It is a mindset I have fought against all my political life. Ideals survive through change. They die through inertia in the face of challenge.
I am a passionate pro-European. I always have been. My first vote was in 1975 in the British referendum on membership and I voted yes. In 1983, when I was the last candidate in the UK to be selected shortly before that election and when my party had a policy of withdrawing from Europe, I told the selection conference that I disagreed with the policy. Some thought I had lost the selection. Some perhaps wish I had. I then helped change our policy in the 1980's and was proud of that change.
Since being Prime Minister I signed the Social Chapter, helped, along with France, to create the modern European Defence Policy, have played my part in the Amsterdam, the Nice, then the Rome Treaties.
This is a union of values, of solidarity between nations and people, of not just a common market in which we trade but a common political space in which we live as citizens.
It always will be.
I believe in Europe as a political project. I believe in Europe with a strong and caring social dimension. I would never accept a Europe that was simply an economic market.
To say that is the issue is to escape the real debate and hide in the comfort zone of the things we have always said to each other in times of difficulty.
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