Denis MacShane reviews Chris Patten’s book about future trends.

In it he swipes at Conservative policy on Europe:

In Berlin recently, David Cameron promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty were he to become prime minister and the Treaty were not to be ratified. That would mean that the first period of any Tory government unleashing, as its main contribution to international politics, a festival of xenophobic hate against Europe. The Tories, BNP, UKIP and the Daily Mail would win the vote – but at the cost of reducing Britain’s influence across the Channel and Atlantic to zero.

Really?

Maybe not.

Maybe other EU members would start to grasp that the taxpayers of the second largest net contributor to the EU budget are getting deeply fed up, and that instead of pressing on with the clunky expensive institution-building envisaged by the Lisbon Treaty, EU leaders need to go for something much ‘lighter’.

Or maybe we opt for ‘special status’ in some sort of semi-detached relationship with the EU, an idea which seems to be catching on in France. Quite how special that would be on practice will turn upon how much we continue to pay into the EU pot.

It’s actually simple.

If the next Government are prepared to pay hardball with the next EU Budget – and not as Tony Blair did in 2005 throw away a magnificent negotiating position to keep the rickety current arrangements staggering on – we can have plenty of influence within the EU.

And if a fraction of the UK public money saved from opting out of poorly run and ineffective EU programmes were put into ambitious, energetic British foreign policy initiatives, we could have far more actual influence round the world than we have now.