EU: UK Membership

My Lords, this debate has registered a consensus among a great many expert and experienced Members of this House that British interests are best pursued through European co-operation. It has been in sharp contrast to the debate last Friday, where a minority of Euro-sceptics called for withdrawal. That in a sense was a parallel debate taking place in a parallel universe. I am glad that we heard, at last but if only briefly, from the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch. He used a number of his familiar phrases, of which the pension conspiracy came out strongly. He did not repeat for what would have been the third time in two weeks his reference to the deep psychotic need of the French, but I do worry about the deep psychotic need of some of our Euro-sceptics to repeat these conspiratorial views of Europe. We have to recognise, however, that much of the British public debate does take place within this parallel universe, one in which honest Englishmen are constantly outwitted by untrustworthy foreigners, and one in which Britain stands alone against a hostile continent determined to impose straight cucumbers, square tomatoes and metric measures on our embattled nation.