Britain's irrational fear of the European Union

The chauvinists have never accepted a role in Europe as a replacement for our former global power

It is as as well that the Prime Minister is provided with a large entourage. No single individual could possibly heft the voluminous advice against a European constitution with which Tony Blair has been weighed down before his departure to the summit in Greece.

After a similar bout of Euro-paranoia in the same quarters of the press a few years ago, I gave a lecture to a Brussels audience on European policy. Bloodied from my battles back home, but rendered fluent by the experience, I gave an impassioned speech on what Britain got out of being a member of the EU. When I stopped, the first question from my audience was perfectly reasonable from their different vantage point. What did Europe get out of having Britain as a member?

No doubt the editors of the Euro-sceptic press pride themselves on having stiffened the Prime Minister's resolve to insist on a good deal for Britain. They have in the process also weakened his negotiating position by reinforcing doubts on the Continent whether Britain is really committed to the European enterprise.

When Labour came to power, Britain was seen as the back marker who could be relied upon to block every proposal. Indeed the expectation that Britain would oppose any new initiative had become so commonplace that other governments paraded their communitaire credentials by speaking in support of measures while privately hoping that Britain would block them. I still remember the consternation at an early council meeting when I refused to play the part scripted for Britain by staying silent until other members realised they would have to say what they really thought if they were not to be lumbered with a frankly loopy outcome.

The problem for Britain is that the rest of the convoy eventually wearies of proceeding at the pace of the slowest member. At that point other countries become reluctant to be identified with the British position and it is more difficult for our negotiators to find the allies to protect our interests.

Towards the end of my time at the Foreign Office, I saw an assessment that Gerhard Schröder had given Britain until the end of 2002 to show we were serious about Europe. If by then we had made no move to join the euro, he would revert to the traditional German alliance with France. Since Chancellor Schröder's re-election, we have indeed seen a resurgence of the Franco-German motor, and their recent pact to resist reforms to the CAP demonstrates how damaging it is for Britain to be left out of the loop.

There is a defeatism at the base of the Eurosceptic case which is both depressing and enervating. Every new proposal for a majority vote is seen as a threat because it is assumed that Britain will always be on the losing side. Any new competence for Europe is greeted with fear as a conspiracy to do down Britain.

Ironically, this timidity is very non-British. The Eurosceptics may have private fantasies in which they see themselves as the spiritual heirs of the British Empire, but the men and women who built it were not wimps who groped for a veto whenever they were confronted by a new challenge. Britain could do worse than enter on the European project with the same self-confidence with which it once addressed the world.

The panic into which the European constitution has thrown the other end of the political spectrum, demonstrates how far apart are the British and the continental perspectives. Both the Mail and The Sun have described the European constitution as the greatest threat to our liberty for a thousand years. This is a pretty rum claim even to any British citizen who can remember that the last thousand years embraced the Spanish Armada, the Kaiser and Hitler, any one of whom was arguably more threatening than M. Giscard d'Estaing. But to the residents of the dozen new democracies of the former Soviet bloc it is incomprehensible. To them membership of the EU is a badge of citizenship of the democratic world and a guarantee that their liberties can not be stripped from them again.

The British problem is that psychologically the chauvinists in our midst have never accepted a role in Europe as a satisfactory replacement for the global power they regret losing. For France and Germany, the European Community provided a national rebound from post-war devastation. For Spain and Greece, joining the Community was a symbol that they had shaken off fascism. For Austria and Sweden, it was confirmation that the shadow of the Cold War had been lifted from them. For Britain, European entry was accompanied by no sense of national regeneration, but, on the contrary, a sense of declining international power.

This may be why we alone perceive negotiations in Europe as a zero-sum game, in which the sovereignty of nations is engaged in an endless power struggle with the competencies of Europe. In the modern, globalised world, sovereignty cannot possess the absolute, unlimited status that it enjoyed in the days of sailing ships and the telegraph wire. National inter-dependence is a more useful concept to guide us through the maze of agreements, treaties and partnerships that are essential to make our interconnected world work for its peoples. It is objectively in our national interest to pool sovereignty on some issues with our European neighbours if as a result we can deliver a better life for the people of Britain.

Tony Blair will not win the European debate in Britain by attempting in Greece to impress the Eurosceptics by shooting all their bêtes noires. He can only beat them by exposing the falsity of their central premise and demonstrating that Britain has nothing to fear and everything to gain from being fully engaged in Europe.

Why on earth should Britain be afraid of a Charter of Rights that has legal force? A couple of generations ago, a bolder, more confident Britain was the leading author of the European Convention on Human Rights. Why do we now put ourselves in the box of the sole European nation which insists on a constitution kept free of human rights?

Why do we cling to the veto as a sort of comfort blanket to fill us with nostalgia for the warm, secure world of free-standing nation states, now a surely vanished as our own years in the nursery? Nine out of 10 decisions within the EU are already taken by majority procedure. The arithmetic of the results shows that Britain is on the losing side far less often than France, Germany or Italy. Indeed we have only secured important advances for British interests, such as the directive on electronic commerce, because the veto did not apply. Whenever the Eurosceptics campaign to keep the veto, we should point out to them that they are preserving the right of more than 20 other states to veto the reforms we want.

But another Treaty of Europe, however majestic, will not turn round popular opinion. I believe we have nothing to fear from the draft constitution, but it is an enormous and unwelcome diversion from the real issues that Europe must address if it is to reconnect with the public. The EU will not command popular affection by behaving as some kind of mechanism for the constant extrusion of new constitutional initiatives.

Europe will only restore its popular standing when it convinces the electorate of Britain and every other state that it widens job opportunities, cleans up the environment and guarantees stability in the continent. The real outcome we should want from Greece is not a prolonged row, but a swift signing-off on the constitution and a return to the real world issues on which could be built the foundation of a People's Europe.