This May, the people of the United Kingdom face a momentous choice. On the outcome of the general election depends not just UK membership in the European Union, but the very identity, even the existence, of our country.

Of course we have to debate the UK’s place in the union – I set out my views below – but we must also understand the risks the UK prime minister is taking with his ill-considered referendum promise, his neglect of what a European referendum would mean for Scotland’s place in the UK, and his breathtaking indifference to the effect of a destabilising referendum campaign on investment and GDP growth.

Cameron, pushed from pillar to post by backbench Tory MPs, has had to promise a referendum on UK membership no later than 2017. He says he would, if re-elected in May, stride from Berlin to Paris to Rome securing agreement to fundamental revision of the EU’s core treaties.

Having – within a matter of months – won the EU’s assent to ending the free movement of labour and rescinding much of the Social Chapter, he would then give UK citizens an “in-out” vote and commend continued membership. (For Nigel Farage of course, no revision of European statutes would be enough.)

Cameron’s position is fantastical. Neither his suppositions about the reception he would get in EU capitals nor his timetable accords with reality. Angela Merkel and François Holland have not the remotest intention of opening up the treaties – nor would the leaders of those countries, such as Finland and the Netherlands, which traditionally have been more sympathetic to the UK position. Even if they assented, treaty change is lengthy and distracting, forcing such countries as the Republic of Ireland into referendums.

The UK would crumble after departure from the EU



Meanwhile, projecting from its strong showing in the opinion polls, the Scottish National Party looks likely to do well in the May election. These gains will serve as a springboard for the Scottish parliamentary elections due in May 2016. The platform will be predictable: Scotland will not be led out of the EU by a Tory government. So victory for Cameron in the EU referendum would trigger another referendum on Scotland’s place in the UK. On present evidence, the advocates of independence would win it.

It’s a dismaying syllogism. If the UK leaves the EU, the UK ceases to exist, crumbling into a Tory-dominated England, an independent Scotland and hugely disaffected Wales and Northern Ireland.

So there is one good (domestic) reason the UK must remain part of the EU. A rushed exit, engineered by a partisan prime minister, would further destabilise the UK, potentially leaving a rump “little England”. Many people look at Cameron’s bland face and his presentational skills and think: Surely he is too practical a political leader to allow this scenario to unfold. But they fail to see that he is both a strongly ideological and a hugely divisive figure. Under Cameron, class, region, and community have been pitted against one another. It was only late in the referendum campaign that he woke up to the possibility of Scotland seceding and grudgingly linked with Labour in arguing for the union. Over Europe, he has vacillated and wavered.

The future of the UK in Europe has, in other words, become intimately bound up with right-left politics within this country. There is, if you like, a negative reason for opposing exit. A rush for the door could cement the political strength of the reactionary right, the _Daily Mail_ and the Murdoch media that support it. (Observers of the UK elsewhere in Europe sometimes cannot grasp just how toxic and petty these newspapers are, and how political leaders do obeisance to them. The phone hacking scandal at Murdoch’s papers gave Cameron a golden opportunity to rebalance British political life and diminish the malign power of the press. He refused it, preferring to back Murdoch.)

Trade and security reasons to stay



Positive reasons for staying in are many and various. The economic case is self-evident. It takes a great effort to reject the data and evidence that says a precondition of sustainable GDP growth is maintaining the single market. The UK’s 21st-century division of labour is keyed to trade across Europe. Markets for energy, financial services, and software are of course not confined to the EU, but commerce within the union provides a platform and “home market” for world trade.

The security case is equally self-evident. Unannounced flights by Russian bombers across the North Sea cannot be separated from instability in the east of Europe. In austerity, the case for defence cooperation grows stronger by the day. Nigel Farage and some Tories spin fantasies about NATO somehow functioning separately from the EU; their recipe would lead to the collapse of Europe into edgy competition and, at worst, the revival of the conflict that scarred our continent for centuries.

Of course, the EU is not a social democratic paradise. Dramatic reform is needed, for example, on the tax front. But this club has never, despite Franco-German rhetoric, been based on a single model or path. There always has been and there remains a UK “take” on institutions and programmes, which may align with the view of other member states, or may not – that is the stuff of diplomacy and negotiation, skills that under David Cameron have been rotting away.

The UK general election campaign is already in full swing. The Tories have massive financial backing compared to Labour and the other parties. Though their poll numbers have not been convincing, it is all too real a prospect that come May 9, Cameron will remain as prime minister. If he does, UK participation in the EU will be in dire jeopardy, with huge geopolitical, economic, and security consequences – for the rest of the EU, certainly, but principally for the civility, prosperity, and social liberalism of my country.