Daily Telegraph- Jack Straw: In 1818, Castlereagh claimed that the Congress System of diplomacy – established to secure peace and stability across a war-ravaged Europe – amounted to “a new discovery in the European government… giving to the counsels of the Great Powers the efficiency and almost the simplicity of a single state”. While the style may have dated, the sense is extraordinarily contemporary. For the huge pressures built up within that system – and its ultimate collapse – remind us of the drum beat of European history, of the fact that few political institutions, supra-national ones included, are perpetual. The more entrenched they become, the greater the stake the elites have in them; but without refreshing their popular legitimacy, they can easily fail.
In 1975, I worked on the “No” campaign in the European Economic Community referendum….. Read more