Mr Verhofstadt, I am not normally a fan of yours, but your article is balanced and generally a fair reflection of the State we are in except for one key aspect I would just like to take issue with.



The EU and membership of it, is without a doubt a massively divisive issue, as you could see from the vote 52 \48 in favour of leave the split was almost 50\50. In such a divided country with almost the same amount wanting to leave as wanting to stay, it was never going to be straight forward to move this Agreement forward. Equally, just look at the streets of France, Mr Macron is presiding over a France which probably has a similar split, Macron publicly stated he would not give France a vote on leaving the EU because they would probably vote to leave. Poland and others who have just emerged from the Russian jackboot are reluctant to find themselves in another centrally managed powergrab and discontent about the EU can be found across the continent.



Can I just ask you, as a human being and someone who holds a leadership role within the EU, WHY you cannot respond to the angst and concern millions of us have about what the EU is and what it wishes to become, because if there were some honest explanations; commitments or even visions for a freer less constraining EU many of us who have lost faith in the EU as a power for good might feel more inclined to support rather than dismiss the EU.



I once was an EU supporter, but I have seen how policies have been driven into the heart of Europe by mysteriously signed off "Treaties" which, buried in the text of such Treaties have been massive shifts of power from the nation state to the centre. The secretive, confusing and unilateral way this has been done, without public consent or proper explanation, has made people (rightly so) cynical; suspicious and worried at the way the EU is and has behaved. Living on a Continent that has a history of regimes emerging to dominate, bully, and control its peoples and the geopolitical behaviour of nations, to many of us the EU is one in a long line of such transcontinental Empires which have brought more misery than peace.



The dreamlike reference of the EU re-creating the unified Europe of Charlemagne, frankly terrifies the British, to us it sounds like trying to make Knights of the Round Table and King Arthur a reality - it is not the way forward for a modern educated Europe. The EU cannot hark back to a bygone age, we need an economic and co-operative European bloc that respects the nation state and democracy, not an organisation that is intent on smothering it and creating a new fairy story.



Brexit was a cri de Coeur from a European peoples inured to the price of war suffering and conflict. A country that has fought in defence of Europe and fought to defend our country against Europe, we have been on all sides of wars and conflict for generation after generation, we know the price of freedom and we have no intention of paying that price again - our freedom is precious to us and will not be given away without a fight and certainly not without a vote.



European countries contain many small states happy or requiring to be part of the EU in a political sense, the UK has never felt that need, we have always wanted to be a part of Europe not run by Europe and that is why we voted to join the EEC, we did not vote to join the EU and there is no point saying "everyone knew" this was a political project which would morph from and EEC into an EU - the great mass of the British public did believe our politicians when they said our red lines on sovereignty were safe and that we had nothing to worry about and that we were in an ECONOMIC not a POLITICAL organisation.



To the British the EU is everything we fought against, an unaccountable, unreasonable, red tape bound undemocratic monolith seeking to govern 28 nations without a proper mandate and demonstrating through its inability to recognise "one size fits all" is not a mantra that will work and is causing unbearable stress on nations and cannot continue. If the EU imagines that Brexit is a weird quirk of Britain which needs to get its act together and sort out its political institutions , it is very much mistaken, these systems which may seem chaotic to you are over 1,000 old and have served us well, our adversarial approach belies the fact that in normal circumstances we do work at a cross party level and that the PEOPLE have the final say.



The EU must change. It is not a case of saying the UK must change and sort its politics out, it can't because of the inflexible nature of the way the EU seeks to operate it will become an increasingly divisive organisation to be a part of. Where national vetos are limited, where majority voting wins out, where subsidiarity has died, where cries for change fall on deaf ears, the fights across Europe will grow and become more serious. How can the EU become an organisation where the "takers" the subsidy dependent outnumber the donors? Such a model is disasterous and will end in chaos. There is no motivation for change that cannot be right.



For Britain and some other countries, a looser arrangement with Europe without the threats, bullying and over charging for membership will in the end be the only way peace can remain in Europe. There has to be a multi speed Europe and the dogged obsession with the ideal of a United States of Europe has to die. Centralised structures such as the EU have proved time and again not to work; local democracy; local decision making within a broad framework is what will save the EU. Unless the EU gets its political house in order the rest of the Continent will remain in turmoil, torn between freedom and local democracy and being run by an anonymous unelected undemocratic autocracy - that is the question of the day and that is a question you and the EU have to answer, it is your problem as a policy maker, how can YOU sort out your political machinery so that our national politics becomes functional again??????