Why Chris Booker and his band of europhobes have got it wrong

Yesterday's Daily Mail saw Christopher Booker go off on one about the EU -total shocker- but whereas conspiracy theories such as his are for the most part laughable in their innaccuracy, they become a problem when they stand to misinform the good readers of the Daily Mail about an issue that could go to a referendum and is vital to the national interest.

Now, conspiracy theories as they go appeal to people in large because they conveniently fit certain key facts around a given theory, as opposed to fitting the theory around all the key facts. This allows such theorists, whether they argue that Elvis is still alive, the Bush administration orchestrated 9/11 or, as in this case, that the EU is a pseudo fourth reich gradually taking control of Europe armed not with a vast military, but a vast bureaucracy, to swagger around with a heightened sense of righteous indignation about them.

Of course, it helps to get the facts right.

The reviled EU bureacracy for example, is no bigger than Birmingham city council (not that an army of brummies marching over Europe is to be taken at all lightly) and yet still more productive than the entire of Whitehall.

Booker, however, gave several specific examples to justify his claim that the Brown government was perpetrating a fraud against the public by not calling a referendum on the upcoming Reform Treaty. I will focus on two of them.

He first claimed that the chaos surrounding Britain's waste disposal service is down solely to the EU, specifically that everything ranging from "the plethora of different coloured bins into which we are expected to put our waste to the national epidemic of flytipping." Now, being concerned about the sovereignty of one's country is one thing, but blaming the fiendish act of flytipping on Brussels too? Don't get me wrong, if someone sees a Eurocrat flying over here from Belgium, with his rubbish and dumping it in High Street litter bins, they should be taken down like anyone else, but otherwise I think we Brits will have to shoulder the blame for that one.

As for the wider issue of waste, it is true that we are bound by certain directives such as the landfill directive which sets targets of by how much we must reduce our dependence on landfill sites over a phased period of years. However, it should be remembered that such directives must be approved by the Council which means getting the approval of the UK government and also that most of the measures put in place to meet these requirements have been at the behest of our own government.

Another wild accusation that Booker made was that the Common Foreign and Security Policy was to blame for the horrendous quagmire facing British troops in the Middle East. How an earth did he come to this conclusion? Apparently the EU is now forcing us to buy Eurofighters and navy carriers "all to equip us to fight imaginary wars in the future." Even if we ignore the fact that the EU does not have the power to send the British military to Tesco due to the national veto over all things defence, the Eurofighter has been in the works since the 1970s. Granted the process of actually ordering, building and deploying the damn things has been woeful, but this has nothing to do with the EU. In any case, only the MoD is to blame for failing to properly equip the brave men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and if anything Booker owes them an apology for trying to make political hey out of their plight.

As for the navy carriers and the imaginary wars, I wonder if Booker voiced the same concerns when it came to replacing Trident. And when he referred to imaginary wars was he discounting the two far away wars we're already fighting as they've already happened? Does he not understand that the UK's interests abroad are the same as those of our continental neighbours and the United States? That the Rapid Reaction Force exists in recognition of European states' inability to fight today's wars of high technology and hugely advanced -and expensive- weaponry on a single defence budget and therefore seeks to make the most of what we have? That it is designed to consolidate our presence in NATO and to work with the American military machine in providing support or speedy and decisive intervention? Needless to say, it is quite mind-boggling how he and other euro-phobes like him can throw stones at the EU over the issue of sovereignty only to pay little if any regard to the importance of national security above all. But then, the national interest has never been top of the europhobe agenda. To the contrary, their stance is built on misplaced ideology at best and pure xenophobia at worst.

Of course, his main gripe though, as with all europhobes at the moment was with the Reform Treaty which he insisted is the Constitution in disguise. This latest treaty does include some of the provisions from the constitutional treaty it is true, but some of the most contraversial elements such as: the constitutional label, that would have done away with the convention of progress by international treaty alone, the flag and anthem, charter of human rights and the reference to 'free and undistorted competition' as the EU's key goal have been dropped. The items kept in, such as a legal personality for the EU -this already exists in the WTO- a permanent EU foreign affairs representative, extended qualified majority voting, as well a mechanism for national parliaments to directly scrutinise EU draft legislation, will have far less impact on British sovereignty than the Maastricht treaty or the Single European Act, neither of which were deemed to warrant a referendum.

