'I don't think that anyone could claim that this is fundamental reform of the EU or of Britain's relationship with the EU," London mayor Boris Johnson complained as he announced that he would be part of the Leave campaign. That was, of course, the promise made by Prime Minister David Cameron when he set off on his tour of capitals to enlist support. In truth, no-one is claiming as much – partly because this agreement, however well dressed up by Cameron, is neither.
And partly because it’s an argument Cameron would find difficult to win and is a distraction from the real issue, to be or not to be in the EU. Blood, sweat and tears may have been expended to persuade the UK’s 27 partners to back the deal, but its minimalist reforms now matter little in this debate. All that mattered to Cameron was to be able to claim success. He has already moved on.
The referendum finally called for June 23rd will be won or lost on whether the British public can be persuaded of one proposition – that the sovereignty conceded to European partners enhances or diminishes the country’s capacity to influence events.
The “sovereignty” argument is one that we are all too familiar with from our own EU referendums, but it’s a difficult, nuanced one to make for supporters of the union against the simplistic mé féiners.
Cameron was doing it manfully on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning, distinguishing between formal or legal sovereignty on the one hand and political or real sovereignty on the other – in essence between the right and the ability to determine freely one's own affairs.
What price the legal right that we all share to buy an expensive car, or to send a child to an expensive school, when in practice few of us can afford either? Cameron argued that leaving the EU would create no more than the “illusion of sovereignty”.
It is a pragmatism more in tune, we will find, with the sensitivities of Middle England, than are the shrill cries of Eurosceptical ideologues who miss Empire and find the idea of sharing power with allies anathema. Who believe that every foreigner is out to get them, and that “w....s begin at Calais.”
Real sovereignty is a measure of the degree to which we can exercise power, the ability to influence, to get things done. It is a dynamic concept, not a zero-sum equation – paradoxically it is quite possible to reduce legal sovereignty, to submit ourselves to others in part, while actually enhancing our ability to affect events by being part of a larger whole.
That is the paradox of membership of the EU – even an imperfect union – and indeed of most international multilateral organisations, a positive experience to which this country can attest.