In September 1946 Winston Churchill announced that it would require an “act of faith” to save Europe from “infinite misery and indeed from final doom”. Only the creation of a “kind of United States of Europe”, he argued, would rescue the continent from further chaos. He was speaking, of course, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The European situation today is less dramatic, but still highly alarming. We face a series of interlocking challenges that are individually and cumulatively bringing the continent to its knees. It has experienced the unchecked resurgence of an authoritarian Russia since 2007, the emergence of Islamic State in the Middle East and its Islamist affiliates on the European home front, a financial and economic crisis since 2008, the return of the “German problem” with the imposition of EU-wide austerity policies primarily at Berlin’s behest from 2010 or thereabouts, the prospect of secessionist movements in Catalonia and elsewhere since about 2012, as well as the rise of Eurosceptic feeling across the EU in countries as diverse as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Hungary and Greece.
As if all this were not bad enough, the long-running British Question has re-emerged with a vengeance. This goes back to the original ambivalence at the time of the UK’s accession in 1973, as to whether it was merely joining a free-trading association, or signing up to a programme of ever closer political and economic union. When the euro crisis prompted a fresh surge of fiscal and political integration, matters came to a head at the infamous December 2011 summit. There, in order to protect the interests of the City of London, Prime Minister David Cameron vetoed the EU treaty designed to save the euro, and immediately found himself not merely isolated, but circumvented by the rest of Europe. Since then the EU’s principle of free movement has reignited the immigration issue in the UK, as the relative dynamism of its economy sucks in labour from across the Union. The Conservative right, after a long period of relative quiescence, has been cranking up the pressure for withdrawal, or at least an early referendum on membership of the EU. Moreover, while the formerly fringe UK Independence Party failed to win more than one seat at the general election, it had millions of voters, all of them presumably hostile to the EU. The Prime Minister has sought to head off these challenges by pledging a referendum on EU membership in 2017. His stated hope is that he will be able to renegotiate Britain’s position in the EU, or even “reform” the EU as a whole, in such a way that he can recommend a Yes vote.
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