation with global horizons. Indeed, rather than being ‘isolated’, Britain has scarcely ever been more integrated with the rest of Europe and the world.