UK must act big and embrace Europe says Clegg

Nick Clegg has warned that a referendum on Britain’s relationship with Brussels risked reducing the UK to “subsidiary status” in Europe.

Ahead of an eagerly-anticipated speech on the EU by David Cameron, in which he was expected to offer a referendum after 2015, the Deputy Prime Minister questioned why there should be “a great national debate about nothing very much in particular”.

In a dig at Conservative eurosceptics who want to take Britain out of the union, he insisted the UK should instead embrace its position in the EU and “act big”.

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Speaking to journalists in Westminster, he said he was “certainly not frightened” of a referendum, and had supported legislation requiring one if new powers were passed to Brussels.

But he said: “We don’t know whether there is going to be a new treaty, lots of people in the eurozone say they want to avoid a treaty like the plague.

“And even if they have a new treaty we don’t know what it will say, we don’t know what it will ask of Britain, if anything. It’s not whether you think a referendum’s a good idea or not it’s why would you provoke a great national debate about nothing very much in particular in response to a document that hasn’t materialised yet and might never materialise.”

His comments, during a House of Commons press gallery lunch, came after the US expressed concern about the prospect of the UK moving to the sidelines of the European Union.

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The unusually direct intervention by the Obama administration provoked a furious backlash from Tory eurosceptics who want to see the UK loosen its ties with the EU.

Asked whether he still backed an in/out referendum – as promised in the Liberal Democrats’ 2010 manifesto – Mr Clegg said: “I think almost regardless of whatever question you put in any eventual referendum, the underlying question is the same – does Britain want to lead in Europe and continue to lead...

“Do we lead or do we kind of hang back in a sort of subsidiary status? And I just think not only ourselves but the Americans and others quite understandably say you are a big nation, you’ve got big horizons, you’ve got big ambitions, you’ve got a big history, act big, don’t act small.”

He said British leadership in the EU was “an expression of self-confidence”.

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Mr Clegg also included a jokey barb about the Prime Minister’s forthcoming speech – to be held in the Netherlands – alongside a self-deprecatory remark that he would be in attendance as Mr Cameron’s interpreter.

“I as a Dutch speaker will be at hand to give a translation – from double Dutch to just Dutch,” he said.

The US Assistant Secretary for European Affairs Philip Gordon made clear on Wednesday that Washington favoured a “strong British voice” in Brussels.

He also warned that referendums could turn countries “inward”.

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“We have a growing relationship with the EU as an institution, which has an increasing voice in the world, and we want to see a strong British voice in that EU,” he told reporters during a visit to London. “That is in America’s interests. We welcome an outward-looking EU with Britain in it.”

Tory MP Bernard Jenkin said that the US had not “got a clue”.

“The Americans don’t understand Europe,” he said. “They have a default position that sometimes the United States of Europe is going to be the same as the United States of America.”