Yes, but no, but yes but no but…

I hope everyone else is as confused by Britain's 'negotiations' with Europe as I am. Cameron seems to exacted a series of pledges from the rest of the EU that are either meaningless or minuscule. The effect seems to be calculated solely to appease the headbangers on his own backbenchers whom he personally riled-up during the days of the coalition by promising them a referendum solely for tactical advantage. Having promised it, he then had to generate some heat to justify it, and so along comes this list of supposedly earth-shaking agreements that actually look a bit embarrassing. Some fiddling with child benefit that doesn't cost much and doesn't apply to many; an exemption from one of the vaguest clauses ever to be committed to parchment 'ever-closer union'; a temporary brake on in-work benefits in unspecified circumstances to solve a non-existent problem and – perhaps the sole thing Cameron actually cares about – some perks for his donors in the financial sector (who show their gratitude by, er, not paying any taxes). Then of course we have the utterly grotesque sight of a backbench MP and Mayor of London being invited to Downing Street for 'talks' as though he were a visiting head of state rather than a rival in the Conservative Party's power struggle. Call that democracy?

If I was a European leader I would be seriously pissed off about being recruited to play a part in a political stunt that's of no interest to most British citizens and of no international merit. Europe is falling apart under the contradictory pressures of the Syrian crisis, the environment is degrading in front of our eyes, Russia is annexing chunks of our neighbours' countries, corporations are poisoning our children, selling our data and evading their taxes and yet the British have hijacked the political agenda to ensure that sugary tea and gristly sausages get protected AOC status (while, I would like to point out, lobbying to weaken car emissions laws in the wake of the VW scandal).

The British have never been anything other than wreckers within the EU as de Gaulle knew. What baffles me most of all about the whole thing is why the rest of Europe puts up with it.



Somehow the UK wants to be America's lapdog and Europe's top dog with very little justification for why it deserves it. Wielding rented nukes is no excuse. Yes, the UK has a very large economy – apparently not large enough to fund public libraries – but an awful lot of it is either shady money or dependent on access to EU markets.

Like most people, I'm fairly conflicted by the EU debates. For the British hard left, of which I am often aligned, the EU is a capitalist plot designed to weaken the working conditions of the masses and ensure the continued hegemony of unaccountable financial elites, though the continental socialist movement doesn't feel the same way. However, I have long felt that while it is a capitalist plot, the alternative is a much nastier capitalist plot with added viciousness. Even the rightwing Western European governments are herbivorous compared with the vicious asset-stripping the UK labours under. What little workers' rights British citizens have are guaranteed by the EU and the various (but not related) European courts. The same applies to human rights (don't forget that the Conservative Party wants to abolish them), reproductive and sexual minority rights, environmental protections, consumer protections and so much more. Leaving the EU would result in a hostage situation. Between the wing of the Conservative Party that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the finance sector (look up tax-avoiding Treasury minister Andrea Leadsom's funding for example) and the wing that sees the poor, sick, Welsh, Scots, young and professional classes as the enemy and you'll soon discover that the EU's mild capitalism is a damn sight more welcoming than British government which will sell us to the lowest bidder just so long as they can carry on fox-hunting.

I look at the Tories and UKIP and see several strands of contradictory thought. They believe in the free movement of capital above all else, but detest the free movement of people. They hate regulation of banks, emissions and everything else, yet they hark back to some imaginary golden age. They hate superstates which are unelected and distant, yet adore the British parliamentary system which features 900 unelected Lords and 650 elected MPs (about to be reduced to 600). They love the British Empire at the same time as hating the EU superstate. They say that the Eurozone is undemocratic and economically unwieldy, applying the same fiscal rules to diverse conditions, while condemning the Welsh and Scottish nationalists for criticising Westminster's identical behaviour. I have a dystopic vision of a non-EU largely derived from Julian Barnes's England, England, in which the Isle of Wight becomes a theme park based on a fantasy bucolic past, while an independent England becomes a backwater ruled by narrow-minded authoritarians. Coincidentally enough, I found the Grassroots Out campaign's decision to design club ties before doing any actual campaigning hugely rich in sociological data.

