Europe: A vision of the future?
Written a lot about Europe in the past, I think I’ve found and tagged most of the old posts but have probably missed hundreds. One of the subjectst that comes up time and again is that, while I don’t like the EU as it currently stands, I like it more than the current alternatives, and truly believe it can be reformed and improved. I share this view with James Clive Matthews, who has written an excellent post on the need to take the long view and broken down his philosophy on Europe and Britain’s involvement:
10) Most individual nations are simply too damned small to have much chance of surviving on their own in the long term. Throughout history, the general trend has been for states to grow larger and larger, until some kind of limit (either geographical or geopolitical) is reached, because the larger the area you cover, the more versatile your production and the more self-sufficient you can be. - This is my primary reason for being pro-EU: I simply cannot see how a country as small as the UK (or, indeed, any European country) can survive on its own in the longer-term. Just as I see national identity being formed largely from negatives, so too is my pro-EU stance.
This is, largely, my primary reason for support as well, Britain gave up the Empire before my father was born, and joined Europe before I was born.
