The history of the European Union is an attempt to bring various nations together to form something approaching a union, an ever closer union. It might not be entirely clear what the intended end point is, but it is probably something approaching a United States of Europe.
Most Conservatives are supporters of the USA, just as we are supporters of the UK. But what is it that makes us supporters of these unions, while we are often skeptical about a United States of Europe?
There are all sorts of problems with the EU, but for me the fundamental problem is that it is trying to do something which is impossible, for which reason it is trying to do it in an undemocratic way.
Czechs and Slovaks recently decided that they cannot bear to live together in one country, as did Serbs and Croats, Ukrainians and Russians. An outsider can barely tell the difference between these peoples, yet they found that living together in one country was undesirable.
How then does the EU suppose that it can make Germans and French and Italians etc. live happily together in one country?
The EU knows that these very different peoples will not choose to live together in a US of E, it is therefore by subterfuge and by gradually and undemocratically forcing them to live together that it is achieving its aim. In my view this will not work. It is the reason that the EU is riddled with contraction and the fundamental reason why the Eurozone is not working.
What this has to do with independence is just this. What the Eurozone lacks and makes that region full of contradictions, we in the UK have. Why would we give it up, when it makes our currency union possible while theirs impossible?
Two countries recently joined together in Europe, the BRD and DDR, or East and West Germany. There were difficulties, but they were overcome. A massive amount of money was transferred from west to east. Why? The answer is that the people felt themselves to be part of one country. They were all Germans. They might have been Bavarians or Prussians or Hanoverians, but they felt fundamentally that they were Germans. It is this which made the currency union of the D-mark possible.
Likewise despite our differences in the UK, despite the rivalry, we don't think of each other as foreigners. Someone from England is not a foreigner, nor is someone from Wales, nor is someone from Northern Ireland. We bicker, but we are of the same kind. We have fought together in wars (imagine the consequences for history if the UK had not existed in 1941), we have endured troubles together and great successes and this has created a common identity. It is this common identity which makes our union as countries and our currency union work so well and which also makes the USA work. Without it no union is possible in the long term. For which reason, the EU and Eurozone are doomed to failure.
What we have, this common identity is so rare and so important that it should be cherished and valued. It is one of the keys to our peacefulness as a nation, one of the keys to our prosperity. It is what the EU would love to have and will never have. It is what Mr Salmond would have us give up. He would make us foreigners in our own country.
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The Scottish independence referendum will be in 2014. I'm campaigning for Scotland to remain in the United Kingdom, by means of a regular blog exploring all of the issues involved.
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