It's redolent of the kind of golf-club fascism that lurks under the surface of these reactionaries, scared of women, immigrants, ethnic minorities, northerners, the Celtic nations, the poor etc. etc. And just think how many more of them there will be when Spain sends back those hundreds of thousands of Daily Mail readers who just wanted a sunnier, whiter Britain and moved to the Costas without ever learning a word of Spanish or gaining any wider perspective. I wonder if the UK political classes' blinkers mean that they assume everyone wants to come here and no True Brit will lose out by not being able to go Over There. After all as we well know, Abroad is Ghastly and They All Think In English Really, They're Just Being Difficult.

In the end, I'm sorry to say, I would take a Brussels government over any British government of whichever party. I remember all too clearly Labour's Tony Blair going round boasting that the UK had the harshest trades union laws in Europe. I don't like or understand Britain's sense of exceptionalism. Yes, its Empire was one of the largest but there's nothing it did that anyone should be proud of, nor does it justify special treatment. If part of the EU's purpose was to bind nations like Germany so closely to its neighbours that it will never misbehave again, Britain certainly deserves the same treatment. Rather than kow-towing to these braying toffs and small-minded UKIP bigots, our friends should keep Britain bound and gagged in a back room until it's ready to behave like a global citizen and good neighbour rather than the local bully.

In an ideal world, I'd vote for a EUSSR in a heartbeat: a radically democratic and socialist continental nation which afforded responsible government to a hugely diverse population with due regard for the rights of minorities everywhere, while combining to provide justice, peace, security and environmental protection in all those cases where collective action alone can make the difference. In the real world, too, membership even of this decaying structure is a positive benefit: just look at South Yorkshire, or the Welsh valleys, or the ex-industrial belt in Scotland. All these and more places have been thrown lifelines not by an indifferent and even hostile British government. I genuinely believe that Britain out of the EU will be a meaner, crueller and poorer place. But at least it might occasion the break-up of the UK and render it harmless for the ages.

So in the end, my answer to the EU referendum is vote Yes, but not with any joy. The negotiations were a political charade and it feels awful to reward this kind of cynical shenanigans with a positive outcome but the alternative is just so much worse. Imagine Farage, Grayling and Johnson's faces grinning at you from every TV screen as they joyfully announce the closure of the last women's refuge or adolescent sexual health scheme, as they sell the last old folks' home to Goldman Sachs (unelected distantly-run and unaccountable corporations are totally different from 'Brussels') and finally as they oversee the loading of the last cattle trucks to Dover bearing the last foreign care workers, while Jeremy Clarkson revs his engine ready to take them off to the the unveiling of a statue to Margaret Thatcher at Rhodes (formerly Oxford) University (chancellor: Michael Gove).

As I said, my feelings are confused and emotional, a bundle of crude political assessment, atavistic fears and ideological prejudices. But I do tend to think that in an uncertain world, building bridges with largely good neighbours is a damn sight more constructive than arrogant one-upmanship.

The Abominable Snowvole

Afternoon everybody. And what a lovely one it is for me too. I love cold weather and snow (as you can tell from the picture above this post. Snow and bopping Wolves on the nose.

Today's thick blanket of snow is having a therapeutic effect on me. Having watched Question Time last night, I'm sorely in need of a Mogadon Cocktail. Grant Shapps was on (just the one of him this time), lying with his half-Blair, half-Delboy smirk. Then Caroline Flint, the Labour's Party's Madame Mao only more rightwing and less charismatic. Roland Rudd, another Tory, Mary Beard (whom I like) and the egregious Nigel Farage.

And if you think that was a panel of gargoyles, the Lincoln audience was living proof that we're only an EU referendum away from pogroms, flaming torches, pitchforks and crosses burning on lawns. If I learned one thing from last night's episode it's this: however lovely the Cathedral may be, never go to Lincoln.

What most enraged me about the show was the panellists' determination – with the honourable exception of Mary Beard, who didn't have a political or financial dog in the fight – to lie, distort and mislead for tactical advantage. Not a shred of idealism or principle between them. Especially Shapps, who while he attacked Labour's (tepid) Europeanism failed to mention that the traitorous Fritz-lover who signed the Single European Act was one Margaret Thatcher. Nor that the Charlemagne Prize for efforts on behalf of European Unity was once awarded to that notorious garlic. Meanwhile, Mr Farage failed to explain why one economic and political superstate encompassing several national and linguistic groups, nations and economies is oppressive (the EU), while opposing Welsh and Scots nationalism.

