EU Reform
Debate between John Robertson and William Cash(9 years, 8 months ago)
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John Robertson (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Gentleman will have the chance to make a speech later.
Sir William Cash
I have said many times on the Floor of the House that I think we have reached the point where we will have to leave the treaties, for all the reasons that I have given and will give. The opt-outs are merely indications of the profound uncertainty with which Britain entered the European Union in the first place. As I pointed out, the veto was a completely unconditional promise for the future, and that has now been whittled away. As I will explain, there are more and more reasons why we are at the exit door. Those are not purely economic, but political.
The European project, based on Maastricht and the successive treaties, has undermined the credibility and efficacy of European integration. That is now reinforced by the practical and visible impact of endemic protests and riots in the streets of European cities and by vast unemployment in several member states, in which youth unemployment has reached obscene levels of up to 60%. I predicted that when I wrote about it in the early 1990s, and I added that it would be followed by massive waves of immigration from central and eastern Europe when the Maastricht system failed, with the consequent emergence of the far right. No one can say that that has not happened now.