Last week, Michael Gove’s wife, the journalist, Sarah Vine, divulged what the Justice Secretary was reading while agonising over the coming referendum. As well as Tolstoy’s War and Peace, we were told, he also read my own The Trouble with Europe. I hope that my humble wake-up call of a book helped him to make his momentous decision. 

It certainly helped me. For when I was researching the book, I was not sure which way I would vote. Moreover, the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech in January 2013, in which he clearly and honestly laid out what was wrong with the EU and what needed to be done to fix it, I found uplifting. It was clear how many people across the EU wanted radical reform and indeed how much the EU desperately needed it. If the UK’s renegotiation were to deliver this, I reasoned, then not only should most eurosceptics support continued membership, but Britain’s actions would also have served to bring great benefit to the rest of Europe. 

In the event, David Cameron’s “renegotiation” produced a mouse. His mantra that Britain is better off in a “reformed EU” is completely beside the point. The EU is not being reformed. Not only are the concessions to the UK minor, but the issue should not be about concessions to us at all. It should be about the essential nature of the enterprise. History reveals that the EU is set on a path towards a United States of Europe. Even when the EU Commission encounters setbacks, this merely delays its progress and/or prompts it to disguise its inner purpose. 

David Fuller's view

Many of us in the UK who love Europe have been increasingly dismayed by the EU’s inability to reform, against a background of deteriorating economies since the launch of the Euro in 1999.  People in other democracies want the EU to exceed, but it is increasingly losing the support of its own citizens.  

Here is a PDF of Roger Bootle's Column.