And while we're on the subject, I find that the more opposed to immigration a British person is, the prouder they are of the British Empire – which as far as my admittedly weak grasp of history gets me, involved lots of heavily armed British people immigrating to lots of other peoples' countries, taking their jobs, land, wives, children, gold etc… Or am I missing something? Perhaps it's just that British people only like repressive superstates when it's them doing the repression. Having to reason things through with foreigners as equals… it's just not cricket!


So here's my point of view on the European Union.


Maybe it's because I'm an Irish citizen with recent ancestors who fought the British on two continents, but I find all this Empire nostalgia plain embarrassing. Give it up! Have some self-respect. Look at Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium. They all had a go at being imperialist powers. Some of them behaved even worse than you Brits (looking at you, Belgium). But they moved on. They don't sigh with regret at what they lost. They're all rich, peaceful and (mostly) nice to each other inside and outside their borders. They don't wander round the world tugging at America's sleeve shouting 'me too, me too'. They don't feel the need to wave nuclear weapons in people's faces as though the power to devastate the planet somehow confers the right to moral and political leadership. That's the politics of the playground. I don't think the British realise that far from leading an 'English-speaking world', their white colonies slightly pity them and everybody else hasn't yet forgiven or forgotten. This fantasy of once again standing alone (i.e. just being America's butler) is embarrassing.

Europe's full of interesting, quirky, well-meaning and rich cultures. Why not just try being one of them? Just for a bit. You don't have to eat the horse or drink the local moonshine. You can keep your clothes on at the beach. Nobody's going to force you to replace that can of Carling with a Belgian fruit beer or a German Dunkel. Your kebabs are safe, as are your awful trains, nightclubs and architecture. You don't even have to learn anybody else's language, or stop believing that they all think in English and are just trying to be difficult.

David Cameron debuts a new look for his Europe speech

Just try negotiating rather than shouting at everybody like a country-sized street drinker with a grudge.

I'm for it. This is unfashionable on the hard left of which I count myself a part, but I see it as an extension of the left's internationalist tradition. I wouldn't keep the EU we have – much of it is a capitalist plot – but I'd happily be a member of the United Socialist States of Europe. Even the EU we have is better than living in a UK stuck on its own.

Why? Because the EU has consistently given British workers and citizens better protection than the British Government. Whatever party's in charge, British governments serve their corporate masters. Remember Tony Blair? When he wasn't prosecuting illegal wars, he wandered the world boasting that Britain had the 'most flexible' workforce in the West, by which he meant 'least protection against exploitation, unfair dismissal, unsafe working condition', the worst pay, the worst benefits and the fewest rights of organisation of any European country. In office, he took the UK out of the Social Chapter, ensuring that British workers could be made to work for longer with even fewer protections. The British Establishment's Utopia is one in which the masses work for low pay in the services industry: doing each other's nails, picking orders in an Amazon compound, offering oral pleasure in out-of-the-way lay-bys. No union rights, no unfair dismissal rights, no collective bargaining, no health and safety laws. Result? Massive shareholder gains, workers unimportant.

Then enter the Tories and their Lib Dem puppies. They've spent the past two years stripping away what little was left of these protections, and mounting a sustained attack on the European Court of Human Rights. It's not an EU body, but it still has Johnny Foreigner making rude comments about Britain's nasty little habit of kidnapping suspects, suspending habeas corpus, turning a blind eye to torture, suppressing war crimes yada yada yada. My MP wants us to delete the Human Rights Act because apparently we've all got too many rights. Yes, you heard me. Too many!

And there are a few other things the Europeans gave us apart from decent justice and workers' protection. Clean Air: Boris Johnson is currently lobbying to prevent EU prosecution for decades' of illegal levels of pollution in London's air. Clean water. Some semblance (however insane) of a farming and fishing policy which isn't just 'help yourself lads'. Decent transport and infrastructure: go anywhere outside Central London and you'll find a discreet EU flag next to major improvements because South Wales, Scotland, the North-East and all sorts of other areas have been left to rot by the cosmopolitan financiers and their tame UK political parties. Who dredged and cleaned the Thames? The EU. Who's paying to electrify the North-West train system? Not the train companies: the EU! Who gave the UK £2.282bn for research and development? Those perfidious Europeans! Who keeps those rabidly anti-European farmers in business? Europe! How much does it cost us? Well, if you earn £50,000 a year, you give the EU £70. That's even better value than the licence fee!

