Europe: Why it really matters.

Amid the recent wave of sympathy for UKIP during the local council elections, their stance on membership of the European Union is widely believed to account for their appeal. Our continued membership of the EU is now rather like a long playing record. There is a good reason for this. A succession of British Governments from Thatcher to the present day have valiantly attempted to punt the issue into the proverbial elephant grass. The trouble is, everyone knows it is still there and it is now forty years since the electorate was last deemed worthy of expressing their opinion. This is why it really matters.

Only today, a group of Conservatives are planning to introduce a Commons motion to force the House to vote on the matter. While this may seem like a step in the right direction, it once again misses the point. It is not for them to decide. Until the electorate decides, the discontent will continue to simmer until it ultimately reaches boiling point. It is the short distance to the latter upon which UKIP have so cleverly played.

Abu Qatada is once more in the news today. In his latest attempt to expose the weakness of the British legal system, he has suggested the conditions under which he is prepared to return to Jordan where he holds citizenship. Quite simply, it is membership of the EU which allows this farce to continue. As loathsome as it is to house somebody with such extreme views, in one way he is correct to show how stupid the British legal system is. The British system doesn't need his help though because everyone knows that they can't rule on anything without the due consent of the European Parliament.

It is now quite clear that the issue of EU membership will utterly dominate the result of the general election two years hence. The question we need to ask ourselves is really quite simple. What type of Britain do we want? We can either elect to stay in and suffer all that goes with that including the massive cost or we can decide to leave and go back to how we were (for the previous few thousand years).

That bit is simple enough. The tricky bit is deciding upon the party who seems most willing to let us decide. As things stand, only the pint supping fag smoking UKIP offers this choice. The Tory pledge is so tied up in political knots, it would take Houdini to work it out. If the Tories, Labour and the Liberals make no alteration to their current committments, UKIP will garner a huge wedge of votes. They may even claim some Westminster seats. They could conceivably form a part of the next coalition. Let us not delude ourselves. The chances of another majority Government are very slim now. If the latest local council elections are even slightly reliable, Labour has hardly made any inroads at all. The Liberals are being punished for a series of U-turns but their votes will largely return. The main reason the Liberal vote will hold good is that so many people have so little trust in the Tories and Labour.

The UKIP leader compared himself last week to David Owen and the SDP in the early 1980s. Not unreasonable except that the SDP was headed by a number of intellectual heavyweights and acquired a healthy number of Westminster seats. It is tricky to see their counterparts in UKIP doing likewise today. Put simply, UKIP are the party who give you a say on EU membership. If you are indifferent to people like Abu Qatada being housed here at our expense, UKIP will hold no appeal for you. I suspect though that the latter will be in a conspicuous minority. On this basis, UKIP are a force to be reckoned with until such time as one of the other parties matches their bold resolve.

I have twice visited Switzerland in the last few years and see no reason why leaving the EU will affect our trade one iota. Much of the arguments for continued membership simply don't hold water. Our trade outside of the EU is rising steadily and the Germans in particular trade far more with us than we do with them. The next two years will be interesting if only to observe the meanderings of the Tories and Labour in terms of their committments to EU membership. Interesting times ahead.