We need to build up pan-European co-operation and co-ordination on defence and security – a common security framework as much as a common market. The EU is changing to respond to that, but it cannot be the EU alone when Europe’s periphery is core to its defence.

We need to build up pan-European co-operation and co-ordination on defence and security – a common security framework as much as a common market. The EU is changing to respond to that, but it cannot be the EU alone when Europe’s periphery is core to its defence.

It seems hard to believe, but 15 weeks ago, Sir Keir Starmer was still prime minister. Now, to read his name in the current news as anything but a reference point is oddly jarring. But last week he was in Dublin to receive honorary life membership of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce and spoke out as an ex-premier.

To say, as Starmer did, that a European ‘security framework’ is as important as a common market is quietly revolutionary. The European Economic Community (EEC), which became the European Union when the Maastricht Treaty came into force in 1993, was often referred to as ‘the Common Market’. It was emblematic of what British EEC enthusiasts liked to imagine was the purpose and limit of the community: a free trade zone, eliminating barriers and tariffs between neighbours.

Perhaps, freed from the constraints of office and reality, Starmer is now experiencing visions

Perhaps, freed from the constraints of office and reality, Starmer is now experiencing visions

That was never true, of course. The very first line of the 1957 Treaty of Rome stated the objective of the EEC as being to ‘lay the foundations of an ever-closer union........

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