There's just one more thing Europe gave us. Peace. I'm really enjoying it. Before the EU there were lots of wars between European states. Since the 1950s when it was founded: none. No more gas chambers, no border squabbles, no military coups in member states. Ireland fought the British for hundreds of years. And now we're partners. The British v the French, the French v the Germans, the French v Spain, Spain v the Netherlands, Germany v Poland… I could go on. But never again.

So apart from workers' rights, justice, a cleaner environment, decent transport, infrastructure investment and peace, what did the Europeans ever give us?

Oh yes: sensible, thoughtful politics without the braying, brachiating willy-waving of cynical, dishonest blowhards of the type we get over here.

EU Super-state? Yes please.

And now I'm off to build a snow Nigel Farage. He'll like it: it'll be blanc de blancs.

Cameron's European Future

Thanks to yet more bureaucratic tyranny by our European overlords, intent on restricting the ancient freedoms of the Anglo-Saxon financial sector, David Cameron will now be represented at all meetings of the European Union thusly:

Uppal the greasy pole

Paul Uppal MP knows which side his bread's buttered. Half of the Conservative Party MPs voted for a referendum on EU membership last night, against party policy. But not Paul: he's never stated a view either way in public (when the wind changes so often, clever cynics never leave hostages to fortune), and last night he voted with his party leadership.

Was this a principled vote? Of course not. Those Tory rebels have ruled themselves out of government jobs. Odds on Uppal getting his feet under a ministerial table have just risen. Be afraid, citizens, be very afraid.

I don't want a referendum on EU membership. It would just be an opportunity for racist newspapers to play on the racist fears of a reactionary minority which won't take a reasoned view of the benefits and drawbacks of membership.

Personally, I'd vote for a United States of Europe in a heartbeat, as long as it's a United Socialist States, rather than a machine for imposing the economically, environmentally and socially destructive neoliberal policies which have beggared us all. The current EU is unwieldy, undemocratic and often corrupt - but having lived in the UK for rather a long time, I'm well aware that on things like working condition, the EU has always been better for us than our own governments.

On a more tactical basis, I'm quite pleased by this huge Tory revolt. I'm hoping that, like the US Republicans and Tea Partiers, the party structure is promoting extremist voices. It might look like there's a upsurge of extremism, whereas Americans in general are moving away from this nuttiness. This leads to the hollowing out of the party's support and what seems like a radical insurgency actually becomes the last hurrah of the nutters. The Tories can eat themselves up over Europe and normal citizens will treat them like the weirdos they are.

Hysterical liars of the week

Check out this front page, from the Daily Express (the paper that even the Daily Mail thinks is barking mad):

Is it true? No, of course it isn't.

FURY erupted last night after a European Union plot to “carve up Britain” by setting up a cross-Channel region was exposed. 

Senior Tories condemned plans to merge southern England and northern France into a territory called “Arc Manche” complete with its own flag. 

Brussels chiefs have already earmarked millions of pounds for lavish projects designed to give the zone its own “identity”.

It's simply an hysterical bit of utter rubbish which - shamefully - appears to be dictated by a Conservative Government minister in the run-up to the local government elections. Propaganda of the very worst sort - ruined only by a) being lies and b) the Express's plummeting readership. This sort of stuff is why the British press has such an awful reputation.

Tory Cabinet Minister Eric Pickles yesterday revealed details of the plan inherited by his Whitehall department from the previous Labour government.

The Communities Secretary said: “Labour ministers have been caught red-handed conspiring with European bureaucrats to wipe England off the map and replace our historic boroughs, counties and cities with transnational Euro-regions.

It's an infrastructure and tourism idea - the EU hasn't got the right to merge countries! I notice too that in the 'minds' of Pickles and the Express, 'southern England' and the UK are the same thing - as I've long suspected. As is traditional with this kind of 'journalism', we get several paragraphs of confected outrage from weirdo extremists (Douglas Carswell, Nigel Farage, the Tax-Evaders Alliance), before we reach the shocking truth about this fiendish Euro-plot: far from being:

“a bid to subvert the St George’s flag and the Union Jack”

it's actually:

a series of cycle routes seeking to link northern France and southern England… a £2million travelling exhibition of “contemporary” artworks and even a bizarre international tour by circus clowns costing £5.5million

Those evil Euro-Clowns!

