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		The wrong choice in Europe Lincolnshire Echo - July 3 2003 Bill Newton Dunn MEP, in his recent article, offers Britain a stark choice. Either we must be positive, enthusiastic Europeans, hitching our wagon to the EU's twelve yellow stars, and gaining influence in Brussels, he says, or we will be isolated and excluded, sitting in the corner and crying into our beer. As usual, he offers us a false choice. Neither of his alternatives stands up to a moment's examination. How on earth can Britain be "isolated and excluded"? We are the world's fourth or fifth largest economy, the world's second largest investor, the largest foreign investor in the USA. We are on the UN Security Council, the G8, the World Bank, the OECD, the WTO. We are leading players in NATO, and in the Commonwealth - an organisation we could make much more of. Indeed as the origin of the English language, we hold a unique position in the "Anglosphere", or as Winston Churchill used to call it, the English Speaking Peoples. We are a great trading nation, and we are key players in a huge range of international organisations. The idea that we have to depend on Brussels to avoid being "isolated" is not merely absurd. It is demeaning and insulting, and shows the low opinion which Lib-Dems have of their country. The alternative of "influence in Europe" is equally illusory. Over and over again, we are asked to give up real and valuable assets in exchange for vague, speculative promises of "influence". Yet when we try to cash in our influence, we find it has done a runner. We have given up our fishing industry. We have given up control of our foreign trade. With the new EU Constitution, we shall give up control of our industrial and social policy, our justice and home affairs, our foreign affairs and defence, and control of our borders and immigration. Yet when Tony Blair recently tried to reform the disastrous Common Agricultural Policy, he found that the French and the Germans had already left their towels on the deckchairs, and he was left out in the cold - again. Now the old Franco-German team has made a pact to block even the modest reforms the Commission thought it might make. Again and again in the European parliament I see measures that even this Labour government recognises as damaging to our country, but which we are unable to stop. And Lincolnshire voters know in their hearts that we have little influence in Brussels - which is why only a quarter bother to vote in the Euro elections. Which is better? To have 100% democratic control over our own affairs in Britain, or to be one voice among twenty-five in an enlarged EU? I have no wish to control the lives of Portuguese, or Greeks, or Slovenians. And I certainly don't want them telling us what to do. Britain does indeed face a choice, but not the one offered to us by Newton Dunn. We can choose to remain a great, confident, independent, democratic global trading nation, friends of Europe but not beholden to it. Or we can accept the EU Constitution, and become a mere off-shore province in the People's Republic of Europe. But we should be warned. Economists are predicting that the EU's share of world trade will decline dramatically over coming decades, for three reasons: because of the damaging EU social model, which destroys growth and jobs; because of the euro, which delivers sub-optimal interest rates in most member-states; and especially because of the huge projected decline in the continental work-force, and the rapid ageing of populations, which is placing destructive pressures on continental state pension schemes. Everyone involved in the debate, euro-sceptics and euro-luvvies alike, agrees that the EU Constitution represents a huge increase in EU integration. The Spanish Foreign Minister calls it "A Political Revolution". Everyone, that is, except Tony Blair and Peter Hain, who say it is "just tidying up the treaties" with "no constitutional significance". Of course Hain lies about it in the UK, but he spoke the truth in Brussels when he addressed the Convention that drafted the Constitution: "We are here to do nothing less than to create a new constitutional structure for a new, united Europe". Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who chaired the Convention, makes a vital point. He says that a treaty is a deal between governments, whereas a Constitution is a deal between the people and their government. To have any legitimacy, the people must have a voice in a referendum - as Newton-Dunn's Lib-Dem colleagues in the European parliament agree. Blair must surely give us a referendum. But if not, we have an opportunity to show what we think, in the June 2004 Euro-elections. If you want to be an off-shore province in an anti-democratic superstate, you can vote Labour or Lib-Dem - doesn't matter which. But if you oppose the Constitution, and want Britain to be a democratic, independent nation, vote Conservative.