Where we are and who we were

We cannot escape our history or our geography. We can forget it though. The Mail is studiously practised in amnesia. I want to remember instead, to remember where we were when Britain joined what was to become the European Union.

Britain had lost it's empire. It was still a power, but not one of the major ones. Any illusion of independence had disappeared after Suez. It was a bi-polar world, divided between two military superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Britain had been instrumental in committing America to the defence of Europe with the post-war Labour government's construction of NATO. Economically, Britain was in relative decline with deep structural weaknesses. It faced an economic and strategic dilemma. Europe or America? This was a choice to be made. There was no independence option. The Commonwealth wasn't a new empire that could keep the imperial show going. The choice was obvious. Geography and history determined it.

Britain's foremost strategic interest lay in Europe, as it still does. It had fought two world wars in Europe in the twentieth century, and many others in previous centuries to prevent the continent being dominated by a single hostile power. The European Union began as a peace project as much as an economic one. This is why Churchill was an enthusiast for the creation of a united states of Europe. The Franco German alliance was the centrepiece, as it was the conflict between these two powers that lay at the heart of the European catastrophe. By taking their place in this new community, West Germany gratefully accepted the restraints on its power as a way of atoning for its history. The EU remains a voluntary brake on German power, not a vehicle for its exercise. And as the European economy began expanding and outstripping Britain, our inclusion became imperative. Britain's integration into the European economic framework laid the basis for the reversal of our relative decline.

So where are we today? There is only one military superpower now, the USA. But the world is more or less tri-polar, split between three economic superpowers - America, China, and the European Union. Britain has played a critical role in creating the EU's status, driving through the single market and supporting expansion. And there Britain stood, one of the 'big three' (with France and Germany), the group of the most powerful nations determining the future of the Union. Now it has decided to abdicate its pre-eminent position in favour of ... what? Who knows? It is an act of historic folly.

Though time moves on, the past lingers in the shadows. A confident younger generation embraced a European future, but the old fantasies - independence, imperial greatness, choosing America over Europe - were still there and were promoted by small groups of obsessives on the left and right. Amongst general apathy, they made such a nuisance of themselves within the Conservative Party that Cameron tried to silence them by the astonishing decision to give them their heart's desire, a referendum. He gave them a referendum that was poorly planned and structured, lacking in preparation, surrounded by constitutional ambiguity, and with a curious franchise that included neither all residents nor all citizens. With much mendacity and a fair bit of illegality, they exploited their opportunity brilliantly to win a tiny majority to leave.

I suppose the one irony of Brexit is that it has created something that has never existed before. Europe had been a topic of little salience and much indifference. But now there is a fervently pro-European movement which is capable of bringing hundreds of thousands out on the streets to protest, in contrast to the few hundred (at best) that Leavers can muster. If we do leave, then this movement will be needed. At some stage we will have to rejoin. We will be weaker, poorer, and will not get anything like as favourable terms, but we will need to. History and geography makes it inevitable.