The vision of a European Common Market was a good one when in 1962 membership was first envisaged for the UK. Nevertheless, we were rightly warned even then by the leader of the Labour Party, Hugh Gaitskell, that a federal Europe lurked in the background.
As far back as 1971 Edward Heath’s White Paper on entry misleadingly promised ‘no erosion of essential sovereignty’. That was untrue then and is much more so today. European law does override British law and David Cameron has failed to achieve any Treaty amendment to change this.
What we have contrived in the EU is the pretension that you can be partly a country and partly not a country. Today, in 2016, disillusionment in the present EU can be found in varying degrees in every country within it, and it has stretched to breaking point the wishes of a large part of the population of the UK.
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