The pros and cons of Euromarriage

Timothy Garton Ash has become a bishop. In Free World, he has written something which is less a work of political analysis than an extended sermon about the value of political liberty and international co-operation between Western states. Of course, no one is against these admirable things, but they sometimes come at too high a price. Yet there is not much about the price in this worthy and rather parsonical volume, which manages to fill 250 pages while paying only the most perfunctory attention to the difficulties or the side-effects of our good intentions.

The argument goes like this. Britain’s political classes are divided into two camps: the Europhiles and the Atlanticists. This is profoundly tragic and unnecessary. Britain, says Garton Ash, must belong to Europe, because we share a European culture. Are not our high streets full of pizza parlours and our football clubs full of Dutchmen and Italians? One day the European Community will be a great economic power block of 40 nations living in mutual interdependence, the first political power in history not to be defined by armed force and a common language.