Bernard Ingham: Britain can never be truly great while Europe has us trussed up like a turkey

We are still one of the freest nations on this planet (though some daft peers are doing their best to shackle our newspapers), yet everywhere we find ourselves in an EU straitjacket.

I need mention only fish, agriculture, trade, immigration, human rights, employment law, City bonuses and a proposed financial transactions tax, votes for prisoners and energy policy.

That little list, culled entirely from memory and current problems, shows you how much we are under Brussels’ thumb.

Mind you, it is our own fault. It stems from Ted Heath’s join-at-all-costs policy through to Tony Blair’s concession of binding targets for renewable energy against official advice without understanding the inherent costs, the loss of ability to compete in the world and the risk to power supplies.

As things stand, there is not a lot we can do about it. Nor, in the end, can we do much more than huff and puff if the majority of the 27 member-states decides to cap bankers’ bonuses, regardless of what they can earn outside the EU, and introduce a tax on financial transactions, no doubt intended to hurt the City of London.

We have been trussed up like a turkey and every month that passes will reveal more of our national impotence. It even extends to foreign policy where our Foreign Secretary, William Hague, tries valiantly to hide his exasperation over Brussels’ inertia in the face of a massive humanitarian crisis in Syria and on its borders.

The Europhiles have, of course, a remedy. We must adopt active engagement and form alliances to get more of our own way. But we already do that.

Only recently David Cameron secured the first recorded cut in the EU’s budget primarily because it served Germany’s purpose. The eurozone’s single currency is costing it a bomb.

All this talk of maximising our influence in the EU is self-delusion. It is largely a game of chance.

I came to regard my 15 years’ attendance at EU Ministerial councils and summits as a visit to a Persian market.

First, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Then, we haggle. And then, if you like the cut of my jib and what we are discussing happens to coincide with your interests or suit your convenience, we might get somewhere.

Principles are a confounded nuisance in the EU. You grab what you can when you can get it. This is not going to change.

Which brings me to what, if anything, David Cameron is going to do about it. His promise of a referendum in 2017 whenthe outcome of a renegotiation of our membership is known is largely meaningless. It is not just that he is believed to have 
already reneged on an EU plebiscite. On current polling he is a poor bet to be Prime Minister after 2015.

And the more he tries to temporise over Europe, the more Ukip’s fortunes are likely to wax.

The reality is that, gullible though we may have been, we were led into Europe under false pretences. We now have exactly40 years’ experience of membership and most of us don’t like what we have been landed with.

But, more important, Brussels’ governance has inevitably sapped confidence in our own politicians. Too many don’t vote any more because they don’t think our politicians count for much.

They confirm their consistency of view by voting even less for members of the pretentious European Parliament who are largely unknown to their electorates. In short, it is only if we recover our ability to govern ourselves within the limits set by globalisation that we can rejuvenate our ailing, declining democracy.

The only argument against trying to recover it is based on that often reliable deterrent called fear – fear of what economic and City reprisals Europe might try. Fear – and in this instance exaggerated fear in 
my view – has, however, never been a satisfactory glue. In any case, we know the longer we remain in the EU the more subservient we shall become.

The political logic of all this points to Cameron summoning up the blood to neutralise Ukip by holding a referendum next year on whether we wish to leave or stay in the EU. I recognise that this would upset the coalition applecart but that’s a wreck already.

Free or chained? That is the question.