Today we learnt that even Tony Blair thinks he has negotiated a bad deal from the EU in the past. Today he described previous agreements reached at Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs) as typically “cobbled together compromise[s]”.
Maybe if he accepts this is true, the UK’s presidency of the EU should be focused on agreeing a document that suits the British people and, of course, the people of other EU nations. Removing the interfering institutions cobbled together since the Single European Act in 1986.
There is a danger, in all this, that we may start to believe we can change the EU and make it an area of enterprise, opportunity and individual freedom. This, I am afraid, is unlikely and, were it not, I may become a europhile! While the EU is staggering and hobbling as it is, the least painful way of progressing the EU’s agenda would be to cut our ties with it and allow it to sink or succeed without us. If it ever acheives that which I doubt, namely non-Franco non-meddling, non-overly-social governance, surely then would be a good time to consider rejoining?
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