High Peak Liberal Democrats

The EU consultation: all right as far as it goes…

Have you gone through the EU consultation sent out from Liberal Democrat HQ by Austin Rathe? I did, answering all the questions or clicking the right options just like a good Lib Dem should - I declared myself committed to staying in the EU, and chose all the suggested benefits of being in the EU: freedom of movement, greater prosperity, no war in Europe thanks to the EU, and so on.

Yet I found the whole exercise unsatisfactory and lacking in nuance. The consultation is full of leading questions. One can only answer as I did (with just a little scope for variation) because to do otherwise would be to take the stance of the Conservatives or UKIP - but this hardly offers a truly rounded assessment of the EU as it exists today.

I expressed my views as I did because, being a liberal, I do accept that the propositions in the consultation are more true than not true. That is why I expect to vote to stay in the EU regardless of what David Cameron manages to renegotiate. On balance, I think the EU is still a good thing and therefore I feel the UK should be in it, both as a matter of playing our part in the world and because it's in our interest to be there. But do I think the EU is pretty much fine as it is? No I certainly do not - I think it badly needs a major overhaul.

The EU is over-bureaucratic and needs serious liberalisation to ramp up sluggish economic growth. As an institution it works overwhelmingly for its biggest members, above all Germany and France (the tension between their interests generates many of the EU's biggest problems). Smaller countries like Greece or Cyprus get bullied. And when an awkward issue like foreign migrants crops up it's every state for itself.

All this is why I've argued for the Lib Dems to take the lead in a campaign to reshape the EU radically - not the exercise Cameron is engaged in, which is more about appeasing his own right wing than properly reforming the EU. I actually think we can outflank the Conservatives on their own ground here by arguing that the EU, as an essential entity for Europe's and our good, is too important to be left much as it is.

So I hope the consultation will not be too decisive in our approach to the EU referendum campaign. By all means let's campaign to stay in, but without appearing to be cheerleaders for the EU as it is. We cannot pretend that much of the British electorate is unenthusiastic about the EU simply because most of our national press is hostile to it. Our compatriots can see there's a lot wrong with the EU. Let's respond to that mood and offer some dynamic solutions.

* Peter Jones is a member in Cardiff and the Vale, and previously a journalist at BBC Monitoring and an analyst at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

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