The EU - A Prime Minister writes...

"Now listen here, I don't want to here any more nonsense about this referendum on staying in the EU.

I have been accused of reneging on my promise in the manifesto to hold a referendum, but you must realise that such a referendum is completely unnecessary. After all, we had a referendum on that issue in 1975, which produced a very clear result. There is also one argument, in particular, against holding such a referendum that we find irrefutably powerful, namely that most people in our country want to say neither ‘yes’ to everything from the EU, nor ‘no’ to everything.

It's a good idea to be in Europe and to be able to take advantage of all the good things that it has to offer - like free trade, whilst at the same time having the option to refuse all the bad things - like for example the single currency.

We should not lose sight of the EU’s very useful work, such as ensuring that all the nations of Europe are equipped to face the biggest challenges of the 21st Century: global competitiveness, global warming and global poverty.

A simplistic in/out referendum, posing an artificial choice that does not do justice to the range of views in the country, would be highly unlikely to settle the question of Britain’s membership of the EU at all.

We make a huge contribution to the EU in monetary terms of course, but we should not lose sight of what we get back in return - for example political unity, financial stability, border controls, the ECB, unification of laws, the Convention on Human Rights, free movement of labour, the common agricultural policy and many others.

The list is simply endless, and I ask you - where would we be without these things? So let's just stop all this nonsense and concentrate on being good members of this wonderful institution!"