European Affairs

The hon. Lady just glosses over the fact that the Irish are being given a second chance, as if they should somehow appreciate that. We have not even had a first chance. Why not give it to us? Let us have a general election, and then we will have the opportunity. I promise the hon. Lady that it will be in our manifesto, and it will be done very quickly. Let us remind ourselves what would happen if the Lisbon treaty were fully ratified by this country. We would be signing up to an EU President, an EU Foreign Minister and a single legal personality for the EU, under a self-amending treaty, with national vetoes to be abolished in 60 key areas. It was interesting listening to the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee—who disrespectfully scuttled out of the Chamber 10 seconds after he had finished his speech. He talked about the European Union as a volunteer club, and many hon. Members would agree that that is exactly what it should be. We are volunteers in the club, and we have some general interests on which we come together, but there are ways in which we differ greatly from each other. Like the hon. Lady, I grew up in Europe—[Hon. Members: "We all did."] I meant that I grew up in various different places across Europe, rather than in one place, but I am grateful for the correction. The important point is that there are some wonderful differences as well as the things that bring us together. The European Union is forcing us together and labelling us all the same. We are not all the same; we have some interesting differences—we manage our economies in different ways, for one—and those are what we hope to defend. "One size fits all" simply does not work. The consequence has already been seen when the EU tried to speak with a single voice about what should be done about the threat from Saddam Hussein. There was no unilateral agreement. The same happened with Bosnia. I served in Bosnia in the lead-up to the Dayton peace accord. That was an EU responsibility, and if I remember correctly, it was Lord Owen who walked away from the table. He was the EU representative, but he could not make progress. It had to be done by the Americans, and it was not until Richard Holbrooke came in that we could sign the accord and get things moving. Europe should be less like line dancing and more like rock and roll. We all want to dance to the same tune, but we do not want to dance all lined up with arms linked; we want to do our individual thing in the same room, enjoying ourselves as neighbours. Labour Members claim that the Conservatives want to run away from the European Union, but that is wrong. We want to change the European Union to make it work for the benefit of Europe. It was designed to provide a platform for free trade. It was also designed, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) said, to prevent conflict, but it has now gone beyond that and is taking powers away from sovereign nations to run Europe as a whole. That is where we say enough is enough, and that is why we say that powers should be handed back. We had an opportunity to vote on this issue in March 2008, and I am proud to say that I voted against the Lisbon treaty and in favour of a referendum. Sadly, we will not get one from this Government, and they are running away from what the nation wants. It was interesting to hear the comments of the Liberal Democrat spokesman. Rather than trying to justify why his party scored an abysmal 13 per cent. in the recent elections, he chose to attack the Conservatives. He did not even touch on what Labour had to say. That reflects the writing on the wall about where things are going with the movement of power in this country. I believe that a voluntary club is the idea on which we need to focus, and that that is what a Conservative Government would bring about. At the moment 27 countries containing 490 million people are in the EU. As has been mentioned, Croatia, Turkey and Macedonia, along with other countries, want to join. Indeed, 10 years down the road we are very likely to see other countries, such as Albania, Bosnia and—moving forward—Ukraine and Turkey, becoming members. Will it be possible to get all those people round the table to agree some of the key policy issues on international foreign policy? No, it will not. The worry is that that will lead to stagnation. Decisions will not be made, and we will end up trying to run Europe as a whole. That will mean that we will lose the individuality that is so critical in allowing countries to flourish as they have, while being united closely enough to avoid the wars that were the original reason why the Union was put together in the first place. Much comment has also been made on what will happens with the European People's party. People need to understand how the European groups operate in order to comprehend fully why many parties sign up to them. They get funding: that is the bottom line. They get large sums of money. If a party breaks away from those groups—from the EPP, the party of European Socialists, or the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe—it loses an awful lot of funding. That is one reason why many other parties are not thinking of jumping ship right now, or are cautious about it. They want to ensure that the Conservatives are forming a group that will move forward. We are proving that that is the case. I am sure that announcements will be made in the not too distant future about how we will set up a group that will say, "We want the European Union to work, but we do not want to cede powers substantially. We want to honour the nations individually, too."