Ultimately, of course we cannot retain absolute sovereignty and remain in the European Union, just as we can't retain it and remain in NATO or the World Trade Organisation. But sovereignty is not an end in itself, certainly not in international politics. The aim is the maximisation of the national interest which in turn gauarantees the security of the nation. The retention of absolute sovereignty was not in the national interest at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and it certainly isn't now with the resurgence of Russia and the emergence of China. The pooling of sovereignty in Europe has also served to gurantee the economic, political and military security of its constituent members. The EU's funds have been used to propel member states' economic growth such as Ireland, to assist countries in a state of emergency such as Greece this summer and to offer the institutional and economic support necessary to protect fledgling democracies, emerging from brutal dictatorships.

Most importantly, through binding member states economies, it has delivered peace in Europe. Although, the role of NATO cannot be understated in protecting Europe from itself through threat of American military intervention, since the demise of the Soviet Union, that responsibility has been transferred to the EU. Indeed, rather than simply preventing Germany from invading France again, as NATO achieved, the EU has taken this one step further by converting the two from warring neighbours to resolute allies and it has achieved this by forcibly binding their interests together. It is no coincidence that steel was the first industry to be merged in the infancy of the EU, it is the most crucial industry for a country at war.

In turn, the benefits of the EU to the individual citizens are unparalled anywhere else. The common market has provided for the free exchange of goods, turning the EU into an economic superpower. Europeans also enjoy freedom of movement whilst the rights they enjoy at home are replicated abroad whether it be in the guise of cheap phonecalls or legal representation. EU directives on the environment, investment in regional development and resolute defence of human rights have done far more for individuals in this country than the government could ever have done alone. I often find it strange that the Conservative party of all parties harbour the most europhobes. They are meant to be for free markets and a strong international presence yet they harp on about sovereignty and allege that the EU stifles British business through its regulations and undermines Parliamentary democracy. The even more phobic UKIP on the Far Right of British politics, and compeltely in step with Booker's views, paint a picture of European Commissioners goose-stepping through Brussels, twirling the ends of whisker-like moustaches as they plot their conquest of Britain through the back door.

The problem with all this is that the EU is almost never the instigator of these decisions heralded as the death of democracy. It is often big businesses, organisations or national leaders themselves who fuel European legislation through their demands for harmonisation across the EU of their respective industries or laws because of the benefits of such legislation to them. Every directive has to be authorised by the Council and the ECJ with Parliamentary oversight scrutinising their every move. Indeed, even the very sub-committees of the Commission that draft EU legislation constantly work with member state representatives as well as the various lobbyists that occupy so much of Brussels' office space.

There are some who assert that we'd be better off ditching Europe altogether and joining NAFTA and creating an English Speaking Union. This is proposterous. Not just because the trade agreements we enjoy with America right now actually exceed the provisions of NAFTA, but also because a Britain outside of Europe is useless to America. We would be useless to American firms investing in Britain without access to the single market and we would be useless to any American government seeking to reinforce the transatlantic relationship, the bedrock of European and American security strategies alike. It was Henry Kissinger who famously asked what phone number he should call for Europe, stressing the American desire to work with a united and secure Europe. For the most part, that number has been Britain's as we have combined the fruits of the Special Relationship with our position at the heart of Europe. However, in the years since the Iraq war, our total compliance with American foreign policy has led to our alienation within Europe. The result was plain to see following Israel's invasion of Lebanon. When the U.S decided to work with the EU to send a UN peacekeeping force into the country, it phoned France, not Britain.

The europhobes' case is not entirely without merit though. There is a definite democratic deficit in the European Union. All the 'high politics', all the bargaining is done behind closed doors, only to be presented to the people in a barely comprehensible format. Prime Ministers and Presidents use the Council to bypass their own Parliaments, relying instead on the precedent set by the treaty their Parliament ratified however many years ago, offering them no opportunity to question or object to their manouevering. This is hardly surprising as such measures are taken to avoid difficult Parliamentary debates over hotly contested issues such as immigration. The European Parliament in turn is rendered impotent even though it yields the authority to constrain its sibling institutions as Premiers have no interest in promoting it and voters find it difficult to identify with it. The only way to rectify this is to open the EU up; tv cameras everywhere -few may actually watch, but it would be start- except for discussion on military matters of course. A great debate is also needed over Britain's place in the EU and where we see ourselves going. It's no surprise that the government is scared of having this debate considering that the media has already made up its mind, but even so every poll says that British people are wholeheartedly in favour of greater European intergration -even the Euro- if it can be shown to be in the national interest.

So, let's have that debate Mr Booker and you're not so merry men, but if you're going to accuse the EU of 'anschluss by other means', then please stick to the facts, even if you do choose just to highlight the ones which support your own position. For that reason alone, I welcome a referendum on the Reform Treaty, even though I don't think we need one.