However, I have news for the Express and for the Conservative Party. There WAS a serious plan to merge the UK and France (again - let's not forget that under the Normans England and the bits of Britain it controlled were outposts of Normandy, and the Plantagenets claimed to be Kings of France and Britain).

The final "DECLARATION OF UNION" approved by the British War Cabinet stated that:

France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union. The constitution of the Union will provide for joint organs of defence, foreign, financial and economic policies. Every citizen of France will enjoy immediately citizenship of Great Britain, every British subject will become a citizen of France.

So which traitorous nutter wanted to declare an Act of Union between Britain and France, in 1940? Why, it was that dangerous Europhile, winner of the Charlemagne Prize for his contribution to the European Ideal, advocate of a United States of Europe ("We Must Build A Kind of United States of Europe" - Zurich speech, 1946) and, er, Conservative Prime Minister and war hero, Winston Churchill!

And that's not all: another Conservative PM, Anthony Eden, considered it again, in 1956!

Let's see what Pickles and the Express have to say about that…

Even stopped clocks tell the time correctly twice a day

You may have noticed that I think David Cameron is Tory Scum No. 1. I yield to no-one in my distaste for this overfed, arrogant, pompous child of privilege.

Yet he said two things today which I applaud.

"Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp."

and

When I think about what Turkey has done to defend Europe as a Nato ally ... I believe it's just wrong to say Turkey can guard the camp but not be allowed to sit inside the tent."

Turkey's continued exclusion from the EU is a disgrace. There are huge challenges before that state should be allowed into the union - in particular, its army's repeated habit of deposing governments it doesn't like and the Kurds' repression - but Germany, France and other nations use these issues as a fig-leaf for simple anti-Islamism. This predates the recent troubles, and stems from the assumption that now-secular Europe is founded on broadly Christian principles. I don't know if this was once true, but it certainly shouldn't be now.

Turkey's hugely important strategically - bordering most of the countries the West has invaded over the past century or so, friendly with Iran and (increasingly less so) Israel - and ever more significant economically. Time to widen the borders.

President Blair, I presume?!!!?

'Blair in frame to become first EU President' screams the Guardian headline: apparently the Minister for Europe has given him the UK government's support.

How do we all feel about this? Why would Europe want him? He was utterly weak on the matter of Britain joining monetary union. He negotiated opt-outs for Britain on worker protection - then boasted about it. He made Britain's former slavish devotion to US foreign policy look amateur, pretty much taking up residence on his knees in front of Bush's crotch. There's no way he can convince as Europe's public face, defender, cheerleader. His religious mania seems all-powering, he seemed reluctant to engage with genuine democracy - preferring goverment by cabal and quiet word - and he has blood on his hands in pursuit of wars most of the other European countries opposed. He shares none of Europe's commitments to moderating free-market capitalism - he's a messenger boy for the least progressive forces in world politics and economics, and he's not even very bright.

I can see why a youngish man with millions of pounds and a Messiah complex might want the job: what I can't see is why anyone else would want to enable this ambition. I know he's restrained his minions from sacking Gordon Brown, but nobody else owes him anything. I wish he'd just retire to one of his many mansions and shut up.

Euro-pudding or mean Little England

Amidst all this disgust about political sleaze, there's an election going on, for the European parliament. I'm a hardline socialist, but unlike most on the proper left, I'm in favour of a United States of Europe - as long as it's a United Socialist States of Europe.

Despite its structural weaknesses, corruption, inefficiency and inevitable political fudging, the EU is currently a better state to be a part of than Britain. In some ways, the EU is a capitalist plot, as my comrades on the left say - but Britain under the Tories and New Labour is a capitalist concentration camp, in which de-unionised workers labour for longer hours, lower pay, less protection and fewer rights than our European cousins. So I'm happy to trade a little bit of British state power for egalitarianism and a better deal for the worker.

Will Hutton, a centrist whom I respect greatly, says that only a shock will remind us of how brilliant EU membership is:

Along with the BNP, the opinion polls suggest that more than 50% of the vote will go to anti-EU parties. I'm not sure the British know the consequence of their vote, but a dynamic is in train that will lead to our exit from the EU.

As a pro-European, I don't want this to happen, but I've begun to wonder whether it wouldn't be better for Europe. Only living outside the EU as the sceptics want - creating a politically diminished Britain fit for hedge funds, tax-avoiders and asset-strippers - is likely to convince the British majority that the option is a disaster.

