Enough Brussels
Sir: Owen Paterson (‘Dave’s big push’,
10 December) is absolutely right to suggest that we should use the EU summit to renegotiate our relationship with Europe. The Prime Minister’s wielding of the veto offers real scope for change. He must now be bold enough to seize the moment. This fundamental renegotiation of our relationship needs to be based on free trade, competitiveness and growth, and not on political union and dead-weight regulation. This is not some grand utopian vision — it exists today. Switzerland in particular has an excellent relationship with the EU, enjoys easy access to its markets without burdensome regulation, and prospers as a result.
Such a relationship would reflect the fact that the British electorate in 1975 voted for a free-trade area and not a political union. It would recognise that people are fed up with mindless interference from the EU; that our businesses, especially the smaller ones, are fed up with the endless EU regulations which hamper their competitiveness; and that taxpayers are fed up with the costs of EU membership — some £40 billion over the next seven years. It would also reflect the fact that the Conservative party is increasingly fed up of promises to ‘rein in the EU’, only for yet more sovereignty to be parcelled off to Brussels.
John Baron MP
House of Commons, London SW1
Where are our allies?
Sir: So the Spectator believes the Prime Minister is in a position of ‘great strength’ in Europe (‘Leadership, please’, 10 December). If so, where are his allies? Most of the ten euro ‘outs’ want to be ‘ins’, and the new Prime Minister of Denmark, the only other country that has a legal opt-out from the single currency, says it will be in her country’s interests to join eventually.
Any influence Cameron might have had was completely squandered when he pulled the Conservative party out of the mainstream centre-right group in Europe to help him secure the leadership of his party — a piece of short-term opportunism he must now bitterly regret.
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