Speaking in a debate on Europe, Professor Brendan Simms of the Department of Political and International Studies [Polis], said the union between England and Scotland and the subsequent creation of the United States which endorsed the Anglo-Scottish union should be a model for Europe. “The Eurozone needs to take a leaf out of the Anglo-Scottish union’s book,” he said, “and federalise its debt and ensure it has sound finances, common political representatives, an elected president, a senate and a common language and army.”
Professor Simms, who is writing a book on European geopolitics, counselled that Britain should not join a British-style Europe in the first instance since “the European project was designed to fix something that wasn’t broken in Britain”.
If the union was a success, however, Britain could consider joining at a later date, he said. He said Britain would be part of a three-layered structure with the single Eurozone at the centre, the wider European community, including Britain, in the next layer and the North Atlantic federation in the outer layer.
Simms said he didn’t think Britain should fear not being at the centre. “A Eurozone political union would be flattery by imitation,” he said.
Read the full story
Image: European Union flag Vsaid and Creative Commons
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
A European Britain or a British Europe?
19 June 2012
Britain does not need to become more European, but Europe should become more British, a leading academic told a debate in the Cambridge series at the Hay Festival last week.