At some point soon, it seems, we will be asked to vote on something which transcends the party politics towards which there is – understandably - much apathy: the path of our future relationship with our European neighbours. The prospect of a referendum on our EU membership has dominated headlines this week in advance of David Cameron’s ‘big speech’ on Europe, such that the possibility of a “Brexit” rather than a “Grexit” is the issue of the hour.
Certainly while UKIP remains a minority party, there is a groundswell of popular opinion that membership doesn't do us much good and costs an awful lot of money. According to a UKIP study, Britain is 10 per cent – or £150bn – a year worse off than it would be as a fully sovereign nation. Those concerns have been stoked by a vocally Eurosceptic media - "Up Yours, Delors" remains the prevailing attitude in many quarters, as you will well know if you have ever listened to a Nigel Farage tirade in the European Parliament.
Although we often hear how bad EU membership is for us, the pro-EU lobby are rather quieter - and also rather less convincing. Europe may be the UK's largest trading partner, but the idea that UK-EU trade will grind to a halt should we leave is surely a nonsense. Norway has managed to prosper outside of the EU club. Swiss companies do very well on the global stage, too, despite being non-members, just as American companies do well in Europe. And inward investment into the UK will surely continue to flow if we make sure that the UK remains an attractive place to do business.
Yet part of me still believes that a strong Europe of which the UK remains a member should be a good thing in a world dominated by trading superpowers of China and the US. Europe and the UK have certainly not always proved happy bedfellows, but such squabbling is only natural in a federal structure with a myriad of sometimes conflicting regional interests – and the UK is as guilty as any other EU member state of sometimes putting its own interests above those of the greater good.
I'm sure there will be much squabbling here as we head towards a referendum, too. But after years of tentative membership that has left Britain isolated, it's time we put political ideology to one side and led the debate on the only thing that matters, but which remains conspicuously absent: the sound economic reasoning that should determine our role in the EU.
