You need to write a diary explaining Ireland's structural dependence on the UK, which you bring up any time people think of doing something without Britain.

Thinking about it, I don't think that would have much effect on the enhanced cooperation things except on travel policy: you'd still need passport and border checks, and it's not as if you can simply walk from Ireland to France.

The UK leaving the EU might be problematic - we have to move stuff through them - but that's a matter of negotiating details.

I have no idea what the effect of a splintering UK would have. I doubt a federal unUK would have much effect, but full independence for lots of bits would be interesting, in the Chinese proverb sense.

Enlargement went too fast, starting in 1973.

I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from them Eugene Debs

As for the TENs, my impression is that Britain isn't actually doing any work to make them a reality. With the CTRL being the sole exception. What Jerome is saying about gas isn't pretty. And the continued hatred of railroads by the Brits is well-known. I guess they stink too much of service publique.

I doubt voltage meant anything since the difference was small to begin with. Visa-less travel certainly doesn't mean anything because it's a bygone conclusion between rich white countries. The USA doesn't have it because it's devolving into savagery. Which leaves the open market and the european budget, both of which work in Britain's favour because it's a sell-out. The same with taking part in European politics which again it does only for its own benefit and in order to sabotage Europe.

So really, the only way that Britain participates in the EU that is non-trivial, willingly, and not completely selfish, is juridically. And even there, Britain does everything it can to avoid being dragged into civilization. Did you know that Britain did everything to minimize a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights to stop the beating of children?

Much like the USA, I haven't heard of a single unalloyed good thing about Britain. Not in my entire life. And you know what? I can cite good things even about Canada and Australia, both of which are anglo and therefore evil.

And what I'm bothered about is not a simple anti-Britishness. A point both I and Migeru tried to stress is that you cast the conflict and interplay of Eurosceptics, neoliberals, etatists in only a (simplified) Franco-British framework, but the setup is different whether we speak of Scandinavian countries, new members, the Netherlands, Germany or Italy -- and for a European debate with (against) both Euroscepticism and neoliberalism, I'd wish your arguments reflected the latter too. To stress again, Euroscepticism =/= neoliberalism is the most important point for me.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

I presume that Brown accepts, in the abstract, that British membership of the EU is in the British national interest. He has however sometimes seemed uninvolved in the reality of being an EU member.

It would be bad for the prospects of a pro EU outcome to a referendum if Brown followed the Blair policy of not making the pro EU case forcefully.

In the only UK wide referendum in our history, in 1975, the yes side included the bulk of the leadership of our three major parties and a very enthusiastic cross party campaign. The no camp was a lot less organised than the eurosceptics are today. It was an odd mixture of left wingers like Tony Benn (who saw the then EC as a capitalist club), Labour centrists like Peter Shore (representing the early 1960s view of the late Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, that joining the Common Market would be the end of a thousand years of history) and right wing Conservatives (at the time given little importamce compared to the dissident Labour cabinet ministers).

The overwhelming weight of political and media support was on the yes side. Leading politicians like Ted Heath, Harold Wilson and Roy Jenkins were campaigning  positively as well as warning of the bad consequences of leaving the community.

I think the British people confronted by the solemn warnings of the leading centrist political figures of the day, were persuaded to vote yes rather than risk the uncertainties of rejecting that advice.

Since 1975 the mainstream leadership of the Conservative party has moved 180 degrees on Europe. It is unlikely that any current Tory frontbenchers would be part of a pro EU campaign. On the other hand there is less division amongst the leading Labour ministers than there was in Harold Wilson's cabinet.

Nowadays, with politicians held in even more contempt than they were in 1975, and after decades of almost unanswered eurosceptic propaganda; if Brown does not campaign wholeheartedly for the EU case the prospects for it are fairly dismal.