Article For Folkestone Herald and Kentish Express

23 June 2005

First of all apologies for last week’s mix-up. Due to a multiple breakdown in communications the Herald printed a year-old article instead of the one I’d written. Pity because the lost article waxed lyrical about the new playing field for Mundella Primary School in Folkestone the opening of which I had attended and Stowting Primary School which I had also visited.

Last weekend it was Lydd Club Day and the Civic Service at Hythe. The glorious weather was an undoubted advantage for Club Day but more of a mixed blessing for the Civic Service!

But I think I owe it to readers this week to say a few words about last weekend’s summit of the European Union. It has been variously described as a crisis, a shambles and a turning point. To me it seems like a great opportunity. This is why.

Fore decades those of us who have been opposed to the integrationist view of Europe – the view that the European Union was bound, one day, to end up as a single state – were told we were on the wrong side of history. There was, we were told, an inevitability about Britain joining the Euro and signing up to the Constitution and all the other elements of the “project”. Opposing them was a waste of time. We were urged, time after time, not to “miss the train.”

Recent events have marked an end to inevitability. Hardly anyone is now suggesting that Britain should join the Euro. Indeed voices in Italy are being raised suggesting they should leave.

And the Constitution is, to all intents and purposes, dead.

Many of those who were previously calling on us to get on the train now seem, at last, to see that it is heading for the wrong destination.

That is why I see these events as a great opportunity.

I hope Mr Blair will seize the initiative and set about creating a different kind of European Union – more flexible and accountable, less centralised and remote. Above all we need a European Union that does less and does it better – and starts returning power from Brussels to the member states.

It is a great opportunity. I hope Mr Blair will take it.