Lost illusions on Europe, Editorial, January 9, 2013 7:13 pm, Financial Times, www.ft.com

Britain needs to adopt a hard-headed approach founded on the national interest – and hold a referendum
The UK’s troubled relationship is a matter of culture, geography and history. Britain is a post-imperial power with an affinity to other English-speaking countries, especially the US. Mutual incomprehension between the UK and Europe comes down to a basic difference in outlook: while the UK sees membership of the club in economic terms, France and Germany, the co-founders, see the European Union as a political project forged from the ashes of the second world war.
This newspaper has always argued in favour of Britain’s membership of the EU, and we continue to believe it is central to the national interest. Our reasons go beyond a purely economic calculation of cost and benefit. They have to do with Britain’s place in the world. Membership gives the UK influence over the biggest global market. It helps to keep the US relationship special. It amplifies the UK’s sway in a world where economic power is shifting eastwards.

The benefits stretch across national frontiers. Thanks to the single market, the British can live, work, travel and study freely across Europe. Enlargement of the EU southwards and eastwards has consolidated democracy in Spain, Portugal and Greece and created a zone of peace and prosperity in former communist central and eastern Europe. Nonetheless, today’s EU is vastly different from the one the UK joined in 1973, or indeed the one Britons voted to stay in when they were last given a chance to express their views in a referendum in 1975.