Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Spectator debate: Is it time to leave the EU?

 Christopher Booker, of the Sunday Telegraph, proposed the motion by taking a blast at his own side.

 Christopher Booker, of the Sunday Telegraph, proposed the motion by taking a blast at his own side.

Christopher Booker, of the Sunday Telegraph, proposed the motion by taking a blast at his own side. The present Euro crisis had inspired Tory Eurosceptics to talk of “a re-negotiation” and a “repatriation of powers”. This, he said, utterly misconstrued the EU project and its “sacred aim” to strip nations of their rights and “never to give back a power once ceded.” He called the EU “a 40-year-long slow-motion coup d’etat” and “a crazy make-believe project” whose hubristic ambitions were now facing nemesis. He heaped scorn on Herman van Rompuy for claiming that the best remedy for the Euro was “more Europe”. Booker said the disintegration of the EU is “as certain as anything in history”.

Phillip Souta, director of Business for New Europe, hung his case on two pegs. The benefits of Europe are vast, he said. And the alternative is risible. During the 1990s, a debate between “deepening” or “widening” the EU had been fought and won by the wideners. So the prospect of a United States of Europe had vanished. Those who feared that spectre, like Christopher Booker, had fallen prey to “the Franco-German federalist conspiracy theory”.

Britain will have more influence inside Europe, he suggested. We can liberalise the EU from within and wield extra clout abroad. Rejecting the idea of a UK referendum he called it “damaging for the country”. Heckled at this point by the largely Eurosceptic audience, he insisted that “nobody is forcing us to be members of the EU”. The heckling increased. “UKIP at the last election,” he reminded us, “polled just 3.1 per cent.” He argued that an EU break-up would send us back to the protectionism and competitive devaluations of the 1930s. As for the notion that the UK might hold Europe to ransom and demand a new settlement, “that is not British,” said Mr Souta.

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