David Cameron's pre-election instruction to the Conservative party "not to bang on about Europe" has been well and truly trashed. These days, when not taking advantage of the easy access to Spanish holiday resorts resulting from EU membership, he's at it himself. Meanwhile, the British economy is flatlining, jobs are less and less secure, and family budgets are squeezed as real wages fall for the third year in succession.
The right wing of the Conservative party, and the monkey on their back that is Ukip, prefer to blame Europe for all of Britain's ills. And a weakened prime minister has little choice but to fall in behind them.
Foreign Office minister David Lidington told a City audience recently: "What Europe needs is not … years of discussion about the intricacies of how decisions are taken in Brussels. What it needs is growth." But the government that he belongs to has condemned us to years of just such pointless discussion about Europe's rules without any real debate about its purpose, let alone the interests of the people it is supposed to be there to serve.
Instead of obsessing about our relationship with the EU, we should be using our membership to rebuild and rebalance our economy, tackle the crisis in living standards and give our young people a future. Last week, the European commission finally began to admit that the grand experiment of cutting our way to growth has failed, and failed young people in particular. It issued explicit recommendations to the British government to tackle the housing shortage, family poverty and youth unemployment.
Read more: Britain's economic recovery depends on working with Europe | Frances O'Grady | Comment is free | The Guardian
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