Tag: Place

Euro-scepticism has remained a current in British politics, long after Britain put aside centuries of anti-European sentiment to join the Common Market in 1973 and to become a member of the more highly integrated European Union 20 years later.

Until now, periodic spasms of parochialism did little lasting harm. But since the European debt crisis and recession, there has been growing sentiment across the British political spectrum for leaving the European Union. As Roger Carr, the leader of Britain’s biggest business group, the Confederation of British Industry, rightly warned on Monday, this latest trend needs to be taken seriously and strongly countered by pro-European business and political leaders. Leading political figures expect a national referendum to be called on continued British membership in the European Union, probably for 2015. If it were held today, an Opinion/Observer poll suggests, the anti-European side would prevail, with a large majority of Conservatives, a plurality of Labour voters and a significant minority of Liberal Democrats voting for a British exit.

Leaving the union would be a grave mistake, sacrificing Britain’s best hopes for a brighter economic future to half-baked longing for the simpler days when the British ruled an empire and had less need for European trade. There’s plenty of time for pro-Europe leaders to make that case. But they must heed Mr. Carr’s advice and speak up.

Twenty-seven countries now belong to the European Union, with several more nations like Iceland, Serbia and Turkey hoping to join. Even without further expansion, the union accounts for almost 50 percent of British trade and is its largest trading partner.

Of course, the sceptics can point to the European Union’s many disappointments. Too much senseless, stifling regulation flows from a bureaucracy with too little democratic accountability. Costly and indefensible agricultural subsidies to local farmers deny needed markets to developing countries and are a factor in driving economic refugees to Europe, a movement that politicians like to rant against.

The euro was established as a common currency with too little preparation and institutional support. And, over the past year, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has been destructively pushing her partners to enact laws that would prolong the recession by setting rigid deficit ceilings, denying countries the fiscal flexibility sometimes needed to revive growth.

But the union’s shortcomings are all the more reason for Britain to keep its seat at the table where Europe’s economic future will be made.

Britain, as the Continent’s third-largest economy after Germany and France, has had a crucial role in shaping European policy, pushing the bloc toward freer trade and away from political federalism. And it has helped preserve the rights of others to opt out of unwanted initiatives like the euro. With decisions on fiscal policy, bank supervision and financial regulation likely to be made in the near future, Britain’s voice is needed more than ever to protect British interests and larger European ones as well.

British supporters of continued European Union membership in all three major parties and in the business community need to counter the seductive simplicities of the euro-bashers who claim that Britain can ignore Europe and thrive on its own. They need to make the case that British engagement in Europe should be, as Mr. Carr put it Monday, “the linchpin of our wider global trade ambitions.” Britain needs the European Union as much as it needs Britain.

– A version of this editorial appeared in print on November 23, 2012, on page A34 of the New York edition with the headline: Britain’s Place in Europe.