Meanwhile, the Europeans can deepen the EU, along the way empowering the European Parliament. When a Tory government leads an impoverished, embittered Britain back into the EU in 25 years' time, reality will have imposed political maturity.

His point is that Europeans are beginning to question the benefit of being the targets of constant, bitter carping from Britain - yes, the UK is a net donor to the EU, but its diplomatic and political efforts are so selfish (and sometimes so slavishly pro-American), its financial policies so wholly devoted to beggar-thy-neighbour quick-buck capitalism, that the continental Europeans are starting to wonder whether an amicabledivorce might be better for them too.

Sorry about the margins and italics - this bloody interface won't let me put them back and it's driving me crazy.

And the prize for consistency goes to:

…who tells The Observer that women politicians shouldn't be judged by their looks.

Caroline Flint, the minister for Europe, who is interviewed in today's Observer Woman, says media attention on her looks is insulting

She's absolutely right. Even better, she utters these timeless truths (in the news section teaser for the interview) across the space of several pages of the Observer Woman, while posing in a range of beautiful, revealing dresses while sporting the hair and maquillage of a Fifties femme fatale.

Needless to say, this softest of soft interviews (does she have leadership ambitions) doesn't find space to point out that she is the hardest, most elitist of the Blairite clique. You couldn't switch on the TV in the late nineties without seeing her advocating benefit cuts for the very poorest or some other mean-spirited, arrogant attack on the underclass, all delivered with a straight face as she claimed that sating the bitterness of the Daily Mail was socialism in action. Who cares that she's damaged the lives of women in this country (never mind the Iraqi victims of the war she loved), when she looks stunning in pastel silk?

She's hard, selfish, determined and utterly soulless - she'll go far. Still, policy is so last century - it's how she looks in a frock that seems to matter, which is an odd stance for a liberal newspaper's women's magazine to take, but there you go - we've been down the post-ideological rabbithole for a long time now.

Let's get UKIP

This is what the Advertising Standards Authority told me when I inquired about complaining about UKIP's disgraceful and cynical appropriation of United States of Europe enthusiast Winston Churchill for their grubby little campaign:

Dear Dr [Vole]

Thank you for your e-mail to the Advertising Standards Authority.

Advertising or marketing communications whose principal function is to influence votes in local, regional, national or international elections are exempt from the advertising Codes so we are unable to investigate complaints about these.

Kind regards

Cynical Ben, in an earlier comment, suggests that this means we can found a 'Nick Griffin is a Twat' party and save up for posters proclaiming this principle. Anyone up for starting a kitty? We could extend it to UKIP as well.

Cheating dishonest UKIP scum

You may have seen this billboard for UKIP (BNP for the Mail-reading accountancy classes), the United Kingdom Independence Party, recruiting Winston Churchill to their anti-European cause. (As an aside, how do they manage to oppose the European Union while defending the United Kingdom Union?). The accompanying election poster declares, amidst a load of largely inaccurate bullshit, that Winston wouldn't let it happen. 

Er… let's see what Churchill (largely a bad man with the necessary skills needed to save Britain in its darkest hour) had to say about a United Europe shall we?

"I wish to speak to you today about the tragedy of Europe. (...) Yet all the while there is a remedy which, if it were generally and spontaneously adopted by the great majority of people in many lands, would as if by a miracle transform the whole scene, and would in a few years make all Europe, or the greater part of it, as free and as happy as Switzerland is today. What is this sovereign remedy? It is to recreate the European Family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe. (...) The first step in the recreation of the European Family must be a partnership between France and Germany."

Winston ChurchillSpeech at Zurich University 19th September 1946

(http://www.historiasiglo20.org/europe/anteceden2.htm)

Now UKIP might claim that Winston wanted an EU to keep France and Germany peaceful without Britain necessarily being a member, but there's no denying that he was a fan, and the Franco-German union is merely 'the first step'. Even better than this, fact fans, is his plan presented to Parliament in 1940 for a united British-French nation. Eat that, a-historical little Englander bigots. 

(I'm an itchy, intolerant leftwinger. Traditionally the left sees the EU as a capitalist plot, whereas the right sees it as a socialist plot). In many ways, they're both right - but I'd rather have a reformed united Europe than the centre-right government we have now).