EU: Disintegration

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, if an aspiring Tory candidate for the other place decides to deny that he is Europhobic to the local party, he will not be selected. That means, logically, that UKIP is not fit for purpose, so will it not disintegrate much quicker than the eurozone recovers from its own crisis?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I am not sure that I quite get the ins and outs of all that. Generally, I hope my noble friend agrees with me that Europe is our neighbourhood but the world is our market, that we must have a balanced and sensible approach in developing good relations with a European Union which obviously requires reforming and modernising to meet the 21st century, and that we must also adjust our own nation to meet this new international landscape.