But this will be reduced when the Parliamentary balance of forces is more equal. My fundamental purpose in raising these constitutional questions is that I, as a lifelong European supporter, see a real threat of us sliding into a form of European integration where we wake up to find we have ceased to be a self-governing nation. I believe that to be a profoundly misguided direction for the EU to embark on, for almost by definition were the EU to become a superpower it would have become a superstate. The EU is a unique mixture of intergovernmentalism and supranationalism. It is a multi-powered organisation deriving its power from multiple sources.
Superpowers exercise their power from the single source of their nation state.
There is now only one superpower, the United States of America. We could only aspire within the EU to exercise such unified power were we to merge into a United States of Europe, with a directly elected President answerable to a European Parliament, with a European Finance Minister with a European Central Bank, a European Foreign Minister, a European Army with a European Defence Minister and the nuclear forces of France and the UK under the command of the European President. A fantasy some might say - would that that were true. It is not a present reality, but it is a present danger. We have seen enough of the politics and the politicians at the start of the 21st Century to know that to an extent unparalleled in our history it is likely to be dominated by a strange combination of an elite embracing centralised globalism, contained by popular demand for identifiable units of decision making with which they can relate.