Britain and Europe

"Britain is not in the Euro, and has not taken part in Schengen. It has deliberately turned itself into a marginal, offshore island, irrelevant to the concerns and future of the European mainland........Britain is no longer an asset to the EU, if it ever was. It’s a pain in Europe’s fundament. Monnet had the right attitude to Europe’s British problem. Continental Europe, he thought, should go ahead with its integration without Britain; the British would then have to stew in their own juice; and sooner or later they would realise that they can’t get along on their own, and apply to join. That, of course, is exactly what happened. If the mainland Europeans had the guts to treat us like that again, that is what would happen again. The truth is that the extraordinary media hoo-ha about Blair’s supposed candidacy is merely one more sign that our political and media classes are living in a time-warp. They still think Britain matters. It doesn’t."

David Marquand: Our Kingdom

Comment: Britain is engrossed in a cloud of illusion, "living in a time-warp" and divorced from reality; believing that it is still a major power which does not need Europe, while accepting the benefits of membership and denying the rights of its own member nations within the UK. The realistic way forward is for the nations of Britain to become independently member nations within the European Union.