Political studies 2007
Britain and europe: Marriage on the rocks?
Thirty four years after joining the then European Economic Community, one might have expected Britain’s membership of the EU to arouse greater enthusiasm at home. Markets have been liberalised to our advantage and the wilder dreams of the arch-federalists have been dashed, not least because the expansion to the east that British politicians always supported inevitably slowed the “ever-closer union” envisaged in the Treaty of Rome. But we are still reluctant Europeans. “We have won the battle for Britain in Europe,” says one former British ambassador to the EU, “but lost the battle for Europe in Britain.” Perhaps the case simply needs to be made by politicians who sound like they really believe in it.
